This game feels a bit like a Richard Kelly movie to me, Southland Tales specifically. Extremely ambitious, ahead of its time yet perfectly encapsulating the time it was released (ST = 00s, TD = 90s), funny and absurd, has crazy sci-fi concepts, somehow combines so many genres and different ideas into something that works together, and all of that collides with time/budget constraints, technical issues and overcomplication due to the creators not being able to stop coming up with insane ideas (cryptic plot for ST, cryptic puzzles/mechanics for here, several of them either don't work or aren't explored to a satisfying degree), finally leading to an unfinished mess that I nonetheless can't help but love and marvel at. And when I say unfinished, I mean about 40% done. And unfortunately there are no comic books here to complete the vision in at least some kind of way. This is all we have.
As an example, closer to the end, there's a potentially very helpful artifact that you will shit yourself getting and it just DOESN'T WORK due to a bug. There's no fix for that.
The second half of the game feels especially cut-off. You get to some kinda interesting (though anything will be after the cable maze puzzles) but very bland locations, shoot some highly expensive endgame footage there, make videos out of that and that's about it. You don't even meet the very much teased Metal Lord. There are like 5 locations in the game, and in some of them you don't get to do or see much.
But despite that, there's still SO much fun to be had in this game. Little mini-games for sleeping, making sandwiches and drinks, routine things like buying fuel rods and food goo feel satisfying with these 3d animations. Incredible sound design, of course, every action has a sound reaction to it, my favorite being the whispers when you "examine" an item ("what is it?.." "..focus.." "...let's take a look!"). Most of the music is amazing, too (I mean, a game like this better have a good OST). And of course I love the visual style of the game, 90s/early 00s 3d is so underrated as an aesthetic.
So many little things in this game give me monkey neuron activation, just moving around, making myself a sandwich (which is always followed by an angelic "yum-yum"), """reading""" """books""" which are more mini-games in disguise, often containing hints for the more obscure puzzles (or, one of my favorite facts about the game, there are interviews with characters who buy your videos detailing their traumatic past, which can help you not to put potentially triggering material into your videos), listening to Kitty Cat on repeat and more and more. Too many things to name.
And back to the negatives, this game is fucking unfair. You can softlock yourself and ruin your save in so many ways. Happened to me several times, at some point I had to resort to a walkthrough for general tips to keep myself sane. Some essential items are hidden in places where you would never even think to look. You might get lucky with click-spamming or you just have to know they're there. And the difficulty settings, they make no sense. Don't pick anything higher than 2 if you don't want to turn your playthrough into pure hell.
Getting this game to work is another pain, took me several attempts and a couple of hours. I got the best result on Windows 3.1 emulated on Dosbox, but I've heard that 95 might work better.
One more thing, and that's the main mechanic in the game. Music videos. In general it's not very fun, you only get to choose the music/images for the video and how long the scenes are. Later, you can play around with some of the Distortion Dimension footage, which makes it a bit more exciting. It's basically your reward for fighting the guitar warriors and solving puzzles. New footage = more money. My favorite idea is getting an animation of a door opening into a shot of Joe Sparks himself running up the stairs with a mad smile on his face. But you do get tired from making videos fairly quickly.
The saddest thing is that you get most of your best footage from 3 locations that you access at the same time. Sonic Cemetery, Hell's Garage and L.A. Stage. These feel the most undercooked in the whole game. No context is given for these locations, no nothing, you just get there, complete a little puzzle or a mini-game and get out with dozens of clips. And after that, there's nothing left for you to discover. Just go home and make those $200k videos for Yuji until you can end the game. There's no climax.
All of that aside, the game is unforgettable. I love games that overflow with creativity even if they are underwhelming on other fronts. I still absolutely love it for what it is.