The Wind-Up Chronicle of Feb 2nd 2k19

hard-boiled boring and the end of this blah game

okay gonna be straight up real here: Murakami’s style and story do not translate well to interactive media. i don’t know if it would survive the shift to a visual medium like film or television, but it sure as shit doesn’t work here– in a point-and-click game, full of incomprehensible puzzles and a lot of meandering language, all of which reads as flowery for the sake of it rather than carrying any philosophical meaning like in the actual works of Murakami.

i didn’t expect much from this game but i at least expected coherence. that… was not delivered. in order to progress i had to alt-tab from game to guide-in-browser the entire way through because as soon as i tried to go it alone i got stuck. there is literally one straight-forward item to obstacle piece in this game and it was in the last quarter of the story. i felt a sincere burst of joy as i applied my shovel to that pile of mud, but then realized that the guide was indicating i was near the end of the game itself, so then i became sullen and resentful again. not really a fun rollercoaster to be on when you’re supposed to be having fun with a game, yanno?

and again, gonna be real: my rating on that bar of five out of ten would be a lot lower except: it’s Murakami. or someone trying to be Murakami, anyway. they tried. they failed. i would love to see a success story with this kind of surrealism, but in order for that to happen whichever dev who is attempting this needs to realize that progression of the game does not hinge on how wild and out there you can get, it hinges on followable logic.

Memoranda has no followable logic. get it for the +1 or the guided 100%, but don’t get it to actually play and enjoy.