Just played chapter 1. Really enjoyed it. Such a breath of fresh air after Borderlands to have something where I'm in control most of the time, there's actually some sort of mechanic there, and I actually give a shit about what's happening. I'm already totally invested in the characters and the mystery. It's a little clunky in places, painfully sincere and hipsterish, but that fits perfectly with these 18 year old art students. The writing is fairly subtle, and where it isn't then it still feels like it's the 18 year olds being cringey or the tone being slightly heightened and Twin Peaksy. And seeing a montage that felt more like Magnolia than Smokin' Aces was, again, very gratifying.
Only a couple of small negatives for me.
Firstly, it could do with more detailed and expressive character models - they give the whole thing a bit of a painterly look which helps cover stuff up but the faces are all pretty low-res and static, and no hair physics, which is all a real shame when it's such an emotioncentric story and you spend so much of it looking at people's faces. I'd love to see a very subtle remaster of this that just fixes these issues. (Oof, just took a look and found out that there actually was a remaster done a couple of years ago, and it looks terrible. Glad I didn't get forced by corporate fuckery to play that version.)
Secondly, the time-rewind puzzles can be a little fiddly. A lot of the time they're really satisfying and fun, but a couple of times I was irritated, especially when there was an aspect of it that didn't get tutorialised till later but I kind of needed to understand at that point, or the boundaries weren't communicated completely clearly.
I'm not convinced right now that it branches any more than a Telltale game (although there were some decisions that I totally bypassed because I didn't bother to look in a certain spot, which is quite cool - apparently I failed to save a bird's life, no idea where that was!), but perhaps stuff will snowball later. I'm hoping the town setting with its reusable settings and cast will help there - easier to spend budget on branching that way.
Really, the best review I can give is that I want to play the second episode right away.
Okay, finished it. On the whole I really enjoyed this. It does enough to hide the fact that it's basically just a fancy visual novel, the time puzzles are often fun and cool, the story is perfect Twin Peaks/Donnie Darko pastiche, the branching has at least some heft to it (a few big options and lots of little ones, plus puzzles with multiple solutions), and I cared about the characters. I found myself laughing along with them when they poked fun at each other, rather than laughing with the writers.
There were a few flaws aside from the stuff I mentioned previously. Though most characters looked fairly different three of the teen girls had very similar, almost bland faces. The clothing and hair has to do a lot of heavy lifting (plus, to be fair, the writing and acting). There is the occasional lack of polish - how soon you get a hint, or how far back you have to keep rewinding, or dialogue playing just as you're about to do something and getting cut off - though nothing major. And the ending was a little bit of a let down - the murder mystery gets solved around the end of 4/start of 5 and then it pretty much moves on to dealing with the time travel stuff and gets trippy, which is a good choice, but it indulgently goes on too long (a real shame, the sequence would have been super-effective if every moment was cut in half), it has an annoying stealth section which, even though you can save-scum through it using your powers, is exactly what I don't want to be doing at the climax of this game, and it eventually gives in and does that 'vignettes on floating platforms in an empty space' thing from every game dream sequence ever.
And then the story ends too ambiguously and, though this may be due to branching stuff, abruptly for my tastes. They don't explain or resolve the time power stuff and they never address the possible romance between Max and Chloe which seemed to me like the third pillar of the story! By the end of it, I was starting to wonder if I'd imagined that element, especially as apparently a large majority of players got Max to kiss some boy near the end of it.
It wasn't awful or anything, it just didn't measure up to the highs of the rest of the game. And, hey, maybe the sequels will solve this stuff. Much like with TWD, I'd gladly play more, and if I get through this backlog and they show up on sale I'll likely grab them.
Rating: clunky in places, but wonderful
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