This week might be remembered as one of the most extraordinary stretches in video game releases: multiple contenders for game of the year, a compelling rival to Mario Kart, an award-winning indie, and at least one title that looks destined to become a cult favorite. There’s no realistic way to play them all this weekend, or even within a month — we’ve been treated to an embarrassment of riches.
Beyond the sheer quality of new releases, the week is notable for a trio of games that deliberately interrogate gender. Silent Hill f, Consume Me, and Baby Steps approach the subject from entirely different angles: psychological horror, intimate autobiographical life-sim, and absurdist comedy, respectively. Each one examines the social pressures that enforce rigid gender expectations, then proceeds to dismantle them — resulting in 2025’s most surprising triple bill, all within seven days.
The highest-profile of the three is Silent Hill f, Konami’s latest reimagining of the franchise. Set in Japan during the 1960s, it follows Hinako as the fog-choked town of Ebisugaoka fills with monsters and memory. True to the series’ tradition, the game excavates its protagonist’s psyche and exposes her deepest anxieties. The developers have been upfront about how gender informs the narrative, telling PC Gamer that situating the story in the 1960s tied directly to Japan’s women’s rights movement.
That historical framing is evident throughout the finished game. Hinako wrestles with the narrow expectations of femininity imposed by her community and even by her family. She’s mocked for being “too boyish,” and her private journals reveal a woman split between the person she’s expected to perform and the person she truly is. The motif of transformation recurs repeatedly as Hinako struggles to shed a persona that suffocates her.
By contrast, Consume Me — the Seamus McNally Grand Prize winner — approaches gender through an intimate, colorful life-sim. Creator Jenny Jiao Hsia translates her teenage self into a string of minigames that map the relentless expectations placed on young women. What begins as a portrait of disordered eating and obsession with appearance expands into the many demands piled onto a teenager: relationships, academic pressure, and the constant performance of “being desirable.” The game’s honesty about those pressures makes it a wrenching, empathetic experience.
Baby Steps offers a third, unexpected perspective on masculinity. At first glance it’s a ridiculous walking simulator from the team behind Ape Out: you control one leg at a time and try to shepherd a manchild through a goofy open world. The schtick reads as slapstick, but beneath the absurdity lies a sincere meditation on male insecurity and the performative expectations of manhood.
Nate, the protagonist, is agonizingly self-conscious: awkward, out of shape, and unable to meet the cartoonish standards of masculine competence he encounters. Throughout his journey he runs into men who embody the idealized “man” — effortless hikers, cocky adventurers, and even a recurring gaggle of nude, hedonistic “himbo” characters who pressure him into abandoning his own aims. Nate is repeatedly shoved aside yet unable to ask for or accept the help he needs. If you stick with Baby Steps through to its conclusion, the game offers a surprisingly tender resolution that urges men to reject the brittle tropes of macho performance and embrace authenticity instead.
All three titles converge on a similar truth: Hinako, Jenny, and Nate follow different roads but face the same antagonist — a society that tries to compress people into tidy gender roles. Each game stages its own revolt against that compression, whether through psychological unmasking, honest self-portraiture, or farcical self-sabotage. Only one of them, though, lets you smash a few faces with a crowbar along the way.
Source: Polygon
