It's week three and we're still in the "getting to know each other" phase, so now's the time to tell you about one of my favorite games in the history of gaming. I'm a shooter nut and a stealthy killer, so you'd think my top game would be a Half-Life or a Doom. But strangely, the one that's affected me the most over years is a plodding, talky role-playing game. I'm talking about Planescape: Torment, and I still remember the weekend many years ago when it sucked me in and consumed me whole.

10-years young this year, Planescape is brainy and brilliant. But back when I first fell in love with Planescape I didn't appreciate it so much as let it get under my skin. In fact, I wish I'd had it around age 15, because it's self-absorbed, existential, and possibly the most goth game ever made. It plays to the dreams of every teenager who thinks the whole world revolves around their problems. And it does it with wit, brilliance, flexible character development, and the voice of Homer Simpson. (Already sold? It's still available on GameTap, and eBay surely has copies too.)

Here's the premise: you're an immortal, but you're also an amnesiac. You can't die. But every time someone knocks you hard enough in the head, you lose your memories and start from scratch. You've lived hundreds of lives and experienced things most folks can't imagine. But your body's broken, your dreadlocks are frizzed, and your blessing has become a curse. It's time to solve the mystery of who you are and how you got this way.

Planescape takes place in a fringe universe that nobody but the most dedicated Dungeons & Dragons player has ever heard of. Out on the planes, death is beatable, reality is malleable, and the moral becomes physical. Streets can give birth to new streets. Whole cities can slide from one world to the next. Your best friend is a talking skull. In fact, you get to talk to dead stuff all the time. Right around the time I had to take sides between a village of dead people and a sewerful of hypersmart rats, I knew my latent goth side had found a most unholy coupling.

The gameplay is fiendish and subversive. For example, you aren't punished for dying; not only do you bounce back every time you're clocked, but suicide even becomes the answer to a puzzle. One of your sidekicks, a succubus named Fall-From-Grace, carries a diary in her inventory; but while you can see it and take it away, so far as I know, you'll never figure out how to unlock it. Which is a shame, because in this game, words are more fun than deeds. Planescape doesn't have branching conversation trees, so much as a gnarly, evil rainforest of dialogue, where smarter characters get better comebacks and the same answer can be delivered as a truth or a lie.

But more than anything, Planescape: Torment deeply groks the mindset of a moody, Camus-plagued adolescent. It makes you feel like you're grappling with an oh-so-serious personal problem, and the whole world was built to help you solve it. Everything around you reflects your dilemma, from the people you meet on the street, to the giant, endless wars on the horizon. And you can struggle through it any way you please: good guy, knuckle-dragger, bomb-thrower or genius -- there's content for almost any path you take. You can flirt with your best friends -- or sacrifice them to the giant pillar of flesh-eating skulls. Hey, who doesn't have some growing pains? (And 7th grade-style fantasies where frenemies die grizzly deaths.)

Of course, not everyone wanted to gaze at my navel as much as I did. Feeling way too comfortable in the adolescent mind of my character as I played I'd think the world revolved around me -- and just like in real life, I was wrong. Outside of a small circle of friends, my problems affected almost no one. I could be anyone and do anything, but the impact of my actions was nada. And no matter what I tried, the end of the game stayed the same.

I won't give away the ending, except to say that it's a bit of a fizzle. But I'd have it no other way. The finale is the smack in the face we all deserve, when it's time to grow up.

As with so many cult classics, Planescape has plenty to teach the industry. "Hero saves the world" is still the story of most of the games on the shelf today; "anti-hero saves the world" covers the rest. Both storylines try to put you in the shoes of a protagonist and invest you in their fate. But none match the total existential absorption of Planescape, where you are your own worst enemy -- and your only savior. And the only person who even cares is you.


Rachael Webster (a.ka.a SG member PixelVixen707) is SG's Hit Play games columnist. A game lover and game blogger living in New York City, she also writes at PixelVixen707.com and tweets as PixelVixen707.