Virginia (2016)

"I recently finished what is probably one of the strangest games in my memory. It feels like a genuine David Lynch experience with its unconventional narrative and schizophrenic flashbacks. Everything in the game looks very cool, specific, and extremely unconventional. The game isn't stretched thin and has a reasonably adequate gameplay length of 2 hours, which is very acceptable for this story and its delivery method.

The game's plot is presented silently; at first, I thought the game was just delaying the first dialogue moment, but soon realized that there are practically none. The entire plot is traced through metaphors in dreams and level design. The level design essentially plays the role of the script because through locations, their shades, and the overall environment, we understand the context of what is happening. Characters are more like part of the environment than heroes with specific social interaction. This fits with the overall idea of the game, adding depth and mystery.

Overall, the game is unique, but in my opinion, Firewatch is better. I don't understand where such strong hype about this game comes from, especially considering that Firewatch came out earlier and, in my view, offers a more cohesive experience.

Rating: 8 out of 10 for excellent artistic style and an engaging story."

I found the art style, color palette, and composition of the scenes in Virginia quite pleasant. The soundwork was a delight, and in some moments the audio felt like the true "Superhero" of the game, further elevating some of the scenes and conveying effectively their specific emotions.

As a sucker for magical realism, I was happy to play a game that for the most part nails the genre so well. While Virginia did not pass the "Twin Peaks" vibe check for me, it managed to carve out its own unique charm.

The scene transitions in the game were outstanding, showcasing a level of craftsmanship that I believe more narrative experiences should aspire to. However, despite these transitions, the pacing of the story was an issue for me. I often found myself out of breath, rushing through an ever-evolving and changing story, with limited moments, in which I could reflect and understand what had just happened.

This pacing problem combined with the game's unconventional storytelling approach, resulted in a loss of clarity regarding the main character's motivation. Without a clear goal, I found myself progressing through the game somewhat aimlessly, albeit captivated by the intriguing visuals on screen.

After playing this game I fell like watching Twin Peaks again. It has a lot of things that reminded me of the show.

I really liked the game. Though it doesn't have a lot of interaction, it's a cool way of telling a story.

I think I'll play it again in the future, I have to pay more attention to the details.

This game has one hell of a soundtrack and an art style that's unique and pleasing on the eye but that's where the praise ends. The story had me invested at the beginning with an interesting concept but lost it's way after a short time and became a convoluted mess, especially towards the final stretch where I had already lost most interest long before.

As far as walking sims go, this is an extremely good one. I haven't played a whole ton, but out of the handful I even remember playing, I will definitely remember this one fondly.

I'm usually very skeptical going into walking sim/interactive story type games because they can very easily become extremely boring, extremely pretentious or both. I don't think this game was boring (although, of course, some people will find walking sims boring regardless) and I don't think it crossed the line too far into pretentious, or at least it was good enough that it actually felt deep and meaningful instead of just trying really hard to be deep and meaningful, like a lot of similar games.

It took a few scenes for me to really get into it, but once I was in, I was IN. I wanted to find out what was going to happen next, and I think the interactiveness was well-used - at first I was disappointed that this was one of those interactive stories that was mostly just clicking and very little thinking about what to click but once I was engaged with the story I didn't care. It's hard to explain why but the placement and timing of player actions in these types of games are really important, and I think that part of this game was really well-designed and thought out.

I knew my final verdict for this game would come down to the ending, and well, it's not getting five stars. The ending wasn't terrible, but it didn't live up to the build-up. I'll probably feel better about it when I lie down and think about everything and start to come up with theories and stuff but ultimately it didn't hit the right note for me. But the journey was good enough that the destination didn't kill the game, it just knocked off a star.

Speaking of notes, probably the best part of this game was the MUSIC. If I imagine how this game would be without the right music, or no music, it probably would have had half the impact, or less. The fact that there's no dialog in this game didn't bother me at all. The music carries all the emotion that the characters lack in voice and facial expression, and it works. It might have seemed kind of manipulative (for lack of a better, less harsh sounding word) that the music made it seem like something important was happening all the time, but maybe a game this short needed it to give the full impact, since there's not much time for a lot of peaks and valleys.

If you're not into interactive narrative/walking sim type games, I understand, but if you want to try this one, the important thing is to think of it kind of like a movie with an interactive element rather than a video game. I came out of this feeling like I just watched a really good movie. By the way, I only decided to play this game on the fly because it's leaving Origin Basic in a couple weeks, so if you happen to have Origin Basic it's worth playing through before it goes (it's only about an hour and a half, but that also depends on your playing style).

This idea is definitely interesting, but as a game it didn't end up being very compelling.

From what I experienced, it seemed like the core concept was to tell a story as a person would remember it - in sporadic, loose chunks of memory, rather than an uninterrupted flow, and with subjective elements rather than an objective representation of reality. The plot benefits from this, as it lends a somewhat surreal feeling to a storyline that dabbles in symbolism and the supernatural. The wonderful sound design also pushes the story along, eliciting emotion from the player in lieu of dialog.

However, it doesn't have enough to hold it together as an interactive experience. The complete lack of dialog makes the characters difficult to understand at times, and often the protagonist's objective is unclear - I feel as though the game would have benefited from a select few pieces of dialog to tie the plot together while still maintaining the memory-like quality. The lack of objective is frustrating again in the linearity of the game. Several times I found myself in a room filled with objects, bereft of clear motivation, tediously scanning the reticle over the room in search of the single thing I needed to interact with in order to move the story forward; this being very reminiscent of pixel hunting from adventure games.

I have read that this game benefits from additional playthroughs, but I found it too tiresome to want to play it again.

Pros:

+ Beautiful musical score.

+ TV-style jump-cuts and editing cut down on a lot of boring walking (though they're a bit jarring at first).

+ Interesting plot and characters. Definitely confusing and obtuse, but invites debate.

Cons:

- It's incredibly linear.

- Floaty controls.

- You're often just scanning the screen trying to find the right think to click, which isn't very inspired.

- There's not much interaction variety. It's just click, click, click. Even when the protagonist picks a lock, you're oddly not given control to do the picking, mini-game style.

- Laughably unsubtle symbolism.