Game with a relatable story about going back to your hometown in adulthood and it REALLY sucks, not because anything's changed with the cute old map-shop couple living across the street, or the curry special at the local diner, but because you've had cinder blocks tied to your feet causing you to walk at a glacial pace, and your good old friend Fujita hasn't gotten into conspiracy theories or MLMs, but building space-time exporation devices he insists you to check 'the vibrations out'. He breaks you into a power plant, you meet aliens, and things get worse from there.

The game itself is mainly walking (slowly) around the surprisingly detailed and realistic-feeling town with your shitty car, the fastest bus system in the world, and trains. You can check e-mails to get a sense of who to meet or when, but sometimes these people want to meet you at nighttime and you can only pass time by walking around, or sitting on a couch (for one hour at a time: and up to two hours max.)

The minimal interactions and weirdly detailed spaces with their bespoke toilet rooms and random characters stick around in your mind afterwards. I think that's the game's strong suit - all you can really do is talk to or kill people, but that combined with your relative helplessness in combat make you even wary to walk around a hospital, since some characters will just assault you based on your in-game state.

Well, I didn't stick around for more than 3-4 hours to really see what could happen or pan out beyond a few in-game days, but it's a unique game. There IS technically a goal to do (pursuing the mystery of the game,) but it feels equally valid to just barely follow the plot and wander the huge city and enjoy the wonderfully-modeled spaces. It feels Crypt Underworld-like - the game doesn't really progress the story a lot of times outside of moments you really have to hunt for, so it kinda feels like walking in and out of bizarre, city-life vignettes.

Fujita, your friend you have not talked to since high school, has something important he would like to tell you! Good luck finding where he lives!

After about an hour of meandering around a very liminal town of no cars and no citizens (the ingame explanation is that there is a virus going around so people are staying indoors, but we all know the PS1 couldn’t handle having an entire town to explore and actually have life in it as well), I finally figured out how to read my map. After randomly stumbling upon a weapon shop called “Wild Arms” (???), I buy a pistol then proceed to beat the store owner unconscious with the baton I apparently already had. Poor guy.

Somehow I made my way back to the starting point at my office where I proceeded to the map store nearby. Wherein I asked for directions to my friend Fujita’s (You know, because everyone just knows where some guy named Fujita lives right). I get back into my car and make my way there, finally with purpose!

Upon arrival (bar the occasional stop-gap when my car hits a barrier and can’t move, so I have to get out and find a payphone to call my car back to me, repeat) Fujita shows me some weird machine, of which I already forget the purpose of, then he takes me to his garage... where he has some C4. Now we are going to blow up the power plant, because “things are changing” (oh god, this is starting to sound like I joined some rightwing terrorist plot). Me, being a silent protagonist with no boundaries, decide to go along with said plan without any dispute whatsoever.

We take the bus to the power plant and the guard bars the entrance. There’s some random cop there too and I kill him with my pistol, because why not. The guard doesn’t even notice the dead cop next to him. Fujita says we can enter through the back way. So we do. Once entering the back of the power plant I proceed to get reckt by a doberman guarding the place (but no humans anywhere). I eventually kill him with my pistol and read his dogtag “Ohm, loves going for walks around town.” Poor guy.

4 stars

Proto-Pathologic que nos mete en el papel de periodista, investigando el origen de una extraña epidemia que resulta en una invasión alienígena encubierta. Como escenario, toda una ciudad monocroma a explorar libremente, vista a través de las gafas de They Live, ausente de vida, como reflejo de cierta mirada cínica hacia una sociedad gris y monótona. O quizás no y es solo casualidad como tantas otras cosas del juego. Con una progresión de leer correos, investigar lugares y liarte a palos con mutantes alienígenas de apariencia humana. Con un singular sistema de muerte, orgánico dentro de su narrativa.

Sorprende su innovación como descuadran sus extrañas decisiones de diseño, difíciles de discernir si intencionadas o placeholders de algo a lo que no se le dio una segunda vuelta. La más extraña quizás la de matar gente como forma de conocer su trasfondo. Una acción violenta sin ninguna consecuencia real desde el momento en que salir y entrar de cualquier edificio resucita a todo el mundo. Cosas que llevan a pensar si realmente se daban cuenta de la implicación de ciertas acciones. Como darnos el papel de periodista para, al poco de comenzar, entregarnos una pistola y hacernos encarar un acto violento hacia trabajadores de una central eléctrica, sin motivación o justificación previa. En They Live al menos tenía un sentido de justicia liarse a tiros con los alienígenas enmascarados y la violencia no dejaba de ser el principal medio de comunicación del estadounidense honrado.

Germs comienza intrigante, el tono sobrio contrasta con la extravagancia alienígena y hasta la portada ayuda a darle ese aura de extrañeza que atrapa. Pero descarrila en cuanto toca avanzar por la siguiente mazmorra y matar al jefe de turno. Es un juego interesante, vanguardista y pionero en muchas cosas, lo que por supuesto no significa que le salga bien todo lo que se propone.