Game Reviews #6 [To The Moon, *Kentucky Route Zero, Dear Esther]

These games all elicited three very, very different emotional extremes

To The Moon - 4-5 hours of crying. Just sitting on my couch with a joycon in each hand weeping out my soul. I believe COVID was having it's heyday when I played this and I desperately needed to feel a strong outer stimuli and holy fuckballs, Batman this did the trick. It's like your favorite sad movie except you have to play it but that makes it even more intimate. Ever since being married, stories about couples hit even harder and this may have been the first time I noticed that. This game fucking wrecked me. 10/10

Kentucky Route Zero - There's a cute little star next to this game because it's my favorite game I've played so far. This game was made by a bunch of artists and, boy howdy, it really shows. IMO it really belongs in a museum or something as an example of how far the medium has come in terms of what constitutes as "gameplay" or even "story" in an interactive way. A part that lingers in my mind is a section of the game where you have a phone and a rotary dial [and have at this point accumulated a few #'s]. I played with that fucking phone for hours. It's the only fully voiced part of the game and it's just lovely. There's singing. There's bears. There's analog ttrpg references and nonlinear gameplay. If you like absurdist shit [and I sure do] check this baddie out. 10/10

Dear Esther - I try to keep things positive as drRapture. I really do. This is supposedly the game that spawned Walking Simulators [a sometimes derogatory term used to describe a linear game wherein the player does little more that walk and use a single button to interact with the environment]. I enjoy walking sims for the most part. But I watched a bit of the creator commentary [because I couldn't get into this one] and the things I heard made smoke come out of my ears and my eyes bleed. This game represents everything I hate about art. It is random and confusing for the sake of being random and confusing. It is "vibes" over specificity to the point of distraction due to lack of continuity. It suffers from crippling pacing due to self-indulgence. And - perhaps most important of all - I want to spit hot lemonade in the creators faces. 0/10