henke on 2/8/2017 at 20:00

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That's a great video.

And I'll probably play Tacoma once it hits the bargain bucket.

Sulphur on 4/8/2017 at 17:52

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That would be an interesting combination as the two are nominally similar. Event[0]'s an interesting game, if not necessarily something easily recommendable. I've yet to give it a decent look-in, but it's got a reasonable facsimile of parser-based AI interaction that was initially fun, but the effect breaks down once you realise its logic operates on a keyword-driven search, and it doesn't fully parse natural language.

Tacoma's got some fairly decent reviews. I'll see if I can't run through it this weekend.

Sulphur on 9/8/2017 at 06:18

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Okay, so I wrapped this up in about two hours and change. If you wanted to categorise it...

☑ Walking Sim
☑ Floating Sim
☑ Paranoid Android
☑ Obsessive Item Detail
☑ Cat puns
☐ Game

Whether you're going to like it depends entirely on your tolerance threshold for exploring and watching. Think of it as virtual interactive theatre. Tacoma does a few smart things with the format, like introducing you to a scene that starts with multiple people who then split off and continue doing their own thing, which leaves you to decide which one to follow and see what they do/say next. Because the conceit is that these are AR surveillance recordings (Tacoma is an orbital station whose crew are monitored 24/7), you can rewind at will to see all of these parallel actions at your own leisure.

Which means that, unlike Gone Home, this one has a lot of voice acting, and I'm glad to say that all of it is excellent, both from the actors' performances and the actual writing. The characters are realistically drawn, with none of them blending into each other despite the facelessness of the AR projections; usually a sign of good character writing. All of them come with qualities that define them, flaws or otherwise. You can discover some of this by poking around their personal effects and snooping their comms logs at various points during scene playback, which is fun to explore and somehow never feels like you're intruding on someone's privacy. Or maybe that's just me.

Part of the joy of walking around is the fact that, while the art direction is pastel-y functional space station chic that evokes low-poly efforts from a distance, there's a massive amount of detail once you walk up to things and look at them in your hands. You can: read the directions on medicine bottles or ingredients lists on packets of snacks (these people eat a shitton of food), scour magazines for detail (in the latter half of this millenium, physical money is an artifact, and corporate loyalty is a tradeable currency), and marvel at the way the gilt borders on a packet of wet wipes reflect the light just so. Verisimilitude in form and function is king; the artists must've spent a lot of time on plain ol' material design, and it shows. There's a lot of attention given to the kind of life people had on board the station, and the items they brought with them and use daily tell their own story.

As for the story, it's... okay. I wasn't excited by it. It's a low-key tale of what happened to a space station populated by humans and an AI, with a decent if shallow attempt at speculating on the evils of corpocracy in the future. There's not much of a plot, but what is there is decent if clichéd if you're already a sci-fi fan. What carries the game and the story, really, is the personality it imbues everything with, which is almost always thoughtfully done.

So yeah, if none of that lights your world on fire, probably give it a spin when it's on sale. If you're a fan of the medium and lovingly detailed takes on everyday objects, it's a worthwhile addition to the library.