A beautifully haunting mess of format, absolutely devastating and personal, but not particularly logical nor linear. An amalgamation of seemingly menial logs, turned into fundamental terror all encapsulated by a odd, alien foray into a mass of taboo and haunted data.

I'd recommend playing this game here: https://laingame.net/ with both the simplified and TSX versions being fantastic though the Simplified being definitely the most cohesive as you can tackle it at your own pace and rewind/skip at your own leisure without the hassle of its obtuse node system.

Gameplay elements included (for TSX), it's a purposefully clunky mess of slow menu choices as you slowly go from log to log, unlocking others, and watching a screen of data move over and over (with chances of things appearing if idle). Overall, not fantastic but serves its purpose. Ultimately outdated.

What makes this media piece so memorable as a "game" is its experience, even in the two modern ways you can play; it's still squeamish and utterly overloading. Not many other games have near the amount of encapsulated phobias and latent trauma that this game handles so well. It's subtle, arguably slow, personal, and painful.

No matter where you go, everyone’s connected.

LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN

Vote: 10
Time CONNECTED: 8 H 47 M

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It's almost too familiar. The futile thumbing through articles of psychobabble in some vain attempt to give a somatic labeling to a conflicted psyche. The psychosexual allure of technology and the internet as potential transcendence from corporeal responsibility. The well-intentioned failures of institutional psychiatry and ultimately, the all too human desire to connect with the other in a century that increasingly obscures and polarizes our conception of the self. The very narrative happening in our minds and at our screens through the lenses of those most helpless and affected.

If you are interested in this game this website has all of the content you're looking for in a more digestible format:

https://laingame.net/index.php?site=0#l4

Start from the bottom and work your way up.

It's a fascinating alternative timeline to an already fascinating
anime. Unfortunately some of the vibes are lost consuming it in this way and Lain as an IP is heavy on the vibes but it's better to lower the barrier of entry and actually interact with the media than just forever have it on the list of things to get around to. At least for me.

I'm not big brained enough to understand Lain going in raw. I watched the anime in college a long time ago and kind of hated it but luckily the anime and the game both have a very lovely hand holdy fanbase willing to explain it all to a dumb dumb like me. After a re-watch of the anime and a playthrough of the game, I get the hubbub. It's all very neato.

The execution is questionable, the story is a disorganized mess and not much happens in the narrative -- and that is the point.

When I first finished Serial Experiments Lain for the Playstation, I felt... wrong? uneasy? mainly because the game does have an ending but not scrolling credits after finishing it. For a long time I felt like it was an experience but nothing too crazy.

So, why am I giving it a 5 star?
It has been 3 years since I finished this game and I still haven't forgotten about it. Hell, everytime I see fanart of Lain I get quite afraid because she makes a hypothesis inside the game, but it's proven to be true outside of it and that's what makes it scary. The fact that she owns a place on backloggd, the fact that she receives fanarts decades after her appearence...

this game lets you see Lain's life in a very deep and close way which is partly why everything is so haunting after you're done with it.

Having to be in a world with other people really is a horrifying thing. Sometimes things get so bad I wonder why we even bother trying to communicate with each other. It seems inevitable that we mess something up, say too much or too little, hurt people in ways we could never fathom. No amount of verbal or non-verbal communication could capture the ideas we truly believe in, it could never convey the nuances of our thoughts and perceptions, the principles we carry that guide our every decision. Wouldn't it be better if we all knew exactly what was going on in each other's minds? It sounds like a horrifying idea, but would it really cause more trouble than we already create? A network of people constantly connected, every detail of your life being taken in by anyone willing to join that network. Then you would see every version of yourself that exists in different people's minds. Wouldn't that be a relief? Or maybe it would drive you mad. Either way, why not give it a shot?

This game came out 2 months after the final episode of Serial Experiments Lain. Fans went into this expecting answers and got more than they would ever want to know.

Mind-blowing experiment of interactive mediality, Serial Experiments Lain detaches itself almost completely from the script of the anime to address the theme of subjectivity in relation to digital information from an entirely new perspective. The game appears as a digital folder from which a range of different audio, visual, and textual files can be accessed in no particular order, through which the narration unfolds as it goes along through more or less explicit clues and information about the events and the evolution in the interactions between the characters. There are many extremely interesting elements such as the focus on realism in the depiction of mental health issues and the therapist-patient relationship with its inherent criticalities and the ability to handle a script that functions perfectly even in a very nonlinear way: a title that may be difficult for many to approach, but one that it is so essential and rewarding to dive into in order to study it in all its parts because of its uniqueness and charm.

While I think it's an absolutely untraditional game that won't appeal to everyone, those who are willing to explore it and give it a chance will find one of the most mind-bending narratives in a video game...and it's kind of one of my favorite anime games out there (which frankly isn't saying much as I've only touched the Fullmetal Alchemist games on PS2 and this.)

If you liked the anime and wanted more Lain and are willing to put up with some very unconventional game design...I'd say it's worth it. You can play it for free here: https://3d.laingame.net/#/