NORCO

Like Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium, the writing here occasionally sacrifices clarity for floridity, although its ornate descriptions do add detail and texture to the rudimentary pixel art.

On a good day, Norco is a bastion of beautifully evocative storytelling that invites any player to take refuge in its world. On a bad day, it cuts deep as a sobering, but loving portrait of a modern dystopia—a community on the edge of great change. But on a personal level, it's a game that understands who we are and what the internet has made us—how this digital constellation of fragmented subcultures has shaped the way we see the world and our place in it. There are few games in the world like Norco, and it belongs unequivocally in the highest tier of narrative experiences in the medium today.

NORCO is hauntingly beautiful. A surreal tale that is dystopic and futuristic but at the same time extremely rooted in the hopeless and sad reality of the suburban industrial areas of USA. A sort of a great acid trip that we won't soon forget.

Even if you don’t normally enjoy point-and-click adventures, Norco is a must-play for anyone interested in story-driven games. It’s one of the best-narrated tales since Dysco Elysium, rich with the real-life history of the town of Norco with some imaginative fiction mixed in. It’s dark, funny, and scary in all the right places, and even if the ending doesn’t wrap up all the mysteries it opens, it’s still sure to leave its mark on you.

If nothing else, NORCO will go down as the game this year that had the most unique world, but it also stands a huge chance of going down as the game with the best writing, story (or stories) and atmosphere. Who could have thought that Louisiana would be a perfect backdrop for a bizarre sci-fi mystery? Geography of Robots did, and it’s thanks to them that we got this memorable journey that folks should check out, even if it may be hard to describe what happened.

Norco offers an incredibly atmospheric story - without gameplay surprises.

The sense of having travelled somewhere that games have never taken us before. [Issue#370, p.116]

Stellar: a must buy. Seriously, get it. Pros: - graphics are beautiful - story is.... amazingly thought provoking. There's so much to talk about, so many ideas that it deals with intelligently, that just throwing them out here would do you a disservice. Seriously: the game speaks for itself. And beautifully so! My translation of it's ideas would just be muddying things. - minigames are fun. - the amount of side-missions that you can stumble into are really neat and range from hilarious to depressing. - a lot of earnestly funny moments Cons: - too short - not meant for people who want a lot of fast-paced action, or dislike reading - not a game for people who don't like stories or complex narratives - the ending is very philosophical and interesting, but as the reviews show, it can definitely go over some people's heads.

A good experience, altho a bit lacking. The setting, characters and story are really interesting and leave you wanting more at the end. Not that its a bad game, but its a bit rushed.

Norco is a game with great potential, amazing art and concepts, but feels like it was given up on at some point. A lot of characters and subplots are never really explored and game ends suddenly early. It should be easily 10-hours or so longer than it is. Still a very interesting experience!

Another one of these games that critics praise for NO reason. This game is pathetic really. Boring from start to finish. The plot barely makes sense and is on the level of something that L. Ron Hubbard might write. If you like to spend 5-6 hours reading walls of text and clicking on pixelated graphic screens have fun with this one.

This one is overrated. Yes the writing is pretty good, at least not banal, at least in the beginning. But I had no fun with it. The atmosphere was good enough, but the story was not.