breakingb0x3s

A pretty little waste of time. This is a story driven point and click adventure game. You play the role of one side of an investigative team. You act as an information provider of sorts using a government system to find "relevant" information on approved individuals. The art works is solid, and the music through the game matches the tones trying to be set, although the transitions for some of the music is abrupt and assumes you are reading as fast as the text is scrolling. The story can take a few different routes but is strongly set to specific story beats, which is fine, games like Disco Elysium do this as well and proves that concept can work. The big difference is, this game does not allow you to explore the themes, or characters any way you want. There's a huge lack of creative solutions, it's either provide the highlighted information you deem relevant or don't, unless the game stops until you provide something. There's no way to end a day early or even really make a "wrong" decision as the game will highlight conflicting data and while it is supposed to point out the contradictions, it does so in a very rigid and inconsistent way, which makes me believe the game would have benefited without having it in at all. With all that said you'd assume this is a bad story, and I think it's a mediocre one that takes a very hard stance. The characters presented are mostly believable, some are definitely written as extreme examples to get the story to flow the way the writer(s) wants things to go. However, instead of letting the player toy around with the system and experiment with different possible outcomes (as could be seen with games like Papers Please or even This War of Mine) you can make minor changes to a pretty set outcome. It has been stated before and I will agree, the game constantly feels like a tutorial. Instead of letting you just investigate, your assigned agent (handler if you will) constantly chimes in on what you submitted to sway you one way or another on each decision (that you can't change). This made me think less about what I was submitting and more trying to isolate what I needed to submit to get the next story beat. Earning achievements might be a reason to revisit if you aren't put off by the story, but those only seem available on Steam at the moment. (I received a free copy through Epic's weekly free games recently) I won't spoil details or twists, but there's little replay-ability as trying to load your finished profile only activates the closing cut scenes you earned through that play through. Meaning you'll have to start a new profile each play through. The game has it's moments and I don't think it's overpriced, currently at $10 on steam and $15 to get this and it's sequel Orwell Ignorance Is Strength. I think it is worth a play through and probably better experienced than watching a play through online, however, I will also point out for the same price you could get Papers, Please which while not having the same pretty graphics or modern feel, does a much better job at handling a "Big Brother" themes presented. Pros: Solid artwork, decent characters, decent music, short (story should only take a couple hours to complete once), interesting premise Cons: Lack of exploration, Overbearing at times, System and logic sometimes contradict themselves, overall poor execution. For those of you who may still be interested, the sequel states to have additional features that may address some of my criticisms in this review, I might even be willing to try that one out some time, however I will go in with much lower expectations.