Kentucky Route Zero

Even though I have only played the first two acts, I have to say that Kentucky Route Zero is one of the most wonderful gaming experiences I've ever had. Apparently a point-and-click graphic adventure, this is actually much closer to an interactive graphic novel. It's really good literature, or art, or however you may categorize it. Obviously, though, the "game" dimension is only the method used to put the player in the middle of the story. The difficulty is trivial, and it consists merely in finding the way through the different locations on the map and sorting out the meaning of the quest, which is but an excuse for a compelling story about lonliness, frailty and oblivion. Now, about the script: it's more than excellent, it's really over the scale. Whoever has written the texts in this game has obviously read a lot and written a lot, and knows who Don Delillo or Faulkner are. Very often the choice of dialogues does not have any consequence on the development of the story --- it's just meant to let the player co-author the story, add and choose the details that frame the main characters. You won't like this game if you're looking for shiny entertainment and action, for real-time emotions where you can prove your gaming stamina. You will love this game if you enjoy art, design, reading a good story, and obviously if adventure games were your favorite genre. It's very hard to explain how fabulously original, simple, light and complex is the graphic aspect of this game. The map interface is a great idea and the medium by which minigames find their right place into the game, creating a spiraling sensation that destroys the common notion of space as the story approaches the zero. Slowly, also the environments lose features of reality and represent in a fascinating way the tricks of immagination, irrationality, oblivion and selflessness. Just play the game, you won't ever forget it. Especially if you like good literature and contemporary art & design!

First off, this is not a game. It's an interactive novel. There is no skill, or luck, or strategy. There's certainly no goals to achieve — which is very much the point. This is a story about people whose lives have been deprived of purpose by the corporate takeover and deindustrialization of the rural American south. It's a southern Gothic magic realist ghost story in which the characters do find a semblance of meaning and community in their broken lives, but not in the ways they expect. I think the experience is enhanced if you go in knowing that Conway will never make that delivery which is the game's inciting incident, that none of the characters will find what they are nominally looking for, and that relationships and authenticity matter far, far more than extrinsic goals. Video games are often fantasies of control but this is very much a story about finding meaning in a world that we cannot control, a world that has left us behind. It didn't totally work for me; I found it a bit too surreal and elliptical to be really emotionally resonant. The sudden shifts of setting and the introductions of whole new casts of characters from one chapter to the next threw me off. But the world that it conjures still lingers in my memory three years later and I might even replay it one day.

If the art relies too much on the viewer to interpret its meaning, it is too subjective, therefore becomes empty and shallow.

Personally I don't get why this so critically acclaimed. It's not really a game at all. It's a visual novel with some point and click aspects. The plot isn't that great, doesn't go anywhere or have much of a coherent story. Yes you could spend about an hour thinking about the meaning of it afterwards, but that's not really what gaming is about. The devs behind the game are art students, who were clearly more interested in making something that should be an arthouse film than a game. It's not unplayable or the worst thing out there but I just don't get the critics who believe this is the best thing ever.

Inconsequential, drab, and unsubstantial story that hopes people will misread its disorganized ramblings as something deeper that it is.