Papers, Please is a grueling game. The low fi audio barely edges out the true 8 bit visuals, which feel as if they’re 30 years late. The only real gameplay is reading through paperwork looking for minute discrepancies as the laws of my home country get more and more convoluted. If the lady in front of me gets through our borders with a passport that spells her name wrong, I’m the one who has to pay the fine, and my family at home is already cold and starving. On the other hand, if I happen to hit the button to have her arrested and thrown in some ungodly gulag that I’ll never see, there may be another five spot waiting for me at the end of the day. Papers, Please doesn’t make me feel good about myself and though it let me walk away feeling accomplished, it doesn’t even necessarily feel like fun half the time. Why in the blue hell do I love this game so much?