Update Seventy-Three: 4 November 2017

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

So close, and yet so far.

I wanted to like the Low Road so much more than I did. Look at it. That aesthetic is gorgeous. The set designer and background artist deserves a medal. This game is a feast to look at. Unfortunately, other parts of the game don’t match that high visual bar, so it ended up being a let down.

It’s like the uncanny valley of a good game - it’s so close that its failings are glaring. The voice acting is okay but doesn’t fit very well with the tone and with each other (the characters recordings are inconsistent with each other, with one character in particular very poorly mixed). The writing is okay but a lot of the gags don’t land clean and the plot kind of runs headlong from one thing to the next without a strong, satisfying throughline. The character models are okay but the ragdoll-esque character animations are too slow and floaty. The central relationship in the game is really weak and I ultimately didn’t care about anybody. It’s stylish but empty.

It’s a solid point and click, though! Its central puzzle mechanic is a good one - it’s a handsy mechanic where you control the characters hands instead of having a cursor, and that makes things more interesting than just clicking and dragging your mouse. It makes things tactile, and it was used in a variety of fun puzzles that were challening but not rage-inducing.

A word of warning, though: do not play in 800 x 600. I got about halfway through the game before I encountered a game-breaking situation. One puzzle was not resized correctly for that resolution, and the piece that needed to be moved was offscreen with no way to click in. I couldn’t back out of the puzzle, nor could I save - I was stuck. I hadn’t saved yet (my b) so I ended up having to restart the entire game. That certainly didn’t help how I felt about the game.

Take a chance on this if you love point and clicks and/or seventies aesthetics. You’re not missing anything if you don’t.

Next up: I asked RNGesus if I should ask RNGesus to pick a game or if I should pick a game. It said I should pick a game. I chose -

See you soon!