This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
A wonderful concept that fails miserably to reach its potential. I would have *loved* if this game had been good, but sadly, the concept is the only thing propping this game. So much more could have been done with the idea of a country full of teens fleeing a dictatorship, but it left me wanting so much more, fantasizing about what the game could have been. Feels like a shower thought that was shared with friends and ruined.
The attention to detail is terrible. Tachometers and Speedometers in cars don't match with the sensation of speed when driving, or realistically what your kind of car could even do, and you can see the background "Pop" into existence like it's inflatable after looping every dozen seconds or so. The weather can also change in seconds, going from mostly clear skies to downpour right before your eyes. A mountain that's supposed to be several thousand miles away appears as if it is several hundred miles away, and a psychotic taxi cab driver is *somehow* available every single day across stretches of road spanning literally thousands of miles to pick up any one of your playable characters in a given run.
Dialogue, and other choices, move around when the screen shakes or other effects happen, making picking a choice you didn't want very easy. Voice acting at the best of times is "satisfactory", but most times leaves you disappointed.
The characters. The characters are bad. Some of them are stereotypical geniuses. Some of them are too dumb to live. Some of them are filled with juvenoia to a ridiculous extent to the point of overriding any empathy. Too many are like that. Some of them get incredibly weak redemption arcs after being horrible people that cheat and lie. Some of them are just "Good", with no real character flaws, and one of them goes from "Good cop" to "ACAB" to "Good cop" whenever the story demands, and unironically says "Fake news" while pulling a gun on people on a bus that ask her about labor camps for teens. Compared to the other characters, the psychotic taxi cab driver feels more realistic, and at least you know what to expect.
If it wasn't so prevalent in the story, it'd be in the next paragraph, but frankly the political commentary in this game warrants a separate paragraph, or the next one would've been a horrible wall of text. I swear to god I'm not a Trump worshiper, the political "commentary" really just is bad. The (definitely not) Fox News station that reports spun stories for the "red" candidate, will show the entire election getting more than 100% of the vote. Oil is bad, Bush did 9/11 (not exactly, but it gives me comedic relief to say it. The government unironically did do a terrorist attack in game though and blamed it on an unsympathetic activist group that sometimes has extremists), and the red candidate will order the wholesale slaughter of teens protesting in the streets at his 50ft concrete border wall.
The story. Written by "The Whole Team", it takes place in a fictional country called "Petria", but it's very similar to the United States in terms of political commentary, infrastructure, and culture. Your role in the story is of a nameless, faceless teen that's trying to escape a dictatorship that's kidnapping teens to be put in work camps and sometimes mk ultra'd. It is never explained in the entire story *why* teens are being rounded up. Apparently adults in this universe just have no empathy, and no foresight whatsoever. Your "choices" really lead to 3 main endings, which are...
SPOILERS:
The red candidate stays in power and keeps being a brutal dictator.
The blue candidate wins the election, and everything is going to be perfect in the future, but not before the blue candidates supporters have a violent protest because reasons.
The blue candidate doesn't win, but a violent protest happens, and blue candidate is installed by the people anyways.
SPOILERS OVER.
Overall, this game is just a massive disappointment. I was very excited at the start of the game, but the execution is terrible. I have no idea why this game is so widely loved. I have have to believe these people just don't play many other games, and the devs have tapped into an edgy demographic.… Expand
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