Recent reviews by Durk

Demo content is solidly long, giving you a proper introduction to a game that tests your brain more than your reflex (highlights the Puzzle and Adventure tags vs. the Action tags, imo). The tone is cute and inspiring, and the cast of characters you meet fits that (without being overly saccharine).

If the visuals and the music in the trailer caught your attention, it's definitely worth a check. Save transfers over to the full game (including retroactive achievements), so you won't "lose progress" if you play this then pivot to the full game.

Consortium is a deep simulation of a small space. You're free to engage as much or as little with the plot and characters as you'd like. Time ticks on, and so too do events in the simulation - with or without you.

Walk around, live the life, tease out the plot, and react to events as you feel is appropriate. Or maybe "pre-act" to events if you want to test the simulation. Go wild. This is one of those "devs thought of everything" kinda games, so you're going to find the game playing right along with you.

You have a great degree of individual narrative agency, but you're not in complete control. Interaction is like a conversation, and the best kinds of conversations are the ones where you feel like you contributed, learned, and came to new understanding. You know the kind, right? It's where you feel like you're glowing from within when you think about it, even years later.

And it has been years. As I write this, it's been almost a full decade. You'd think in ten years of video games that surely there are newer, deeper, more interesting examples out there of this kind of game, right?

IF THERE WERE, WHY WOULD I BE WRITING A REVIEW ABOUT A TEN YEAR OLD GAME?

Ten years were chewed up and spit out by the game industry reinventing skill trees, jiggle physics, and flag collection and whatever else. Consortium served us a small taste of a future of interactive narrative gaming that DIDN'T HAPPEN. As such, Consortium remains one of the best examples of narrative interactivity in video gaming.

Yeah, the game has flaws. The shooting felt shallow and janky at release, and the game abruptly ends in a cliffhanger. Does that put you off at all? Don't let it. Consortium is petite Westworld Star Trek.

I have been waiting nearly my whole life for this game.

That sounds like hyperbole, I know. It is not. Let me tell you why:

In this game, I got to finally fulfill a childhood fantasy of mine - I got to see what was hiding behind The Little Mermaid's shells. That's right, this game shows you the pearls she has hidden under those oyster shells that adorn her chest.

Don't frown. Don't pretend to be above such things. Bring your nose back down from the sky. You don't fool me, and you don't need to. I feel the same way, brother. I have since I was young. But we are no longer young, and we have no need to be fools hence forth.

And sister, don't get this thought in your head that men are pigs. I met a pig in this game and he's an alcoholic and a smoker, of which I am neither. You cannot pretend that little You didn't wonder about those gravity-defying chesty bags that kept her buoyant unda da sea. In your curiosity, we are unified. And now Telltale has given you the possibility to sate this curiosity.

Both sexes, brothers and sisters, come together with me on this thing! I am now free of this need! I am free of the foolishness of youth! I am free of the maddening curiosity! MEN! WOMEN! I HAVE SEEN THE HILLS THAT PART THE SEAS, AND THEY ARE GLORIOUS!

Additionally, you play as some guy (Big Bad Wolf) and pretty much say and do whatever you want. That's pretty cool, I guess.