Kentucky Route Zero

Don't play this game if you just want to play a game. It's not a good game. I assumed it was due to it's perpetual exposition / magnificent number of excruciating dialogue, like whenever I would attempt a great Final Fantasy game when I was ten/my attention span would not allow (where are the difficult jumps and guns and puzzling levels??). Or perhaps it was just my inexperience with point-and-click adventure games. Regardless of how boring this game was at times:

This game is one of the coolest experiences I had last year. It's because it felt less game, more impending doom. Less fun activity and more existential exercise. More moody - think Twin Peaks, first run through season one. More cold, quiet, unrelenting nightmare. The unease this game is able to achieve - without ever being a horror game, per se - is incredible. 

There were few parts to enjoy throughout a long gameplay, but those times were fantastic! Fever dream events and scenes and settings and characters and situations - and don't even get me started on the music. I didn't think it could have gotten any cooler / more perfect than the string-plucking silhouettes, but then BAM! (like a million hours later) there's this bar scene where your new-befriended buddies are on stage, delivering Annie Lennox level eerie vocals, pained and relatable. Over a depressingly simple, factory setting synth beat. Otherworldly sounds join in and sink you further into this game's universe - or maybe even another one - than you ever thought those dragging conversational scenes would allow you. All after your bedraggled crew of kooklunatics - who could only ever exist here - have been through the harshest of days. I picture the main character exhausted in the way one can only be after trudging in the whipping winds and snow of a harsh winter. There are things that will never be the same - things lost. Things that he has not even been afforded time to grieve - he's been on a time-sensitive mission, after all. Been enough dodging the whiplash from this world's oddness - no time to slow down. Until finally, without knowing, without being able to prepare for it: he is able to sit. And rest his body and mind. I picture things sinking in, slowly. A calm, constant stream of realization, as he sips his cheap beer. Around others, but alone. 

The game was honestly worth it just for that scene, alone. And in order to have that scene have the weight and depth that it did: I had to play through all of the dragging parts! It's a game that isn't a game, but one that I think leaves you with an aftertaste much sweeter than the initial bite or sip. Felt a bit pretentious at times, but there are some things that feel pretentious that actually turn out good. And some people who say things feel pretentious simply because they genuinely just don't get it. I am quite able to admit that there may be pieces to this game that I missed. But the tragedy of it hit. And the feelings were felt. 

Having said all that: navigating the actual Route was quite painful and irritating at times, so maybe don't play this in a rush. You will lose your mind. 

I will keep my eyes peeled for that thing the creators were allegedly working on three years ago. Fingers crossed.