Tacoma (2017)

Thematically, departs drastically from Gone Home, but mechanically is basically the same game with a new plot. Rather than seeing a story as it happens, the player character is exploring the environs and piecing together the story from the evidence left behind.

The player doesn't have much agency - there are no choices to be made and you simply consume the narrative as it is laid out for you - but rather the player interacts with the story as it unfolds, choosing what to read and investigate to uncover more details of the events, characters, and the world that they're in. Unfortunately there's not a whole lot to do beyond that, but it does keep the focus on the narrative, which I found quite compelling and a pleasure to experience.

Intro

This is a game in which you walk about a space station going through people's lives by looking at their computers, and where they lived and worked. You also play through several interactive scenes where past crew interactions are represented digitally where they took place. There is no combat or action or any form of threats.

Improvements

Obviously, comparisons to Gone Home are inevitable since it's the same developer and the games have similar gameplay. I'd say Tacoma is better in many ways:

• The Augmented Reality bits are nicely done and make it easier to empathise with the crew.

• The environment is more interesting, and it seems like a fairly realistic representation of what such a space station would be like.

• The worldbuilding is nice, with space politics among space factions. Plus all the books, food, technology, etc. I criticised Gone Home for lazily re-using the same clothing texture in the same drawer but they really went the distance here.

Demerits

• It's harder to really feel for the crew because they're from the future and there's six of them.

• It lacks the nostalgia of VHS tapes, cassette tapes, zines and 80s/90s bands.

• The AR-bits would have been a lot better if they had actually shown people instead of wire-framed blobs.

Conclusion

Tacome is really well done and definitely one of the better 'walking simulators', but it didn't grab me as much as Gone Home did. Even though at 3 hours it's twice as long, you don't get to know the crew quite as well as the Samantha. Good but not great.

Gameplay: 3 /5 Story: 4/5 Presentation: 4 /5 Difficulty: N/A

Basis:

Story= plot progression, intrigue, characters, world

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

The game is very much like other story-driven games. I would compare it to something like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, or Gone Home. It is a game where the story is told by exploration of the world. I spent about 3 hours playing this game to beat it and I did a moderate amount of exploration. Having completed the game I know I would have missed a lot of details about the few characters in the game had I not explored a little bit. In the end, I would have understood the main parts of the plots, but I wouldn't have experienced the rich subplots of each character and the world in which the game is set. I think the developers did an awesome job of fleshing out the world outside of the Tacoma Station without us ever having to leave it. Additionally, to that, they did it in what averages around a 2-3 hour experience.

The game could have improved on the number of things you can do to learn more about the story. It mainly consists of watching characters speak, reading documents and examining objects. In The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, there are puzzles and a little bit of what I feel like was horror survival that made the game continuously interesting yet pushed the story forward. Even with the few gameplay elements that Tacoma had, I was intrigued from beginning to end.

Rating: 6.5/10

I like it, but not nearly as much as Gone Home. Gone Home hooked me from the beginning, probably because of how it teased horror. It then evolved into something really emotional. Tacoma never grabbed me, I don't know if it was just that I'm familiar with what they want to do or the story itself isn't on the same level. The relationships are fine but I'm also not generally a fan of audio logs and whatnot in games, unless they're really interesting. I didn't find the environment that compelling, we've had a lot of abandoned space stations and they usually feel lonelier than this.

So if I'm being honest, this may really resonate with people a lot more than it did with me, perhaps I just wasn't in the right frame of mind this time around, but it didn't hit me despite having some solid writing and acting.