Unlike the vignette Swampstar by independent collective Geography of Robots, Norco is too much of a game to spare it from a rating in favor of an appreciation as a piece of art on its own and in that context, it might look like I disagree with a majority of critics, giving the interactive amalgam of an RPG and a Visual Novel raving reviews, but I will actually not be able to say much different about it. My astonishing conclusion though is, that I'm still not all that impressed.
In theory, alternate Louisiana in Norco could be a fictional alien world to me just like Neo Tokyo or a city on Mars. I was even joking if the title describes narcotics for Trollans until I found out it was actually a brand name for pain medication. Little did I know, however, that Norco is also an actual census-designated place in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana that derived its name from the New Orleans Refining Company and is home to a major Shell manufacturing complex. I'm learning every day.
You don't have to think much about why the company in the game Norco is called Shield and with the Shell facility having experienced catastrophic explosions twice the story sure appears less far fetched. I recommend reading the Honeysweat interview with GoR's Yutsi if you'd like to know more on his growing up in sight of that factory, comparing it to Midgar in the world of Final Fantasy.
Even without knowing Norco specifically, I was of course aware of the condition our world is in and I think it's hard to not see how close the narration stays with things happening in reality. It sure is condensed and emphasized, but we have everything from AI to ponzi schemes, messed up religious beliefs, unregulated capitalism or privately organized space travel. It's not like Orwell is predicting the future a couple of decades away, it's more like holding up a mirror, showing us the dystopia we're creating for tomorrow or a day after.
Born and raised in a small town bordered by the dilapidated ruins of an industry, having watched a company burning down to the foundations and knowing the history of a group buying out farmers to build a production plant in the area, I can nothing but relate to protagonist Kay returning to Norco. It's what you recognize best at a carnival. There are those who are too young to escape and those who never made it out, but then there are other people in their thirties or rather forties, returning to family business - taking care of parents or bringing up children of their own in an environment that appears at least more family friendly than the big city.
For Kay it's late. She has tried to cut loose and ignored her cancer infested mother trying to get in touch. Time doesn't stand still when you're away and as much things don't seem to change as long as you're there, everything is weirdly different once you turned your back and tried to start a life of your own independently.
Norco uses pixel art to illustrate this story and I don't really understand how this can be seen as innovation, because digitizing photographs for instance is something going back to the old Amiga days at least. It's not ugly at all, but, especially with the retro trend of recent years, something I'd rather call standard opposite to some of the reviews I've read. Recreating that off grid Amiga feeling especially with the first person solo adventure layout is another cup of Grog.
I've mentioned it before in my review for One Night Stand, when playing Our World Is Ended as one of my first actual visual novels, I was missing interaction with the screen other than clicking text. Despite being described as a point'n'click I was lucky to read up enough on Norco before to not expect it being the familiar third person story puzzle, so I was merely amazed at first that Norco was allowing me to dive into the scenery as much as I'd define the character by text choices.
One thing I also enjoyed was the use of a mindmap to elaborate a thought process and reflect on the information received via dialogue, even though it often rather bothered me as doubling what I already understood. That tracking though also led to me speeding up reading to pass the character's annoying mumble (doesn't have to be voiced, but please…) and therefore forgetting key information I would have needed to authenticate for additional lore via the follow up Shield Nights (available for free on itch.io) that seems to consist mostly from background information I dug out elsewhere or could make sense of on my own, so I'm not tempted to replay Norco just to read some more liner notes.
The reason I'm not keen on revisiting Norco, not even to check for different character developments rather than the endings I think I caught the best from anyway, is that despite its captivating atmosphere it wasn't that much of a revelation to me. The fictional elements are better seen as surreal than to be dissected for a consistent explanation and the mood isn't the most welcoming happy place, so that adding an awkward fight system (autofight available after patch), clumsy boat ride or text adventure staircase mechanics acts as a repellent on me.
From a standpoint of classic graphic adventure gameplay Norco isn't very good even after the added expert mode. Most of the time it's either just not challenging, which is fine as long the plot goes on, or it's nerve wrecking in execution, which is destroying the flow. What Geography of Robots don't understand is guiding the player through puzzles alongside with the narration to unfold information seamlessly.
Ironically the distributor Raw Fury also has Kathy Rain and Whispers of a Machine by Clifftop Games in their catalog and Norco would fit perfectly as the spiritual tie in I was wishing for between those two brilliant point'n'click adventures. It's almost frightening how precise Norco combines ethereal elements from the first and a probably more obvious futuristic technology from the latter to another mystery plot. It's possible that makes me biased, but I'm actually more dreaming of how exchange of expertise between those indie developers could be a benefit to all of us.
With a splendid post-industrial depressive black metal track scoring the rolling credits it was rather a relief to end this adventure. I couldn't stop playing but didn't really enjoy Norco in the true sense of the word. For that, it's too much a reminder how fucked up this world is, it's too close to the somber atmosphere of a rat's nest I tried to escape but always returned to somehow after traveling around no matter how long. It also causes awareness, not only for losses of the past, but also how my parents are becoming older, giving me a hard time deciding to move to the other end of the country for an actually awaiting future.
Told from both the perspectives of Kay and her mother with party members joining on and off Norco to me is a maelstrom that should at least offer satisfaction by putting some things in order, though it treats its puzzles rather as part of a minigame cocktail, so you won't just click text and look at some scenic pictures. I always appreciate media including toilet needs, but I would have required a little more than a few gags to possibly miss while exploring the environment.
It feels harsh to say after an otherwise enthralling story, but maybe that's what you get after spawning from a multimedia documentary by a pseudonym collective that might not yet have the experience to make a full grown game rather than a gaming part within the initial project. It's sad that Norco could have been the equivalent to calling Grave of the Fireflies the best anime you never want to watch again, but it wasn't meant to be. It's far from being comparable as a full emotional experience.
For that reason and hoping Geography of Robots can find a way to create a more wholesome product, I don't even think their demo End Millennium is a step in the wrong direction. Maybe writing is their strongest capability, so focusing on a text adventure would be a logical conclusion until they find support in puzzle design should they want to attempt the genre at all.
Sure, Norco can also function as an exercise for the collective to improve on, but then we should not hype for something that isn't present. I wouldn't mind supporting them with my purchase as much, had I been downloading the game from a niche indie platform, but I bought it from a major distributor for way above my average price.
My expectations weren't sky high and maybe I'm wrong when so many others seem to love it anyway, but I would rather have preferred the packaging to say "This is the best we can do at the moment, support us so we can improve on our promising art", because that's what it comes down to. And with that in mind it's something like an unpolished gem for an atmosphere of desolation and despair, justifying a generous playthrough.
Check out more of my backloggd adventure reviews for games like:
Full Throttle Remastered
Detective Gallo
Broken Age
Thimbleweed Park
Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure
In theory, alternate Louisiana in Norco could be a fictional alien world to me just like Neo Tokyo or a city on Mars. I was even joking if the title describes narcotics for Trollans until I found out it was actually a brand name for pain medication. Little did I know, however, that Norco is also an actual census-designated place in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana that derived its name from the New Orleans Refining Company and is home to a major Shell manufacturing complex. I'm learning every day.
You don't have to think much about why the company in the game Norco is called Shield and with the Shell facility having experienced catastrophic explosions twice the story sure appears less far fetched. I recommend reading the Honeysweat interview with GoR's Yutsi if you'd like to know more on his growing up in sight of that factory, comparing it to Midgar in the world of Final Fantasy.
Even without knowing Norco specifically, I was of course aware of the condition our world is in and I think it's hard to not see how close the narration stays with things happening in reality. It sure is condensed and emphasized, but we have everything from AI to ponzi schemes, messed up religious beliefs, unregulated capitalism or privately organized space travel. It's not like Orwell is predicting the future a couple of decades away, it's more like holding up a mirror, showing us the dystopia we're creating for tomorrow or a day after.
Born and raised in a small town bordered by the dilapidated ruins of an industry, having watched a company burning down to the foundations and knowing the history of a group buying out farmers to build a production plant in the area, I can nothing but relate to protagonist Kay returning to Norco. It's what you recognize best at a carnival. There are those who are too young to escape and those who never made it out, but then there are other people in their thirties or rather forties, returning to family business - taking care of parents or bringing up children of their own in an environment that appears at least more family friendly than the big city.
For Kay it's late. She has tried to cut loose and ignored her cancer infested mother trying to get in touch. Time doesn't stand still when you're away and as much things don't seem to change as long as you're there, everything is weirdly different once you turned your back and tried to start a life of your own independently.
Norco uses pixel art to illustrate this story and I don't really understand how this can be seen as innovation, because digitizing photographs for instance is something going back to the old Amiga days at least. It's not ugly at all, but, especially with the retro trend of recent years, something I'd rather call standard opposite to some of the reviews I've read. Recreating that off grid Amiga feeling especially with the first person solo adventure layout is another cup of Grog.
I've mentioned it before in my review for One Night Stand, when playing Our World Is Ended as one of my first actual visual novels, I was missing interaction with the screen other than clicking text. Despite being described as a point'n'click I was lucky to read up enough on Norco before to not expect it being the familiar third person story puzzle, so I was merely amazed at first that Norco was allowing me to dive into the scenery as much as I'd define the character by text choices.
One thing I also enjoyed was the use of a mindmap to elaborate a thought process and reflect on the information received via dialogue, even though it often rather bothered me as doubling what I already understood. That tracking though also led to me speeding up reading to pass the character's annoying mumble (doesn't have to be voiced, but please…) and therefore forgetting key information I would have needed to authenticate for additional lore via the follow up Shield Nights (available for free on itch.io) that seems to consist mostly from background information I dug out elsewhere or could make sense of on my own, so I'm not tempted to replay Norco just to read some more liner notes.
The reason I'm not keen on revisiting Norco, not even to check for different character developments rather than the endings I think I caught the best from anyway, is that despite its captivating atmosphere it wasn't that much of a revelation to me. The fictional elements are better seen as surreal than to be dissected for a consistent explanation and the mood isn't the most welcoming happy place, so that adding an awkward fight system (autofight available after patch), clumsy boat ride or text adventure staircase mechanics acts as a repellent on me.
From a standpoint of classic graphic adventure gameplay Norco isn't very good even after the added expert mode. Most of the time it's either just not challenging, which is fine as long the plot goes on, or it's nerve wrecking in execution, which is destroying the flow. What Geography of Robots don't understand is guiding the player through puzzles alongside with the narration to unfold information seamlessly.
Ironically the distributor Raw Fury also has Kathy Rain and Whispers of a Machine by Clifftop Games in their catalog and Norco would fit perfectly as the spiritual tie in I was wishing for between those two brilliant point'n'click adventures. It's almost frightening how precise Norco combines ethereal elements from the first and a probably more obvious futuristic technology from the latter to another mystery plot. It's possible that makes me biased, but I'm actually more dreaming of how exchange of expertise between those indie developers could be a benefit to all of us.
With a splendid post-industrial depressive black metal track scoring the rolling credits it was rather a relief to end this adventure. I couldn't stop playing but didn't really enjoy Norco in the true sense of the word. For that, it's too much a reminder how fucked up this world is, it's too close to the somber atmosphere of a rat's nest I tried to escape but always returned to somehow after traveling around no matter how long. It also causes awareness, not only for losses of the past, but also how my parents are becoming older, giving me a hard time deciding to move to the other end of the country for an actually awaiting future.
Told from both the perspectives of Kay and her mother with party members joining on and off Norco to me is a maelstrom that should at least offer satisfaction by putting some things in order, though it treats its puzzles rather as part of a minigame cocktail, so you won't just click text and look at some scenic pictures. I always appreciate media including toilet needs, but I would have required a little more than a few gags to possibly miss while exploring the environment.
It feels harsh to say after an otherwise enthralling story, but maybe that's what you get after spawning from a multimedia documentary by a pseudonym collective that might not yet have the experience to make a full grown game rather than a gaming part within the initial project. It's sad that Norco could have been the equivalent to calling Grave of the Fireflies the best anime you never want to watch again, but it wasn't meant to be. It's far from being comparable as a full emotional experience.
For that reason and hoping Geography of Robots can find a way to create a more wholesome product, I don't even think their demo End Millennium is a step in the wrong direction. Maybe writing is their strongest capability, so focusing on a text adventure would be a logical conclusion until they find support in puzzle design should they want to attempt the genre at all.
Sure, Norco can also function as an exercise for the collective to improve on, but then we should not hype for something that isn't present. I wouldn't mind supporting them with my purchase as much, had I been downloading the game from a niche indie platform, but I bought it from a major distributor for way above my average price.
My expectations weren't sky high and maybe I'm wrong when so many others seem to love it anyway, but I would rather have preferred the packaging to say "This is the best we can do at the moment, support us so we can improve on our promising art", because that's what it comes down to. And with that in mind it's something like an unpolished gem for an atmosphere of desolation and despair, justifying a generous playthrough.
Check out more of my backloggd adventure reviews for games like:
Full Throttle Remastered
Detective Gallo
Broken Age
Thimbleweed Park
Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure
The comparisons are too easy to make. A narrative driven independent game with lush prose that dabbles in magical realism and science fiction as it confronts visions of both the future and past. It also happens to be set in a version of our world (in this case, the American South) that has been skewed, deals with themes of labor politics and the plight of the working class, and draws on and reinvents design philosophies from decades year old games. The comparisons make themselves. That’s why I am doing my damnedest not to say those games’ names, because to do so robs Norco of its own, distinct identity. It’s torture not to draw line after line between its constituent elements to its counterparts for the sake of preserving that identity, maybe especially because I think Norco is experiencing an identity crisis of its own.
Let me be unequivocal: Norco is a good game. I think it’s worth playing. There’s a part of me that feels bad for offering an emphasis on criticism, as if I’m kicking down a darling indie game. So I’m trying to be particularly explicit here: I think Norco is a good game. It’s filled with beautiful writing, unique characters, and potent themes of grief and politics. It has things to say. But I’m not sure Norco is quite sure what those things exactly are.
I have biases, and two in particular that I arrive at here: I care disproportionately about endings, and I care greatly about “aboutness”. Norco’s ending fell flat for me, and I struggle to know for sure what it’s truly about. These are my biases. As I’ve just said, there are so many reasons to love this game. That’s not what I’m going to write about here. I’m going to write about what keeps me from truly loving Norco.
I think I disproportionately weight endings in narratives because they are what stories leave you with. When you walk out of the theater, the thing that is mostly immediately carried with you is the last frames before the credits rolled. Games, historically, do not have great endings. I don’t mean mechanically; there are lots of games with great final bosses and all that. But the narrative ending, the last moments, these are usually unnoteworthy, and it’s usually brushed off. With narrative driven work, however, this is a little harder to forgive. Of course, everyone likes different kinds of endings. I am picky with my endings, I’ll admit, but I try to have a nuanced understanding of what does and doesn’t work with me in an ending. Enter Norco.
Norco’s ending, by which I mean the exact final moments before the credits roll, feel rushed and incomplete. It is in desperate need of a denouement. It’s ironic, because the climax of this game is flanked, quite literally, with two beautiful moments on the left on the right, one of which is perhaps the game’s most beautiful sequence. I will not spoil it, but it is an ethereal, melancholy, and haunting image of memories and home. I almost wish moment was positioned as the Norco’s last moments, because this potency is immediately undercut by the climax, which felt bereft of catharsis. And I think the reason this climax fell so flat for me is because it relied on the motives of the main character, whose identity and desires are opaque and indistinct.
Kay, the protagonist, never feels like she is given the opportunity to become a character of her own. Blake, her brother, almost feels like one, but is mostly off screen. The companions you encounter feel like characters. They have motives, interiority, likes and dislikes, quirks. Catherine, Kay’s deceased mother, who you play as in flashbacks, gets to be a character, too. This is welcome; rather than just being a grief object for the protagonist, Catherine gets to be a person. So rarely are stories about grief as much centered on who we lose as how we lose them. But what about Kay? What are Kay’s feelings? What does Kay want, need? What does she like or dislike? I’m not sure I could tell you anything about her, despite having spent hours in her shoes. I felt more empathetic and understanding of its side characters by the end. All I know about Kay for sure is that she is detached.
A detached character is obviously not a bad thing, and detachment serves an important role here. Kay’s detachment, as I read it, is representative of a response to what feels to many young people like the slow march into a catastrophe by modern industrial society. It is very intentional, and the rare moments where Kay’s detachment is overtly characterized, it is felt strongly. But when a game builds up to a climax which centers on the characters goals, motives, and desires, her own specific relations and history, all of which are deliberately muted and blurred… I struggle to be moved by that climax and its ever brief ending.
Kay is neither a cipher nor a character you roleplay as. I don’t know what she’s supposed to be. She’s not me, but who is she? I can neither imagine myself as her or imagine her as someone else. Like the game itself, the player is in a crisis of identity.
Norco is kind of a mess, both narratively and mechanically. It’s modeled after classic adventure games, but the puzzle design is a far cry from that old school style -- which is not something I’m exactly mourning. Those puzzles were notoriously arcane and absurd, an ethos that has aged in quite a way, and it wouldn’t have worked here. Norco’s puzzles are relatively straight forward and signposted heavily, and you can ask for advice. But Norco also has a combat system. And it has mini-games. A lot of them. Most of these mini-game puzzles are fine. Nothing exceptional, but nothing horrible. There is one bit I did think was excellent and well executed, which I won’t get into again for spoilers, but involves a boat. But I truly have no idea why this game has combat. It’s not fun and just feels silly. And this lack of cohesion is also seen in its thematic underpinnings.
The themes are easy enough to identify: the struggles of the working class, religion’s social role, messianic myth, the desire to find meaning under late capitalism, ironic middle class hipsterism, the ever-extravagant machinations of the bourgeoisie, and so on. But these themes are neither explored on their own fronts nor are they unified by any central theme. The “Mind Map”, which is an interior display of the lore and relationships in Kay’s life (again, trying not to make the comparison here) is dense with connections but not with cohesion. There is some fascinating world-building and cool ideas in here. But where do they lead to?
Obviously I don’t think it’s necessary that a “message” be had in art, but when you neither pose questions nor offer answers, it can begin to feel more like these themes are props. Norco mostly acknowledges and maybe comments on its phenomena. Again, that’s not intrinsically bad, but I have my preferences, and the absence of direction doesn’t work for me here. All of it is cool, sure. But I don’t know what to make of it, and not in a way that fills me with giddy curiosity. I didn’t leave Norco with any questions, for either its world or for my own.
Again, I feel guilt, “damning with faint praise”, but I seem to be in the minority here, which is nice, I guess. It makes me feel a little more comfortable offering criticism. After all, I can find plenty of ecstatic analyses of Norco, but not as much where I’m coming from. I see why others have fallen in love with it. But I never got that far. Maybe I’ll grow more fond after reading criticism and other’s feelings. But this was my initial response, and that counts for something.
Norco, at its core, ends up as a collage, so scattered as to almost resemble a pastiche of itself. It’s soup full of scoopfuls of ideas that have been lightly emulsified. Collages can be good. And Norco is good. Its lack of thematic and structural direction does not nullify all the beauty therein, but it is why I don’t think I’ll ever get goosebumps when I think about it.
Let me be unequivocal: Norco is a good game. I think it’s worth playing. There’s a part of me that feels bad for offering an emphasis on criticism, as if I’m kicking down a darling indie game. So I’m trying to be particularly explicit here: I think Norco is a good game. It’s filled with beautiful writing, unique characters, and potent themes of grief and politics. It has things to say. But I’m not sure Norco is quite sure what those things exactly are.
I have biases, and two in particular that I arrive at here: I care disproportionately about endings, and I care greatly about “aboutness”. Norco’s ending fell flat for me, and I struggle to know for sure what it’s truly about. These are my biases. As I’ve just said, there are so many reasons to love this game. That’s not what I’m going to write about here. I’m going to write about what keeps me from truly loving Norco.
I think I disproportionately weight endings in narratives because they are what stories leave you with. When you walk out of the theater, the thing that is mostly immediately carried with you is the last frames before the credits rolled. Games, historically, do not have great endings. I don’t mean mechanically; there are lots of games with great final bosses and all that. But the narrative ending, the last moments, these are usually unnoteworthy, and it’s usually brushed off. With narrative driven work, however, this is a little harder to forgive. Of course, everyone likes different kinds of endings. I am picky with my endings, I’ll admit, but I try to have a nuanced understanding of what does and doesn’t work with me in an ending. Enter Norco.
Norco’s ending, by which I mean the exact final moments before the credits roll, feel rushed and incomplete. It is in desperate need of a denouement. It’s ironic, because the climax of this game is flanked, quite literally, with two beautiful moments on the left on the right, one of which is perhaps the game’s most beautiful sequence. I will not spoil it, but it is an ethereal, melancholy, and haunting image of memories and home. I almost wish moment was positioned as the Norco’s last moments, because this potency is immediately undercut by the climax, which felt bereft of catharsis. And I think the reason this climax fell so flat for me is because it relied on the motives of the main character, whose identity and desires are opaque and indistinct.
Kay, the protagonist, never feels like she is given the opportunity to become a character of her own. Blake, her brother, almost feels like one, but is mostly off screen. The companions you encounter feel like characters. They have motives, interiority, likes and dislikes, quirks. Catherine, Kay’s deceased mother, who you play as in flashbacks, gets to be a character, too. This is welcome; rather than just being a grief object for the protagonist, Catherine gets to be a person. So rarely are stories about grief as much centered on who we lose as how we lose them. But what about Kay? What are Kay’s feelings? What does Kay want, need? What does she like or dislike? I’m not sure I could tell you anything about her, despite having spent hours in her shoes. I felt more empathetic and understanding of its side characters by the end. All I know about Kay for sure is that she is detached.
A detached character is obviously not a bad thing, and detachment serves an important role here. Kay’s detachment, as I read it, is representative of a response to what feels to many young people like the slow march into a catastrophe by modern industrial society. It is very intentional, and the rare moments where Kay’s detachment is overtly characterized, it is felt strongly. But when a game builds up to a climax which centers on the characters goals, motives, and desires, her own specific relations and history, all of which are deliberately muted and blurred… I struggle to be moved by that climax and its ever brief ending.
Kay is neither a cipher nor a character you roleplay as. I don’t know what she’s supposed to be. She’s not me, but who is she? I can neither imagine myself as her or imagine her as someone else. Like the game itself, the player is in a crisis of identity.
Norco is kind of a mess, both narratively and mechanically. It’s modeled after classic adventure games, but the puzzle design is a far cry from that old school style -- which is not something I’m exactly mourning. Those puzzles were notoriously arcane and absurd, an ethos that has aged in quite a way, and it wouldn’t have worked here. Norco’s puzzles are relatively straight forward and signposted heavily, and you can ask for advice. But Norco also has a combat system. And it has mini-games. A lot of them. Most of these mini-game puzzles are fine. Nothing exceptional, but nothing horrible. There is one bit I did think was excellent and well executed, which I won’t get into again for spoilers, but involves a boat. But I truly have no idea why this game has combat. It’s not fun and just feels silly. And this lack of cohesion is also seen in its thematic underpinnings.
The themes are easy enough to identify: the struggles of the working class, religion’s social role, messianic myth, the desire to find meaning under late capitalism, ironic middle class hipsterism, the ever-extravagant machinations of the bourgeoisie, and so on. But these themes are neither explored on their own fronts nor are they unified by any central theme. The “Mind Map”, which is an interior display of the lore and relationships in Kay’s life (again, trying not to make the comparison here) is dense with connections but not with cohesion. There is some fascinating world-building and cool ideas in here. But where do they lead to?
Obviously I don’t think it’s necessary that a “message” be had in art, but when you neither pose questions nor offer answers, it can begin to feel more like these themes are props. Norco mostly acknowledges and maybe comments on its phenomena. Again, that’s not intrinsically bad, but I have my preferences, and the absence of direction doesn’t work for me here. All of it is cool, sure. But I don’t know what to make of it, and not in a way that fills me with giddy curiosity. I didn’t leave Norco with any questions, for either its world or for my own.
Again, I feel guilt, “damning with faint praise”, but I seem to be in the minority here, which is nice, I guess. It makes me feel a little more comfortable offering criticism. After all, I can find plenty of ecstatic analyses of Norco, but not as much where I’m coming from. I see why others have fallen in love with it. But I never got that far. Maybe I’ll grow more fond after reading criticism and other’s feelings. But this was my initial response, and that counts for something.
Norco, at its core, ends up as a collage, so scattered as to almost resemble a pastiche of itself. It’s soup full of scoopfuls of ideas that have been lightly emulsified. Collages can be good. And Norco is good. Its lack of thematic and structural direction does not nullify all the beauty therein, but it is why I don’t think I’ll ever get goosebumps when I think about it.
Bayou cybergoth. Gorgeous, lush, and strange. Somehow humid. Smells like hot oil, decay, and air conditioning. Tastes like gas station coffee when you desperately need to wake up.
See after finishing this game,, I took a good amount of time to think about what to write and how to convey the feelings this game made me feel. Instead I would like to refer you to an amazing review, that says everything better than I ever could.
Check out the following review and leave my good friend crimson2877 a like and a follow there: https://backloggd.com/u/crimson2877/review/400677/
Additionally, I recommend watching this short youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoDhW8g5xks
(Some of the images and vistas you are offered in Norco are among the most distinct cyberpunk vibes I've ever seen in a point and click adventure.)
Check out the following review and leave my good friend crimson2877 a like and a follow there: https://backloggd.com/u/crimson2877/review/400677/
Additionally, I recommend watching this short youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoDhW8g5xks
(Some of the images and vistas you are offered in Norco are among the most distinct cyberpunk vibes I've ever seen in a point and click adventure.)
This review contains spoilers
I remember the first season of True Detective and how badly people wanted to unravel a complex mystery that involved the Deep State, time travel, sex cults, and aliens. The first eight or nine episodes teased it... and then it just sort of petered out. It was like being at a club when the lights come on and they herd you out with the "you don't have to go home but you can't stay here" cliche.
Norco is a game for those people - the ones who clamoured for some bizarre, absurdist, larger than life mystery to chase set against a Southern Gothic neo noir backdrop. But Norcp sort of does the inverse, where it builds and builds from slow neo noir potboiler to utterly insane cultist shenanigans, until it eventually ends on this seemingly unsatisfactory but largely personally emotional note.
By the end of this game things have escalated to Southland Tales levels of apocalyptic surrealism. And in such a way that the symbolism has boiled over to a point that feels either very meaningless or meaningful. Like the ending was either written first and everything leading up to it makes sense to the writer or at a certain point they kept spiralling things that they lost track of what they were trying to say.
The deep sense of lived in personality this game has shines brightest in the small details and small areas. Your home and Blake's room; the local street and bar; any time the world map opens and you see the refineries, swamps and highways dotting the distance. By the time you get to plantations and rocket ships in the swamp, things lose that personal touch. Although one still gets the the feeling that this precise level of surrealism could only be born from someone who grew up in this area. Once you're jumping off a spaceship with your mum's corpse things sort rounded into place for me. I can't even articulate what those things are, just the emotionality of it hit me in the gut for some reason.
Kentucky Route Zero this isn't. I think this games loses a lot whenever characters have to talk. The prose is maybe a little too precious. But any text in this game I think is quite poetic. Reminds me a lot of In Other Waters, where the colours and game art also really lift the text up and makes it feels presented as poetically as it is written. I just don't think this games contains any real people outside of Catherine (her sequences are the highlight for me). Everyone else feels like a crude stereotype, which is a shame but not a deal beaker for the game it ultimately ends up being and not what it seems at the beginning.
Norco is a game for those people - the ones who clamoured for some bizarre, absurdist, larger than life mystery to chase set against a Southern Gothic neo noir backdrop. But Norcp sort of does the inverse, where it builds and builds from slow neo noir potboiler to utterly insane cultist shenanigans, until it eventually ends on this seemingly unsatisfactory but largely personally emotional note.
By the end of this game things have escalated to Southland Tales levels of apocalyptic surrealism. And in such a way that the symbolism has boiled over to a point that feels either very meaningless or meaningful. Like the ending was either written first and everything leading up to it makes sense to the writer or at a certain point they kept spiralling things that they lost track of what they were trying to say.
The deep sense of lived in personality this game has shines brightest in the small details and small areas. Your home and Blake's room; the local street and bar; any time the world map opens and you see the refineries, swamps and highways dotting the distance. By the time you get to plantations and rocket ships in the swamp, things lose that personal touch. Although one still gets the the feeling that this precise level of surrealism could only be born from someone who grew up in this area. Once you're jumping off a spaceship with your mum's corpse things sort rounded into place for me. I can't even articulate what those things are, just the emotionality of it hit me in the gut for some reason.
Kentucky Route Zero this isn't. I think this games loses a lot whenever characters have to talk. The prose is maybe a little too precious. But any text in this game I think is quite poetic. Reminds me a lot of In Other Waters, where the colours and game art also really lift the text up and makes it feels presented as poetically as it is written. I just don't think this games contains any real people outside of Catherine (her sequences are the highlight for me). Everyone else feels like a crude stereotype, which is a shame but not a deal beaker for the game it ultimately ends up being and not what it seems at the beginning.
The word 'enjoy' wouldn't be the right one to use for my time in the living, breathing world of Norco, but it's a setting unlike any I've experienced before in a game. An excellent narrative wrapped up in a grimy art style that felt sweaty and nervous. I could have done without the combat bits, but otherwise this is amongst the best visual novels I've played.
Um point and click bem interessante, mas que infelizmente não conseguiu me prender.
O jogo tem uma ambientação bem conhecida, misturando um futuro capitalista, tendências tecnológicas e o adorável estilo clássico dos indies, porém isso não é o suficiente para ser interessante.
Em 2 horas de jogo não consegui me sentir conectada com o tema de luto e investigação, os personagens não me passaram sensação nenhuma e era como estar presenciando um filme obrigatório para a escola.
Um outro fator importante foi que o jogo não tinha som e mesmo após reiniciar várias vezes tudo se resumia a um silêncio absoluto.
Já a gameplay, posso dizer que é um teste de paciência pra quem for jogar no controle, pois o ponteiro se movimenta muito lentamente e a passagem dos textos quando não automatizada parecia travar, o que me fez por diversas vezes ficar apertando o botão repetidamente.
Apesar de achar todo o conjunto bem interessante, Norco não é meu tipo de jogo e acho difícil tentar mais uma vez.
O jogo tem uma ambientação bem conhecida, misturando um futuro capitalista, tendências tecnológicas e o adorável estilo clássico dos indies, porém isso não é o suficiente para ser interessante.
Em 2 horas de jogo não consegui me sentir conectada com o tema de luto e investigação, os personagens não me passaram sensação nenhuma e era como estar presenciando um filme obrigatório para a escola.
Um outro fator importante foi que o jogo não tinha som e mesmo após reiniciar várias vezes tudo se resumia a um silêncio absoluto.
Já a gameplay, posso dizer que é um teste de paciência pra quem for jogar no controle, pois o ponteiro se movimenta muito lentamente e a passagem dos textos quando não automatizada parecia travar, o que me fez por diversas vezes ficar apertando o botão repetidamente.
Apesar de achar todo o conjunto bem interessante, Norco não é meu tipo de jogo e acho difícil tentar mais uma vez.
Pros:
- The pixel art’s exceptional and the synth soundtrack gives it a very atmospheric sci-fi vibe that glued me to finish in one sitting
- Well written, the tone’s somber but also weird, and the dialogue’s surprisingly entertaining with its humor
- There’s technically a combat system? It’s minor but does add some welcome variety to the gameplay
Cons:
- The ending’s kinda abrupt
- A bit cumbersome with a controller since it’s like an old school point and click game and the cursor moves pretty slowly
- More a nitpick, but there are small sections where you control an annoying boat that I could’ve done without
- The pixel art’s exceptional and the synth soundtrack gives it a very atmospheric sci-fi vibe that glued me to finish in one sitting
- Well written, the tone’s somber but also weird, and the dialogue’s surprisingly entertaining with its humor
- There’s technically a combat system? It’s minor but does add some welcome variety to the gameplay
Cons:
- The ending’s kinda abrupt
- A bit cumbersome with a controller since it’s like an old school point and click game and the cursor moves pretty slowly
- More a nitpick, but there are small sections where you control an annoying boat that I could’ve done without
Norco is everything I had hoped Kentucky Route Zero would be. I cannot get over how well written this game is. Every glittering moment of this script feels so honest and evocative, and there is such wonderful restraint in the pacing, in the humor, in the “minigames,” and in the weirdness. Weirdness, when wielded by incapable hands, can drain meaning from its narrative surroundings. When tastefully applied as it is here, however, weirdness has a capacity to deepen and give nuance to the people and emotions anchoring a story, in seemingly inexplicable ways. This work is a triumph for writing in games
It is a shame that a game like this, which had moments of legitimately good writing and occasional glimpses of interesting ideas, was published in an essentially half-finished state. When the credits roll and you've seen all the answers, you realize that the totality of this game is less than the sum of its parts, and ultimately anything of meaning it tried to say was drowned in self-indulgence. In full seriousness, the game is better if you drop it after Act 2. So do that, and go play one of the many far better games which stylistically influenced this one.
I find this game to be very similar to Backbone in its execution. It starts as a more intimist neo-noir adventure game and it starts building up to something very off the trails in contrast to it's starting vibe. But still, the narrative is very compelling, even though the protagonist is the character that has least personality among all of them, and the visual landscapes are a true masterpiece of art
You gotta have a clean ass to fight crime.
A casualty of scope creep, NORCO consists of many methodical and haunting tone pieces and prose paintings that sparsely link well or command time effectively. I really enjoy the narrator writing, the broader strokes of mood, and the qualities of southern Louisiana and New Orleans brought forth, but the adventure game plotting doesn't give space to breathe or reflect in the way that I'd like. Combat feels tacked on and so removed from violence that the larger set pieces become the least exciting.
The most fun I had was zipping around the swamp to different text entries, just kind of getting washed over. I wish the more game-y parts were slower and less desperate to feel like a puzzle or to throw a bunch of character gags that felt out of place with the reflective narration. NORCO is quite fun and I'm happy it exists, but it's a little confused on its own identity and the kinds of politicized and class constructions it wants to discuss.
The most fun I had was zipping around the swamp to different text entries, just kind of getting washed over. I wish the more game-y parts were slower and less desperate to feel like a puzzle or to throw a bunch of character gags that felt out of place with the reflective narration. NORCO is quite fun and I'm happy it exists, but it's a little confused on its own identity and the kinds of politicized and class constructions it wants to discuss.
NORCO is so painfully "of the moment", both stylistically and thematically, that its undeniably enigmatic and successfully executed atmosphere is robbed of a lot of gravitas by its cloyingly pandering hip-ness.
It's a game that feels as if it is becoming dated as you play it and one that will never be called "timeless". It's clearly class-obsessed but is trope-filled, meaning such themes are barely given any of the fair, in-depth thought they deserve outside of surface-level mentions. Probably saddest of all, the much-lauded writing amounts to C-tier work, at best, in the pantheon of amazing PC Game writing. It's perhaps even more hindered out of the gate by all of the hyperbole of so many fawning mainstream reviews, which set up fans of great game writing with inaccurate expectations going in.
If you want a game that makes you feel like a train hopping, DIY show-going, roach-filled microwave-owning, salt of the earth "interesting person" who is surrounded by occult magic and mystery in your tragic family, but is under the thumb of big oil and evil industry, buy this game! If you know shallow, mostly gameplay-free poverty porn visual novels when you see them, then you'll see it in NORCO fast and be sorely disappointed in the missed potential of so many possibly interesting ideas that only amount to a mish-mash of "vibes and feels".
Finally, I LOVE point and click adventures and LOVE experimental games, but when the pointing and clicking is mostly just a game of “I Spy” to trigger flavor text about certain objects and its “adventure” is one that, more or less, tells itself with very minimal player input or choice, I consider the “experiment” to be unsuccessful.
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"Blake is...a lot. An edgelord." -NORCO
It's a game that feels as if it is becoming dated as you play it and one that will never be called "timeless". It's clearly class-obsessed but is trope-filled, meaning such themes are barely given any of the fair, in-depth thought they deserve outside of surface-level mentions. Probably saddest of all, the much-lauded writing amounts to C-tier work, at best, in the pantheon of amazing PC Game writing. It's perhaps even more hindered out of the gate by all of the hyperbole of so many fawning mainstream reviews, which set up fans of great game writing with inaccurate expectations going in.
If you want a game that makes you feel like a train hopping, DIY show-going, roach-filled microwave-owning, salt of the earth "interesting person" who is surrounded by occult magic and mystery in your tragic family, but is under the thumb of big oil and evil industry, buy this game! If you know shallow, mostly gameplay-free poverty porn visual novels when you see them, then you'll see it in NORCO fast and be sorely disappointed in the missed potential of so many possibly interesting ideas that only amount to a mish-mash of "vibes and feels".
Finally, I LOVE point and click adventures and LOVE experimental games, but when the pointing and clicking is mostly just a game of “I Spy” to trigger flavor text about certain objects and its “adventure” is one that, more or less, tells itself with very minimal player input or choice, I consider the “experiment” to be unsuccessful.
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"Blake is...a lot. An edgelord." -NORCO
A beautifully told, frequently funny, often overwrought, always thought-provoking, incomplete yet unforgettable little story.
Disappointed by how the genuinely impressive specificity of place, atmosphere of dread, and the sharply observed details re: class and encroaching capital are left entirely by the wayside around the halfway point (maybe even earlier?) in favor of it's ok-but-not-revelatory plot, which I found significantly less interesting than the place and context and small glimpses of community around which it initially revolves. Unlike KR0 it is to some extent actually about the region its ostensibly about, at least at first, but also unlike KR0 its formalist and structuralist swings feel...not half-baked but maybe a bit of an afterthought, or at least not consistent enough in implementation to fully land. The 4ch/proud boys/Q analogue stuff is just restrained enough to avoid being embarrassing and is generally p funny but ultimately feels pretty toothless idk.
All that said, the first few hours absolutely transfixed me, and I got more genuine laughs out of the jokes here than I have from any game I can think of in recent memory, and that Thou end credits track fucking shreds so this still gets a rec from me! Extremely keen to see what Geography of Robots do next, they've definitely Got Something here.
All that said, the first few hours absolutely transfixed me, and I got more genuine laughs out of the jokes here than I have from any game I can think of in recent memory, and that Thou end credits track fucking shreds so this still gets a rec from me! Extremely keen to see what Geography of Robots do next, they've definitely Got Something here.
The ending felt so abrupt but as a whole I think this was a pretty good portrayal of what a semi dystopian but also somewhat realistic American Deep South might look like. The "combat" and boating mini games felt tacked on and unnecessary. I wish they left those details out to focus on more details or explorable areas.
The comparisons between Kentucky Route 0 and this are inevitable, but I think there's such an interesting, subtle difference that I think is really profound. KR0 often lets you interpret the relationships and histories of characters however you wish. And that's part of how it excels. That sort of ambiguity and tug of how these relationships play out is really something special. Its one of the many things that make KR0 what it is. You can't control everything, but all those small ways you can shape how evens unfolded for all these desperate people is one of its high points.
But there's a specific scene in Norco that instantly made an impression on me as different. The history of your character, Kay, is partly formed by your choices. But she always chose to run away from home, wander the collapsing United States, fight in various wars. When Kay abandons her brother Blake, you have the choice of "I didn't care how he felt" or "He'd get over it."
I chose the latter. The text responded. "He didn't." You don't get to choose how people feel about you.
I'm gonna try and stop comparing Norco to other things now, its really not fair to a truly wonderful game. Norco's adventure has you leap between the undecipherable Kay visiting her mother's grave and the final days of said mother. You encounter shady corporate espionage, malicious gamer cults, a power-crazy AI that's gone off the rails, and other strange entities vying for control. But what the game really excels at communicating is this idea that these seemingly powerful factions really have no power at all. Its all collapsing bit by bit, they're all just in denial of how powerless they really are. The game's more interested in the personal lives of these people and how they handle being caught up in the madness of all these conspiracies. The game encourages you to chase after various optional side content and examine the internal lives of all these strangers. In fact, one of the better endings is entirely missable if you aren't willing to just explore around.
One of the optional scenes you can acquire is a vision of what occurs after the game's end. Assuming your survival, where will the heroes end up? The answer isn't easy. They return to their old ways, fall back into melancholy. The stress of the current predicament is just one moment in time, not a life-changing fiasco. You can't change how people feel about you. You can't change where your path ends up. But you can try and understand people along the way. Make connections, even if they falter. Do good in little pieces
This game is just delightful. If you're a fan of Vibes and point and click, its worth full price.
But there's a specific scene in Norco that instantly made an impression on me as different. The history of your character, Kay, is partly formed by your choices. But she always chose to run away from home, wander the collapsing United States, fight in various wars. When Kay abandons her brother Blake, you have the choice of "I didn't care how he felt" or "He'd get over it."
I chose the latter. The text responded. "He didn't." You don't get to choose how people feel about you.
I'm gonna try and stop comparing Norco to other things now, its really not fair to a truly wonderful game. Norco's adventure has you leap between the undecipherable Kay visiting her mother's grave and the final days of said mother. You encounter shady corporate espionage, malicious gamer cults, a power-crazy AI that's gone off the rails, and other strange entities vying for control. But what the game really excels at communicating is this idea that these seemingly powerful factions really have no power at all. Its all collapsing bit by bit, they're all just in denial of how powerless they really are. The game's more interested in the personal lives of these people and how they handle being caught up in the madness of all these conspiracies. The game encourages you to chase after various optional side content and examine the internal lives of all these strangers. In fact, one of the better endings is entirely missable if you aren't willing to just explore around.
One of the optional scenes you can acquire is a vision of what occurs after the game's end. Assuming your survival, where will the heroes end up? The answer isn't easy. They return to their old ways, fall back into melancholy. The stress of the current predicament is just one moment in time, not a life-changing fiasco. You can't change how people feel about you. You can't change where your path ends up. But you can try and understand people along the way. Make connections, even if they falter. Do good in little pieces
This game is just delightful. If you're a fan of Vibes and point and click, its worth full price.
The bad guys in this are called the Garretts. Unconscionable, unforgivable. If I could give negative stars I would
The kind of game that blows you away at first with different amazing threads but as it goes on you start to think damn I really hope these all cohere by the end but I have a feeling they probably won’t and then sure enough they don’t and the credits roll
The kind of game that blows you away at first with different amazing threads but as it goes on you start to think damn I really hope these all cohere by the end but I have a feeling they probably won’t and then sure enough they don’t and the credits roll
My read on Norco, is that, in some places more than others, we live in such a fallen world that extreme psychosis is the only vector we have to make sense of existence.
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I hope no one takes offense to this, I say this with love and sympathy but: boy is the southeastern corner of the United States a flaming hell climate. People who live there are built different.
- Im gonna lead with my most negative thought: I think pure blood adventure games really really struggle to bring the fun. Norco tends to have good pacing, and my penchant to go off-critical path saved me some grief - but boy is it just sort of not fun to do arbitrary puzzles. Idk, maybe this sounds like bad advice but I would have been fine if Norco was just a VN front to back. I dont think you need to make gameplay if you dont have good gameplay in mind. Idk, idk.
- I think everyone knows this, but Norcos got great writing. I was expecting a more non-fictional romp of some kind and was surprised to find (in the games own words) “some Da Vinci Code” shit. There is a slight “magic realism” thing going on a la Kentucky Route Zero but what this really is, is a mystery thriller in a, ahem, ”swamppunk” alternate near-future setting.
- Whats also unexpected, is that Norcos pretty funny. The game ostensibly takes place in a very dour world in a region thats fairly ready to just give up - but in that blase mindspace there is permission to get silly. The world around them is already absurd, why not start a cult where everyone is called Garrett? Why not do some after hours clowning? An honest world is a rotten long-expired dream, whats left to do but channel some levity?
- I dont want to labor this thought too much, but Norco also depicts some moments of genuine sadness. A melancholy sky hangs over everything that happens in Norco and once and awhile someone says a few words that blow the clouds away to give you a brief glimpse into the void behind it.
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I hope no one takes offense to this, I say this with love and sympathy but: boy is the southeastern corner of the United States a flaming hell climate. People who live there are built different.
- Im gonna lead with my most negative thought: I think pure blood adventure games really really struggle to bring the fun. Norco tends to have good pacing, and my penchant to go off-critical path saved me some grief - but boy is it just sort of not fun to do arbitrary puzzles. Idk, maybe this sounds like bad advice but I would have been fine if Norco was just a VN front to back. I dont think you need to make gameplay if you dont have good gameplay in mind. Idk, idk.
- I think everyone knows this, but Norcos got great writing. I was expecting a more non-fictional romp of some kind and was surprised to find (in the games own words) “some Da Vinci Code” shit. There is a slight “magic realism” thing going on a la Kentucky Route Zero but what this really is, is a mystery thriller in a, ahem, ”swamppunk” alternate near-future setting.
- Whats also unexpected, is that Norcos pretty funny. The game ostensibly takes place in a very dour world in a region thats fairly ready to just give up - but in that blase mindspace there is permission to get silly. The world around them is already absurd, why not start a cult where everyone is called Garrett? Why not do some after hours clowning? An honest world is a rotten long-expired dream, whats left to do but channel some levity?
- I dont want to labor this thought too much, but Norco also depicts some moments of genuine sadness. A melancholy sky hangs over everything that happens in Norco and once and awhile someone says a few words that blow the clouds away to give you a brief glimpse into the void behind it.
Beaten: Mar 28 2022
Time: 5.3 Hours
Platform: Mac
Well, this is the second game I can remember that got me to tear up. The other one was Mother 3, which managed to catch me off guard at the very end of the game with a warm embrace, a shoulder to cry on who’s existence was what got me to open up those ol tearducts that don’t see as much use as they probably should. Norco hits different, but also the same. At least as far as the crying came about. There was a small moment partway through that gave me those same emotions, an optional small warm cozy patch to stick for a while, get your bearings, and brace for your return to the dour world on display, and that got me primed I think. But it was a scene closer to the end that really got me, and while I didn’t cry as hard as Mother 3, it was enough.
But uh anyways, it’s also a game! Not just a crying simulator! As a game, and a piece of southern-gothic-cyberpunk media, it’s very fucking cool!!! So it’s a pixely point and click adventure game set in Norco (wow, who woulda thought), which is a real place in Louisiana, known for being the home of a Shell petroleum refinery according to Wikipedia. Now, I knew Norco was real, but I just learned about the Shell refinery thing as I was looking it up to write that sentence, and wow that makes the politics of the game hit way harder.
See, it’s not just set in our real world Norco, it’s a cyberpunk reflection of it. It eschews the standard neon billboards and “wow, this city looks just like tokyo but it’s in LA? and it’s raining all the time?” (I love blade runner don’t @ me) cyberpunkisms, for a much more unique setting, a combination of cyberpunk tech-stylings with eroded swamps, run-down small town vibes, and refinery smokestacks spewing towers of flame into the night sky as their owner (Shield, haha) expands it’s operations and pushes people out of their homes. It’s cyberpunk, but just barely. It feels like very much it’s own thing, fresh in ways not much from that style of media has been in years.
The politics of the large corporation vs the small town aren’t the textual focus of the story though. Instead, you play a character who’s returning to the town after years away, exploring the changes that’ve gone down since you’ve left, and trying to find your brother. The narrative spins out much MUCH more from there, but that’s the basis, and might be my favorite part of the game.
Norco’s small, subtle moments are my favorites. Descriptions flare vividly like anything out of your favorite book, while the evening sky in the background adds a sense of romanticism to the downer vibes. A point of comparison would be Kentucky Route Zero, as far as weird narrative-first point-and-clicks go, but there’s a different intent here. KRZ was interested primarily in letting you stew in its winding passages and dark caves, providing ample detours (some mandatory) to ensure you understood that moving forward was not the point. While Norco’s writing has a similar quality to KRZ, the pacing is more in line with traditional point-and-clicks, speedy from scene to scene and only slowing down when you want it to. While I don’t personally think either style is better, Norco’s approach feels much more accessible.
Similarly accessible is the puzzles. In classics of the genre, things like Beneath a Steel Sky and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, I’m often in love with every aspect of the game besides progression. There’s an esotericism to those old puzzles, a real arcane complexity that’s generally pretty cool on paper, but becomes tedium upon tedium for me when I try to solve them. Norco keeps the feeling of complexity and arcane solutions juuuust enough, while also not forcing you to make any enormous leaps of logic like the classics used to. In place, there’s a good amount of more elaborate and more obviously “puzzly” minigame-based puzzles, where you’ll be controlling a boat, or performing Paper Mario-esque RPG attacks. These moments are just in there enough to bring the pacing and energy up or down when needed, and not for a second more.
My only thing is I wish the game was longer. I wish it let me stretch out a little bit more, that it took a bit more time reaching climaxes. But I feel like that’s a good problem to have, leaving me wanting more. It didn’t feel insubstantial or anything, I just want to exist here for a bit longer, to let things build a bit more.
Regardless, fantastic game here. Big ol Please Giv it a Shot
Time: 5.3 Hours
Platform: Mac
Well, this is the second game I can remember that got me to tear up. The other one was Mother 3, which managed to catch me off guard at the very end of the game with a warm embrace, a shoulder to cry on who’s existence was what got me to open up those ol tearducts that don’t see as much use as they probably should. Norco hits different, but also the same. At least as far as the crying came about. There was a small moment partway through that gave me those same emotions, an optional small warm cozy patch to stick for a while, get your bearings, and brace for your return to the dour world on display, and that got me primed I think. But it was a scene closer to the end that really got me, and while I didn’t cry as hard as Mother 3, it was enough.
But uh anyways, it’s also a game! Not just a crying simulator! As a game, and a piece of southern-gothic-cyberpunk media, it’s very fucking cool!!! So it’s a pixely point and click adventure game set in Norco (wow, who woulda thought), which is a real place in Louisiana, known for being the home of a Shell petroleum refinery according to Wikipedia. Now, I knew Norco was real, but I just learned about the Shell refinery thing as I was looking it up to write that sentence, and wow that makes the politics of the game hit way harder.
See, it’s not just set in our real world Norco, it’s a cyberpunk reflection of it. It eschews the standard neon billboards and “wow, this city looks just like tokyo but it’s in LA? and it’s raining all the time?” (I love blade runner don’t @ me) cyberpunkisms, for a much more unique setting, a combination of cyberpunk tech-stylings with eroded swamps, run-down small town vibes, and refinery smokestacks spewing towers of flame into the night sky as their owner (Shield, haha) expands it’s operations and pushes people out of their homes. It’s cyberpunk, but just barely. It feels like very much it’s own thing, fresh in ways not much from that style of media has been in years.
The politics of the large corporation vs the small town aren’t the textual focus of the story though. Instead, you play a character who’s returning to the town after years away, exploring the changes that’ve gone down since you’ve left, and trying to find your brother. The narrative spins out much MUCH more from there, but that’s the basis, and might be my favorite part of the game.
Norco’s small, subtle moments are my favorites. Descriptions flare vividly like anything out of your favorite book, while the evening sky in the background adds a sense of romanticism to the downer vibes. A point of comparison would be Kentucky Route Zero, as far as weird narrative-first point-and-clicks go, but there’s a different intent here. KRZ was interested primarily in letting you stew in its winding passages and dark caves, providing ample detours (some mandatory) to ensure you understood that moving forward was not the point. While Norco’s writing has a similar quality to KRZ, the pacing is more in line with traditional point-and-clicks, speedy from scene to scene and only slowing down when you want it to. While I don’t personally think either style is better, Norco’s approach feels much more accessible.
Similarly accessible is the puzzles. In classics of the genre, things like Beneath a Steel Sky and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, I’m often in love with every aspect of the game besides progression. There’s an esotericism to those old puzzles, a real arcane complexity that’s generally pretty cool on paper, but becomes tedium upon tedium for me when I try to solve them. Norco keeps the feeling of complexity and arcane solutions juuuust enough, while also not forcing you to make any enormous leaps of logic like the classics used to. In place, there’s a good amount of more elaborate and more obviously “puzzly” minigame-based puzzles, where you’ll be controlling a boat, or performing Paper Mario-esque RPG attacks. These moments are just in there enough to bring the pacing and energy up or down when needed, and not for a second more.
My only thing is I wish the game was longer. I wish it let me stretch out a little bit more, that it took a bit more time reaching climaxes. But I feel like that’s a good problem to have, leaving me wanting more. It didn’t feel insubstantial or anything, I just want to exist here for a bit longer, to let things build a bit more.
Regardless, fantastic game here. Big ol Please Giv it a Shot
An interesting experience, but not one that I thoroughly enjoyed or was fully engrossed in all the way through. There are moments of almost Disco Elysium levels of brilliance in the story-telling and writing here, but as it stands, it cannot touch those hallowed peaks quite yet. The minigames are a fun distraction, but the ending was very lacklustre and abrupt, and I felt there were definitely aspects of the world and the characters you meet that could have been more thoroughly explored.
This review contains spoilers
What starts as a pretty promising look into the world of post capitalism Louisiana and the destruction of the oil industry alongside the story of a broken family trying to reunite quickly becomes an absolutely terrible retelling of the Come Fly With Me sidequest from New Vegas written by someone who hated the shit out of those ghouls.
Grab it on sale if you want to see the beautiful pixel art tho.
Grab it on sale if you want to see the beautiful pixel art tho.
This is everything I want from a video game.
This review contains spoilers
A great premise and stellar art design act as solid foundation to prop up an absolutely rickety mess of narrative and gameplay execution.
In Norco I saw something I rarely see in games: an exploration of places like home. Hailing from one of the poorest states in the American South (although Oklahoma's inclusion on that list is sometimes contentious), I've seen firsthand how economic evolution has slowly eroded the communities, homes, and spirits that once defined the great American Heartland.
Hell, as someone from these parts who's got an interest in art...these types of narratives have always fascinated me: the Southern Gothic of O'Connor or Faulkner, the Modernist treatments by Steinbeck and Ellison, etc. These stories take symbols familiar to us--family, faith, perseverance, community, fear, redemption, isolation, etc. and allow us to see alien groups (poor southern blacks, "Okies," American Indians, etc.) through understandable and sympathetic eyes. It allows us to see beyond the thick accents and rudimentary lifestyles and recognize the real human lives, struggles, and emotions behind it all.
So here we have Norco, which first appeared to me via a Tribeca Games Spotlight in 2021 next to other greats like 12 Minutes. The premise was perfect: Norco was one of those places many couldn't believe was real--one of those 'on the nose' symbols that you'd probably think came out of a bad book. But, like with much of the industrial south (as well as the northern Rust Belt), Norco is a sad fact of reality--one begging for artistic exploration. That might sound harsh, a sort of 'culture vulture' thing, but I mean it without a shred of irony. Just as Steinbeck had used the amalgam plight of real Okies escaping to California for The Grapes of Wrath, I think plenty of towns like Norco deserve to have stories told that push awareness to the greater public.
What's in an Opening?
But alas, within literal seconds of pressing start, Norco has already blown it. It's opening montage is perhaps the worst opening I have ever seen to a game--at least in terms of establishing mood, tone, and setting.
First, the game forces players to make narrative choices involving characters we have no understanding of. I don't know or care how well Kay slept based on their proximity to oil fields--I don't even know who the hell Kay is yet. I understand Kay is supposed to be a proxy for me, but I've just goddamn showed up here. I haven't absorbed the mood or tone of the game. I've got no attachment to anything yet and no headspace with which I can make a decision I give two shits about. In fact, I would say that even asking these of the player so quickly serves as a lazy cheat for the writers to avoid writing an actual mood setting hook. They instead rely on a basic player choice to invest you when you've got no reason or incentive to actually make choices yet.
Second, the game's godawful prose attempts to lure you in with some Mccarthy-esque delivery but bats your attention away with the same overwritten, over-precious exposition and framing that plague all beginner 'art' writers. Lines like
The war was a meme that set Albuquerque on fire.
Should make anyone roll their eyes (or laugh their ass off) as hard as the newest YA books should. Especially when literally moments later you're being forced to answer if you tried to fucking pray, sleep, or "forget" while hiding in a freightliner escaping the 'foot soldiers of a pop up junta.'
Remember: we're 35 seconds into this game.
To Point? Or Click?
Keeping in line with the laughably sophomoric opening, Norco decides to take so much influence from the most obvious sources that it destroys what little impact the game could have had left. Its point and click nature means that LucasArts (primarily Ron Gilbert's trademark blend of off-kilter black comedy) is front and center the entire journey. Combine this with Norco's bleak premise and you have a cocktail mix as good as Toothpaste and OJ.
Moments that are meant to highlight the impoverished lifestyles of NPCs are always undercut by the stupidest Glibertian shit. People starving, living life under the freeway? How about a funny puppet show that also happens there? Abandoned malls and burnt out youth with nowhere to go? How about a teenage cult that uses a fucking iPhone app to convert teens so they enter a dead mall and build a fucking rocket ship? So much stupid shit happens in this game that I can say a statement like
"Sorry your mom died of cancer, if only she didn't need QuackCoin and didn't go see the SuperDuck then it would have all been okay!"
Without lying about a single goddamn thing that happens in Norco.
The game's willingness to undercut and serious plot beats with unrelatable goofy content indicates a lack of clear and consistent narrative direction. If it's trying to be surreal, it's not doing much beyond some cheap sight gags. If it's trying to be serious, then the whole damn thing's a clown show.
This isn't to say that narratives need to have one consistent tone to be effective--look at my favorite game for Christ sake. But what a great narrative needs is effective use of tone. If you're going to be wacky, do something interesting with it. If you're just going to make some basic and derivative Ron Gilbert gags, then I could have just spent my time playing Monkey Island. The greatest of games, will use moments of comedy and levity to disarm the player and endear them to the characters of the world in realistic ways. Think your Disco Elysium or Mother 2 types of games. Norco, by contrast, fails to do either. Instead I'm usually left scratching my head wondering just how funny do they think the 10 week old hot dog gag is. It understands Southern Gothic as much as any fourteen year old who just read A Good Man Is Hard To Find for the first time does.
Cyberpunk Hell
On the other end of that spectrum is the rest of Norco's tired influences, the cyberpunk dystopias of Blade Runner and Final Fantasy VII's Midgar. At this point, discussion of Blade Runner is itself so banal that I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. But several visual motifs are directly ripped from the film, so it shouldn't take you long to see the comparisons line up. Norco, in its desperate attempts to strip everything from the kitchen cabinets, even shoves some half-baked Replicant theming into the game during its final moments.
As for Midgar...well I'm starting to feel the same as I do about Blade Runner. It seems creatives and fans point at Midgar as a cheap shorthand for dystopian influence far too often these days. Not to say that Midgar is a shoddily crafted locale--the place is great! But as with most great works, the devil is really in the details as to why its great. The PS1 original stunned the world with some of the best atmosphere, direction, and writing gaming had seen up to that point. Moreover, Midgar left players wanting more, as the short time spent there left a lot to the imagination. But with Norco, as with Final Fantasy VII: Remake, the finer details are all sacrificed in the name of some basic stylization and theming.
Which is a shame, Norco's art direction could have set the game up for serious success in the hands of the right writer/director. When the game isn't busy ripping motifs from Blade Runner it concocts some genuinely great atmospheres and visuals that do emphasize the setting well. It's just unfortunate that the settings also have to involve puppet shows and mall cults. It's unfortunately just another reminder that Norco was creatively reaching towards the bottom of the ideas barrel when building its world and narrative.
Is There Life In Norco?
Which brings me back to Norco's most important failing: relatability and authenticity. The world and characters of Norco are as foreign to me as those in Maniac Mansion or Beneath a Steel Sky. They're just too damn quirky and flat for their own good. Any time I genuinely try to get wrapped up in what's happening to Kay or her mom I have to deal with characters who end every sentence with bruh or have names like ditch man. I have to deal with characters who are hunting after crypto coins or are all named fucking Garrett for comedy purposes. I have to attend parties where characters dress like they're in Eyes Wide Shut or scale rocket ships designed like Byzantine fortresses because...that would be cool.
The real tragedy is the fact that any real point that could be made about Norco--you know the real city is left totally dead in the water. Any sort of authenticity to the real people of Louisiana or the American South as a whole gets washed away under a mountain of the brain-dead metaphors, bad ideas, and unfunny jokes that plague nearly all quirky indie games. It's doubly sad considering that the guy who made the game is himself from Norco. It's a reminder that simply being from a place doesn't mean you're always the best equipped to tell its story. I don't feel like I've learned fuck all about Louisiana, and I live just a couple of hours away from Norco.
I spent more time chasing cryptocurrency and cults than experiencing the true effects of life in the town. I spent more time driving a motorcycle with my (admittedly sick) robot companion than I did getting to really understand the people who lived there. I spent more time figuring out that I'm the fucking descendant of Christ himself than letting anything actually meaningful about Norco soak in. Virtually every environment, puzzle, and interaction was in service of either a dumb gag or a trite narrative twist that served no point beyond elevating a tired narrative that had nowhere to go.
And so, Norco leaves Norco to rot.
More than anything else, Norco feels like it uses the aesthetics of poverty for cheap indie game gravitas. It feels like the writers and fans are more into Canadian Post-Rock bands with run-on sentence names (that are actually cool references to 50s Japanese films you don't know) than they are into Dixieland or Swamp Rock. It feels like the last place on earth they'd actually want to be is Norco, LA. And in this sense, I truly hate this game. In trying to create something that gave players a taste of the modern southern condition, Norco utterly failed. Instead it gave them an amalgam of hyper-derivative influences and half-baked 'art' literature with cheap Christ symbology.
What really digs me is how many players will feel 'enlightened' after this when they might as well have been playing Red Alert 3 for their cold war history. I guess I'll still be looking for the game that Norco was supposed to be.
In Norco I saw something I rarely see in games: an exploration of places like home. Hailing from one of the poorest states in the American South (although Oklahoma's inclusion on that list is sometimes contentious), I've seen firsthand how economic evolution has slowly eroded the communities, homes, and spirits that once defined the great American Heartland.
Hell, as someone from these parts who's got an interest in art...these types of narratives have always fascinated me: the Southern Gothic of O'Connor or Faulkner, the Modernist treatments by Steinbeck and Ellison, etc. These stories take symbols familiar to us--family, faith, perseverance, community, fear, redemption, isolation, etc. and allow us to see alien groups (poor southern blacks, "Okies," American Indians, etc.) through understandable and sympathetic eyes. It allows us to see beyond the thick accents and rudimentary lifestyles and recognize the real human lives, struggles, and emotions behind it all.
So here we have Norco, which first appeared to me via a Tribeca Games Spotlight in 2021 next to other greats like 12 Minutes. The premise was perfect: Norco was one of those places many couldn't believe was real--one of those 'on the nose' symbols that you'd probably think came out of a bad book. But, like with much of the industrial south (as well as the northern Rust Belt), Norco is a sad fact of reality--one begging for artistic exploration. That might sound harsh, a sort of 'culture vulture' thing, but I mean it without a shred of irony. Just as Steinbeck had used the amalgam plight of real Okies escaping to California for The Grapes of Wrath, I think plenty of towns like Norco deserve to have stories told that push awareness to the greater public.
What's in an Opening?
But alas, within literal seconds of pressing start, Norco has already blown it. It's opening montage is perhaps the worst opening I have ever seen to a game--at least in terms of establishing mood, tone, and setting.
First, the game forces players to make narrative choices involving characters we have no understanding of. I don't know or care how well Kay slept based on their proximity to oil fields--I don't even know who the hell Kay is yet. I understand Kay is supposed to be a proxy for me, but I've just goddamn showed up here. I haven't absorbed the mood or tone of the game. I've got no attachment to anything yet and no headspace with which I can make a decision I give two shits about. In fact, I would say that even asking these of the player so quickly serves as a lazy cheat for the writers to avoid writing an actual mood setting hook. They instead rely on a basic player choice to invest you when you've got no reason or incentive to actually make choices yet.
Second, the game's godawful prose attempts to lure you in with some Mccarthy-esque delivery but bats your attention away with the same overwritten, over-precious exposition and framing that plague all beginner 'art' writers. Lines like
The war was a meme that set Albuquerque on fire.
Should make anyone roll their eyes (or laugh their ass off) as hard as the newest YA books should. Especially when literally moments later you're being forced to answer if you tried to fucking pray, sleep, or "forget" while hiding in a freightliner escaping the 'foot soldiers of a pop up junta.'
Remember: we're 35 seconds into this game.
To Point? Or Click?
Keeping in line with the laughably sophomoric opening, Norco decides to take so much influence from the most obvious sources that it destroys what little impact the game could have had left. Its point and click nature means that LucasArts (primarily Ron Gilbert's trademark blend of off-kilter black comedy) is front and center the entire journey. Combine this with Norco's bleak premise and you have a cocktail mix as good as Toothpaste and OJ.
Moments that are meant to highlight the impoverished lifestyles of NPCs are always undercut by the stupidest Glibertian shit. People starving, living life under the freeway? How about a funny puppet show that also happens there? Abandoned malls and burnt out youth with nowhere to go? How about a teenage cult that uses a fucking iPhone app to convert teens so they enter a dead mall and build a fucking rocket ship? So much stupid shit happens in this game that I can say a statement like
"Sorry your mom died of cancer, if only she didn't need QuackCoin and didn't go see the SuperDuck then it would have all been okay!"
Without lying about a single goddamn thing that happens in Norco.
The game's willingness to undercut and serious plot beats with unrelatable goofy content indicates a lack of clear and consistent narrative direction. If it's trying to be surreal, it's not doing much beyond some cheap sight gags. If it's trying to be serious, then the whole damn thing's a clown show.
This isn't to say that narratives need to have one consistent tone to be effective--look at my favorite game for Christ sake. But what a great narrative needs is effective use of tone. If you're going to be wacky, do something interesting with it. If you're just going to make some basic and derivative Ron Gilbert gags, then I could have just spent my time playing Monkey Island. The greatest of games, will use moments of comedy and levity to disarm the player and endear them to the characters of the world in realistic ways. Think your Disco Elysium or Mother 2 types of games. Norco, by contrast, fails to do either. Instead I'm usually left scratching my head wondering just how funny do they think the 10 week old hot dog gag is. It understands Southern Gothic as much as any fourteen year old who just read A Good Man Is Hard To Find for the first time does.
Cyberpunk Hell
On the other end of that spectrum is the rest of Norco's tired influences, the cyberpunk dystopias of Blade Runner and Final Fantasy VII's Midgar. At this point, discussion of Blade Runner is itself so banal that I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. But several visual motifs are directly ripped from the film, so it shouldn't take you long to see the comparisons line up. Norco, in its desperate attempts to strip everything from the kitchen cabinets, even shoves some half-baked Replicant theming into the game during its final moments.
As for Midgar...well I'm starting to feel the same as I do about Blade Runner. It seems creatives and fans point at Midgar as a cheap shorthand for dystopian influence far too often these days. Not to say that Midgar is a shoddily crafted locale--the place is great! But as with most great works, the devil is really in the details as to why its great. The PS1 original stunned the world with some of the best atmosphere, direction, and writing gaming had seen up to that point. Moreover, Midgar left players wanting more, as the short time spent there left a lot to the imagination. But with Norco, as with Final Fantasy VII: Remake, the finer details are all sacrificed in the name of some basic stylization and theming.
Which is a shame, Norco's art direction could have set the game up for serious success in the hands of the right writer/director. When the game isn't busy ripping motifs from Blade Runner it concocts some genuinely great atmospheres and visuals that do emphasize the setting well. It's just unfortunate that the settings also have to involve puppet shows and mall cults. It's unfortunately just another reminder that Norco was creatively reaching towards the bottom of the ideas barrel when building its world and narrative.
Is There Life In Norco?
Which brings me back to Norco's most important failing: relatability and authenticity. The world and characters of Norco are as foreign to me as those in Maniac Mansion or Beneath a Steel Sky. They're just too damn quirky and flat for their own good. Any time I genuinely try to get wrapped up in what's happening to Kay or her mom I have to deal with characters who end every sentence with bruh or have names like ditch man. I have to deal with characters who are hunting after crypto coins or are all named fucking Garrett for comedy purposes. I have to attend parties where characters dress like they're in Eyes Wide Shut or scale rocket ships designed like Byzantine fortresses because...that would be cool.
The real tragedy is the fact that any real point that could be made about Norco--you know the real city is left totally dead in the water. Any sort of authenticity to the real people of Louisiana or the American South as a whole gets washed away under a mountain of the brain-dead metaphors, bad ideas, and unfunny jokes that plague nearly all quirky indie games. It's doubly sad considering that the guy who made the game is himself from Norco. It's a reminder that simply being from a place doesn't mean you're always the best equipped to tell its story. I don't feel like I've learned fuck all about Louisiana, and I live just a couple of hours away from Norco.
I spent more time chasing cryptocurrency and cults than experiencing the true effects of life in the town. I spent more time driving a motorcycle with my (admittedly sick) robot companion than I did getting to really understand the people who lived there. I spent more time figuring out that I'm the fucking descendant of Christ himself than letting anything actually meaningful about Norco soak in. Virtually every environment, puzzle, and interaction was in service of either a dumb gag or a trite narrative twist that served no point beyond elevating a tired narrative that had nowhere to go.
And so, Norco leaves Norco to rot.
More than anything else, Norco feels like it uses the aesthetics of poverty for cheap indie game gravitas. It feels like the writers and fans are more into Canadian Post-Rock bands with run-on sentence names (that are actually cool references to 50s Japanese films you don't know) than they are into Dixieland or Swamp Rock. It feels like the last place on earth they'd actually want to be is Norco, LA. And in this sense, I truly hate this game. In trying to create something that gave players a taste of the modern southern condition, Norco utterly failed. Instead it gave them an amalgam of hyper-derivative influences and half-baked 'art' literature with cheap Christ symbology.
What really digs me is how many players will feel 'enlightened' after this when they might as well have been playing Red Alert 3 for their cold war history. I guess I'll still be looking for the game that Norco was supposed to be.
Incredibly well written. Loved a lot of the story and the characters. I kinda wish the ending was a bit more substantial, but everything else was very well done and enjoyable.
this is my current game of the year frontrunner. i highly recommend it. i just finished it, and i feel like i'll want to sit with it for at least half a year and then replay it.
In terms of gameplay, at the end of the day, it's a very conventional and basic point-and-click adventure game with no deviations from the formula other than how some things are presented. They get the structure of that done perfectly, there was never a moment where I was majorly confused as to what to do next, the interactions and critical path were very clear, and a lot of the optional content was easy to engage with, though I know I must have missed some more obscure things. My favorite thing that they did differently was how they log all of the things you've learned in a "mind map," which makes getting exposition about the (very weird) story very easy.
What this little adventure game gets perfectly right are tone and setting. The art, sounds, and demeanor of all of the characters come together into a vivid picture of the world that the creators aim to immerse you in. It's grimy and it's weird and it's kind of uncomfortable, but it's also fascinating, and the classic "point and click adventure" formula fits right against the setting incredibly well.
What the game does decently is character writing, as it comes to making clear and evocative characters. However, while the dialog is incredibly evocative and does well to make crystal clear characters, what the characters actually SAY is not particularly compelling. The prose and dialog try very hard at a poetic "mystique" contrasted to plain vulgarity, but because there's so much more of a focus on vibe over substance, you don't really get anything out of any individual line no matter how poetic or funny it might be trying to be. Ultimately I lump "character writing" of this type into "tone and setting," because the characters end up serving as strong pillars of the setting without ever providing compelling arcs or drama in their own right.
The story and plot are riveting in terms of dramatic beats to get you invested in how absurd the scenario is that is unfolding. However, there is a lot about the setting and events that undermine the story, with the setting presenting a very mundane and dry presentation of MOST aspects of the world (going into so much detail about the nature of the environment, the politics, what it's like to really live in this situation) and then proceeds to have most characters not truly question just how absurd the premise of the plot actually is. Sure, some people say "man, that's crazy!", but that's not really enough when what's happening is so insane. Just calling something crazy is not the same as actually questioning and analyzing it, and this story is NOT interested in characters actually trying to understand the situations that they're experiencing (whether that means understanding the situations literally, personally, or emotionally).
The best example of this is when the protagonist meets his mom's friend who is the "originator" of the "Superduck," a sentient biological super entity. He literally explains the craziest shit imaginable to the protagonist, and she has NO QUESTIONS about ANY of it. The story just acts like people would accept things that they obviously wouldn't, especially given other things they've questioned or not accepted. If stuff like this was happening all over the world all the time, that would be one thing, but there's a clear insinuation that all of this is new, weird, and scary. I can see that the writer is trying to get across a theme of "the world is always weird and scary, why would these salt-of-the-earth people care about some new weird and scary thing," but I just don't feel like the setting is absurd enough to support the absurd story, and this just causes a lot of tonal dissonances.
My last major issue is that the story itself is too full of vague poeticism. There are a lot of ideas thrown at the screen, but I'm not convinced they really have any kind of interesting interplay. I'm not left thinking about or considering anything meaningful about what was presented after finishing the game, it just kind of boils down to nihilistic absurdism with only a veneer of heart. The implications of what it means for your character to "succeed" at the end are immediately undercut with a sense of imminent doom in their future regardless of the outcome of what happened in the story. I am fairly certain I got the "good ending" because of one or two things I collected earlier in the game, but the story is so obsessed with its own nihilistic tone that there can't actually be a "good ending."
The real issue with "vibe" versus "substance" here is that none of the themes presented really go anywhere or have anything to do with each other, and the themes, story, and character arcs do not interweave in such a way that they elevate or progress one another. You've got a hodgepodge of themes that go nowhere: corporate greed, religious absurdity, modern technological absurdity, family "trauma", etc. The events that occur don't really resolve any of these themes, the themes don't really have anything to do with each other, and at the end of the game, it just feels kind of like you went on a slow-paced Disneyland ride through someone's bizarre hallucinogen-fueled dreams about their fucked up childhood growing up in Louisiana.
Obviously, that was enough to get me to finish the game, but the writing clearly has literary aspirations that it's unfortunately not living up to.
Narrative Design: 4/10
Tone/Setting: 8/10
Plot/Drama: 7/10
Story: 4/10
Themes: 2/10
Character Arcs: 4/10
Dialog: 4/10
What this little adventure game gets perfectly right are tone and setting. The art, sounds, and demeanor of all of the characters come together into a vivid picture of the world that the creators aim to immerse you in. It's grimy and it's weird and it's kind of uncomfortable, but it's also fascinating, and the classic "point and click adventure" formula fits right against the setting incredibly well.
What the game does decently is character writing, as it comes to making clear and evocative characters. However, while the dialog is incredibly evocative and does well to make crystal clear characters, what the characters actually SAY is not particularly compelling. The prose and dialog try very hard at a poetic "mystique" contrasted to plain vulgarity, but because there's so much more of a focus on vibe over substance, you don't really get anything out of any individual line no matter how poetic or funny it might be trying to be. Ultimately I lump "character writing" of this type into "tone and setting," because the characters end up serving as strong pillars of the setting without ever providing compelling arcs or drama in their own right.
The story and plot are riveting in terms of dramatic beats to get you invested in how absurd the scenario is that is unfolding. However, there is a lot about the setting and events that undermine the story, with the setting presenting a very mundane and dry presentation of MOST aspects of the world (going into so much detail about the nature of the environment, the politics, what it's like to really live in this situation) and then proceeds to have most characters not truly question just how absurd the premise of the plot actually is. Sure, some people say "man, that's crazy!", but that's not really enough when what's happening is so insane. Just calling something crazy is not the same as actually questioning and analyzing it, and this story is NOT interested in characters actually trying to understand the situations that they're experiencing (whether that means understanding the situations literally, personally, or emotionally).
The best example of this is when the protagonist meets his mom's friend who is the "originator" of the "Superduck," a sentient biological super entity. He literally explains the craziest shit imaginable to the protagonist, and she has NO QUESTIONS about ANY of it. The story just acts like people would accept things that they obviously wouldn't, especially given other things they've questioned or not accepted. If stuff like this was happening all over the world all the time, that would be one thing, but there's a clear insinuation that all of this is new, weird, and scary. I can see that the writer is trying to get across a theme of "the world is always weird and scary, why would these salt-of-the-earth people care about some new weird and scary thing," but I just don't feel like the setting is absurd enough to support the absurd story, and this just causes a lot of tonal dissonances.
My last major issue is that the story itself is too full of vague poeticism. There are a lot of ideas thrown at the screen, but I'm not convinced they really have any kind of interesting interplay. I'm not left thinking about or considering anything meaningful about what was presented after finishing the game, it just kind of boils down to nihilistic absurdism with only a veneer of heart. The implications of what it means for your character to "succeed" at the end are immediately undercut with a sense of imminent doom in their future regardless of the outcome of what happened in the story. I am fairly certain I got the "good ending" because of one or two things I collected earlier in the game, but the story is so obsessed with its own nihilistic tone that there can't actually be a "good ending."
The real issue with "vibe" versus "substance" here is that none of the themes presented really go anywhere or have anything to do with each other, and the themes, story, and character arcs do not interweave in such a way that they elevate or progress one another. You've got a hodgepodge of themes that go nowhere: corporate greed, religious absurdity, modern technological absurdity, family "trauma", etc. The events that occur don't really resolve any of these themes, the themes don't really have anything to do with each other, and at the end of the game, it just feels kind of like you went on a slow-paced Disneyland ride through someone's bizarre hallucinogen-fueled dreams about their fucked up childhood growing up in Louisiana.
Obviously, that was enough to get me to finish the game, but the writing clearly has literary aspirations that it's unfortunately not living up to.
Narrative Design: 4/10
Tone/Setting: 8/10
Plot/Drama: 7/10
Story: 4/10
Themes: 2/10
Character Arcs: 4/10
Dialog: 4/10
I don't know dude... Norco starts off as what I'd say is a really fascinating blend of southern gothic and science fiction storytelling, and it initially does this great. I was deeply intrigued by what was first shown and the tone and everything felt just right. It felt like a story so close to home, but also something completely alien at the same time.
Unfortunately, the latter half just lost me entirely. It spirals into a narrative that I feel is seeking to be cryptic and weird more so than it is trying to be compelling. In that pursuit, the story of Norco ultimately falls flat for me with a weak climax, and an ending that left me feeling nothing except relief that it was over. I'm sure some people who loved this will tell me what it all meant and how I just didn't get it.
Unfortunately, the latter half just lost me entirely. It spirals into a narrative that I feel is seeking to be cryptic and weird more so than it is trying to be compelling. In that pursuit, the story of Norco ultimately falls flat for me with a weak climax, and an ending that left me feeling nothing except relief that it was over. I'm sure some people who loved this will tell me what it all meant and how I just didn't get it.
There's plenty of well-written games out there. But it's rare to run into amazingly written ones. Games where just the prose, coupled with some great audiovisual presentation of course, can get you so deeply enthralled that you forget everything else and become a sponge, trying to absorb as much of its world as you can. Games where you feel like you everything you do holds its own little meaning.
Norco is one such game, but it's also imperfect, in many ways. None that are immediately apparent, Norco sounds, looks and reads great. But there's a couple things that feel like they don't belong. There's combat, for starters. You'll get in about... four, five fights in the whole game? They're all really easy and not a bother, it's just weird. The story feels oddly paced, disinterested in its main plot at first, only to become much more linear and fast-paced near the halfway point. There's still a good amount of things you can miss, but the freedom of choice that I really fucked with vanishes kinda quickly.
Perhaps the biggest flaw is that the game's themes, as pointed out by others, don't feel as cohesive as they should. The first half of the game is clearly about modern society and capitalism, while the second is more spiritual and symbolic (with a long detour in the middle about cults, which I feel is the worst part of the game). Both of those two halves, taken individually, are executed in a pretty gnarly way, but when looked at in the context of a single story, I genuinely struggle to see a throughline.
And that's a damn shame, because I'm a loser who likes to feel smart, and when I don't "get it", I feel non-smart. It's hard for me to let go of the idea that every game needs to "mean" something. So, let's try, spoilers ahead. I think this is a game about trying to find your own purpose and how difficult and possibly fruitless it is in today's world. The protagonist's mother gives up her past as a free spirit to try and make some dough for her family in her last days. Million, the family robot, can't ultimately escape her programmed purpose (I think? She deserved a better conclusion man, she was so cool and then got killed off abruptly. A fucking crime I tell ya). The Garrets are all looking for some purpose in the most toxic way, first starting some cult and eventually just trying to shoot themselves into space. Superduck is a hive mind of gigantic proportions, bending nature to its will, and is punished with a horrible death. Pawpaw forces all of your family into some preordained Da Vinci Code religious bullshit, with your final action being to just escape from it. It's about trying to find a little bit of freedom in a world that that keeps applying a more and more suffocating stranglehold on to you.
Or you know, it's about something else and I just made all of the above up. Even if I'm right, I don't know if it's supposed to end on a more hopeful note, or a sour one. Norco hurts, because it's so close to being an absolute classic for me, so close to having just the right symbolism. Or maybe I'm the one who's so close to finding the perfect way to look at it to let it blow my mind as it deserves. I don't know.
"We're all trapped in this limbo. A long twilight that bleeds out to the edges of time where even the most fantastic things become banal. This grey blanket of stale time. Stagnant, lonely time. To puncture it... To punch a hole in it. I understand the appeal. I do."
Norco is one such game, but it's also imperfect, in many ways. None that are immediately apparent, Norco sounds, looks and reads great. But there's a couple things that feel like they don't belong. There's combat, for starters. You'll get in about... four, five fights in the whole game? They're all really easy and not a bother, it's just weird. The story feels oddly paced, disinterested in its main plot at first, only to become much more linear and fast-paced near the halfway point. There's still a good amount of things you can miss, but the freedom of choice that I really fucked with vanishes kinda quickly.
Perhaps the biggest flaw is that the game's themes, as pointed out by others, don't feel as cohesive as they should. The first half of the game is clearly about modern society and capitalism, while the second is more spiritual and symbolic (with a long detour in the middle about cults, which I feel is the worst part of the game). Both of those two halves, taken individually, are executed in a pretty gnarly way, but when looked at in the context of a single story, I genuinely struggle to see a throughline.
And that's a damn shame, because I'm a loser who likes to feel smart, and when I don't "get it", I feel non-smart. It's hard for me to let go of the idea that every game needs to "mean" something. So, let's try, spoilers ahead. I think this is a game about trying to find your own purpose and how difficult and possibly fruitless it is in today's world. The protagonist's mother gives up her past as a free spirit to try and make some dough for her family in her last days. Million, the family robot, can't ultimately escape her programmed purpose (I think? She deserved a better conclusion man, she was so cool and then got killed off abruptly. A fucking crime I tell ya). The Garrets are all looking for some purpose in the most toxic way, first starting some cult and eventually just trying to shoot themselves into space. Superduck is a hive mind of gigantic proportions, bending nature to its will, and is punished with a horrible death. Pawpaw forces all of your family into some preordained Da Vinci Code religious bullshit, with your final action being to just escape from it. It's about trying to find a little bit of freedom in a world that that keeps applying a more and more suffocating stranglehold on to you.
Or you know, it's about something else and I just made all of the above up. Even if I'm right, I don't know if it's supposed to end on a more hopeful note, or a sour one. Norco hurts, because it's so close to being an absolute classic for me, so close to having just the right symbolism. Or maybe I'm the one who's so close to finding the perfect way to look at it to let it blow my mind as it deserves. I don't know.
"We're all trapped in this limbo. A long twilight that bleeds out to the edges of time where even the most fantastic things become banal. This grey blanket of stale time. Stagnant, lonely time. To puncture it... To punch a hole in it. I understand the appeal. I do."