Recent reviews by Morpher

This is the first time I've ever posted a review for a game (at least, in a long time) but Disco Elysium is an experience I cannot recommend enough. I would also probably recommend this game to people who prefer a good book to a video game. Playing this feels more like engaging with a interactive novel, than it does a traditional game.

Disco Elysium is set in the fictional world of Elysium, more specifically in Martinaise, a poverty-stricken district of the city of Revachol. While the game is limited to this one location, there is such a deluge of world-building and careful plotting in this game, that a lot of information about the world outside of this district is readily available to keen explorers.
The game incorporates elements of magical realism and absurdism, as well a dark sense of humor akin to the writing of Joseph Heller and John Kennedy Toole, in order to tell a story about addiction, poverty, ideology, economic decline, aging, identity and Jungian psychology, as well as touching on countless other themes.

You play as an alcoholic detective, who's lifestyle has caught up with him and is now suffering with total retrograde amnesia. Amnesia so severe, that to even say the character's name technically counts as a spoiler.There has been a murder in the district of Martinaise, and you are the man they sent to find out who did it.
Over the course of this game you can engage with a colorful cast of characters, each with unique perspectives and values. The depth of writing that has gone into crafting this incredibly complex world in insane, but more insane is how well fleshed=out the various and conflicting individual perspectives of the world can be. So much so that real lines of political thought and philosophy are explored and interrogated throughout the game - Your character can even engage directly with these lines of thought, choosing his own ideological direction and modelling himself on certain schools of thought.

The narrative concept of a fractured psyche, allows one of the most interesting aspects of this game to be utilized. The skills system is unique, in that a high skill level in a certain area may not necessarily be a good thing. Your character can engage in direct dialogue with different aspects of his brain, all of which offer unique solutions and options to overcoming problems. The problem is, is that sometimes these voices are wrong, and can actively mislead you. Your character is constantly forced to make decisions based on whether or not he feels he can trust himself, and in turn, asking you if you can trust yourself, and your own judgement.

This review barely scratches the surface of what makes this game so great and such an exciting new release. I would seriously say that this worth your time, even if you are not someone who would typically go for any kind of game!

Absolutely fantastic sci-fi/fantasy adventure. Puzzles can be a bit meandering, and packed to the brim wth advenure game logic, but what keeps you going is the engaging story, the well-crafted and consistently interesting world, and the fantastically colourful and personable characters. Visuals are a bit dated, but don't look too bad all things considered, and the game can last you a good 20-24 hours to play through once, so you get your money's worth, really.

This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ great, and I wil defend it to the end's of the Earth. Please play The Longest Journey.

I only played this game several hours ago, but it's stuck with me since then. I can't begin to explain how fantastic an experience this was. I feel that to say too much about the game will severely limit your experience going in, but unlike a lot of games that I have played this year, hell, in my lifetime, none have had quite as serious an affect on me as this one has had.

I know people have criticised the game as being pretentious, but I would urge you to set aside that attitude immediately, and trust the game's creator to deliver a story which both holds a mirror up to content creators and reviewers/critics, even (if not, especially) those with the best of intentions.

It's difficult to quite put into words without explaining it, a lot of the twist at the end heavily contradicts anything that you could put into a review, other than whether or not the game was good or bad. The deliberate ambiguity of certain aspects of the story certainly reinforces this.

What's also important is that it's perhaps the ultimate bridging of narrative and gameplay. Again, without wishing to give away too much, the game goes a long way to show that the 'walking simulator' that many people seem to look down on can still be used in new and interesting ways, to tell stories that no other medium could tell. This narrative is one that is unique to video games.

There is a lot more to this game than everything I have just said (including several moments in the game that hit, emotionally, very close to home), but I do not wish to give away too much, and would recommend that people experience it for themeslves. Please buy this game, it has completely changed the way that I assess my own work, and how I approach the work of people around me.