This review contains spoilers
If you've never fallen in love online before, you might enjoy this game. If you have, you've already played this game.
Since this is a narrative focused game, a review of the game has to come from the perspective of the narrative, so this review has major spoilers.
I wanted to like it. I really did. As a girl whose first few loves were online and just as awkward, I feel like it captures exactly that kind of frustrated, timeless, pure energy of first loves, especially with the added complication of figuring out how to negotiate it online. Idly performing some task while discussing topics totally divorced from the game felt authentic to how it happens "in real life," where it almost feels like the games are a crafted digital space for you two to talk in. I think it properly captures how much these virtual spaces contextualize our behavior and make us different but almost more authentic versions of ourselves, and it does an incredible job of making the rest of the world, the "real world," feel awkward and stilted in comparison. But I found myself wondering what the point it was trying to get across was beyond that.
Was it just to capture that energy? Because if so, I feel insufficiently motivated to identify with the main character; instead of playing out this sort of energy for myself, instead of feeling like I am falling in love all over again, I am distinctly watching Nina do it for me; her very real presence (in this case, her literal physical presence on screen) drove home the point that this was HER story, not a shared one, and so I left feeling like I was invading her privacy, going through her emails and archives she'd almost certainly never look at again once they were zipped up (I even explicitly avoided opening archival data in an effort to more effectively roleplay to no avail). Even my token interaction of grinding enemies went away as I realized that Cibele would just keep smacking them to death if I let her.
Was it a cautionary tale? A lot of textual evidence seems to suggest this. During some of the DMs with another guy, it's revealed Nina had her nudes leaked by a different flame. Blake says he loves Nina repeatedly, but the content of his attraction boils down to superficial details like her appearance gleamed from photographs to how "chill" she is, a descriptor used basically only when you have nothing else to say about a woman. Blake even explicitly compares Nina to a different female character who we're told is simply not attractive enough for that kind of consideration. Blake even tries to go back to that relationship they had before, much to Nina's disappointment. But if the game is a cautionary tale, then why does it read so much like a love letter, ending with Nina explicitly saying that she's glad she shared this with Blake? Why does Nina treat her implied nudes getting leaked in such a blase manner? What is Blake's status as the leader of their clan supposed to imply here?
I feel like a good companion piece would be the 2013 movie "Her" staring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. In many ways, what's being shown here is similar thematically and emotionally the Oscar contender, but I came away with the impression that that movie simply had more to say about its subject matter.
Maybe, despite loving story focused games exploring rare subjects, this game wasn't designed for me. Perhaps this game was meant more for the people who had never negotiated suddenly feeling for someone online. If that's you, you might want to give this a try.
Since this is a narrative focused game, a review of the game has to come from the perspective of the narrative, so this review has major spoilers.
I wanted to like it. I really did. As a girl whose first few loves were online and just as awkward, I feel like it captures exactly that kind of frustrated, timeless, pure energy of first loves, especially with the added complication of figuring out how to negotiate it online. Idly performing some task while discussing topics totally divorced from the game felt authentic to how it happens "in real life," where it almost feels like the games are a crafted digital space for you two to talk in. I think it properly captures how much these virtual spaces contextualize our behavior and make us different but almost more authentic versions of ourselves, and it does an incredible job of making the rest of the world, the "real world," feel awkward and stilted in comparison. But I found myself wondering what the point it was trying to get across was beyond that.
Was it just to capture that energy? Because if so, I feel insufficiently motivated to identify with the main character; instead of playing out this sort of energy for myself, instead of feeling like I am falling in love all over again, I am distinctly watching Nina do it for me; her very real presence (in this case, her literal physical presence on screen) drove home the point that this was HER story, not a shared one, and so I left feeling like I was invading her privacy, going through her emails and archives she'd almost certainly never look at again once they were zipped up (I even explicitly avoided opening archival data in an effort to more effectively roleplay to no avail). Even my token interaction of grinding enemies went away as I realized that Cibele would just keep smacking them to death if I let her.
Was it a cautionary tale? A lot of textual evidence seems to suggest this. During some of the DMs with another guy, it's revealed Nina had her nudes leaked by a different flame. Blake says he loves Nina repeatedly, but the content of his attraction boils down to superficial details like her appearance gleamed from photographs to how "chill" she is, a descriptor used basically only when you have nothing else to say about a woman. Blake even explicitly compares Nina to a different female character who we're told is simply not attractive enough for that kind of consideration. Blake even tries to go back to that relationship they had before, much to Nina's disappointment. But if the game is a cautionary tale, then why does it read so much like a love letter, ending with Nina explicitly saying that she's glad she shared this with Blake? Why does Nina treat her implied nudes getting leaked in such a blase manner? What is Blake's status as the leader of their clan supposed to imply here?
I feel like a good companion piece would be the 2013 movie "Her" staring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. In many ways, what's being shown here is similar thematically and emotionally the Oscar contender, but I came away with the impression that that movie simply had more to say about its subject matter.
Maybe, despite loving story focused games exploring rare subjects, this game wasn't designed for me. Perhaps this game was meant more for the people who had never negotiated suddenly feeling for someone online. If that's you, you might want to give this a try.
Vaudevillain
1 year ago