I'm kinda disappointed by this game, cuz most of the other old and no achievements HOG games I've played were awesome, but this one is kinda meh. The item usage were a lot of moon logic. There's way too many back and forth and without a map system it got annoying fast, especially since there's always a slight load time in between scenes. The story is meh and doesn't make much sense. You're a presumably teenager or a young adult and Herbert who's suppose to be a capable hero type of dude, yet he's just utterly useless and demands this young girl to go to all the dangerous places and do things for him. I know it's for gameplay purposes but he could've idk, did his own side of work and together they bring down the cult or something. Instead he just comes off as a horrible person. lol I didn't enjoy the HOGs either as they're all rather blurry and boring, and the minigames are ugh, just really bad. Would not recommend.

This game is quite disappointing for me. It has really great framing and vibe especially with its art style, and the main mechanic/premise was real interesting at first, but does get dull near the end. What I think fell short for me is the story. The writing isn't bad, but it's just...average/passable. It failed to make me care about any of the characters, and more importantly, it failed to make me care about "Orwell" and the plot. It's especially apparent at the final chapter where there's a long ass "cutscene" where you're stuck reading phone logs of the activist group as they fight with each other, and I'm just sitting there thinking: I don't care about any of these. It might also be that I ran into a weird situation where I actually had no clue about who the culprit is, but in the phone call a guy hacked into my system and said I figured it all out and revealed who it is, which just made me very confused. I'm also confused about the message the game is trying to give me. It seems like it's trying to say that ultra surveillance is bad, but we as the player can stop a bomb attack with Orwell, and the "activist group" left the impression that they're a bunch of mad people trying to terrorize people. And the final reveal of you're getting targeted is supposed to be this bum bum bum big thing but the game flat out told you it's gonna happen, multiple times already to the point where it just didn't hit me at all.

I'm coming to the conclusion that the story is sanitized too much, which is funny given it's clear political waving message, but there's no real ugliness, no real consequences and not really grounded, which is the biggest failure in getting me to care. I think if it's set when Orwell is already live and you as an investigator are tasked with a series of cases. One person you deemed as suspect got shot dead while police are arresting them, and later on you find out more information that they are actually innocent. Perhaps later you're tasked with a target who is their partner who you initially don't know, and the partner is really struggling because the person you killed was the bread bringer of the family, and is now resorting to some criminal acts to keep afloat. Or perhaps not even that, it could just be a blurb about someone that's discovered dead in their house, and then you found out who that person is related to. For some reason I'm thinking of Papers Please's story, just more of that type of grounded-ness. There's actually a lot of potential, but the story has to dare to go there, which Orwell just didn't. It tried, but it didn't work because the person was not at all innocent, or not even likable cuz a character can be guilty and if they're charismatic enough the player will grow fond of them.

Another rather unfun part of the game that I only realized since I went back to get the remaining achievement is that, your actions doesn't mean shit. Whatever you do, it'll still lead to the same big plot points, and even if you actually get the "good ending" where Orwell is rightfully shutdown, you still get investigated which is just funny to me cuz then what's the point? What's the point of all the activist group that has done and the innocent people that has died in the bombing? Orwell is still active and being used, and nothing has changed. It left me with a bitter feeling but that bitter feeling is empty, because I don't really care about the story, it left me bitter because of the real world correlations of feeling helpless when I see all the news about political stuff.

Maybe this review didn't make sense, I'm not sure. Brain is a little bit of a mush after a long day of work. I do still think this game is worth a play, it's just disappointing. I do own the sequel so when I get around to it I'll see if things improve.