Invader Zim levels of critique on capitalism.
We're better than the corporations because our social atomisation, dissociation from community doesnt have a Pip Boy mascot. Let's kill "Marauders" (please don't ask who or what they are). Damn is that gun a Gucci? We replaced the politics of New Vegas with a gripping perk system that entirely leans on combat stat boosts. The extent of this game's role-playing capability is deciding whether or not to be a character who presses the bullet time button. Randomly generated loot lends to the sheer artifice of this world, the characters are all jokes and interacting with them is like flicking a bobblehead. This review is as short and unfocused as the game is.

The first thing you can do in the game is decide to name your dog, or just decide it's an old traveller following you until the day you are unable to give him treats or his legs give up.
An amazing trip from start to finish, Kentucky Route Zero is the game that made me realize magical realism can be achieved by other communities of the world aside from latinamerica. The bibble belt of USA comes to life in this game, showing you stories of decadence, the hardships of debt and the dehumanization of people thanks to it.
I'm 24 years at the moment of writing this. I can remember the times I have cried since my adolescence, since I was called a crybaby while growing up.
I didn't cry trough many hardships of my life because, I recall, tought that tears are precious things that must be conserved. But this game made me cry. After an encounter with a character that brought up in me the remembrance of the beauty of non-existence and being alive in memory, I realized this game was for me. But then, while I was walking away from it's house, a mesmerizing rendition of You've got to walk (that lonesome valley) by the Bedquilt Ramblers, a band started to produce covers of gospell and bluegrss for this game, I understood that it wasn't just for me, but it would be one of the loves of my life.
This game has made me feel like home. A home that's starting to break down, full of mosquitos and filth, with no water or electricity, but the house you grew up in, with the pets buried in the yard and your gradma's pot boiling while she listens to the radio. A house that will probably cease to exist once you leave, but that during your stay in it will take roots in you

Kentucky Route Zero is in one way a collection of stories intertwined between ghostly caricatures of the past, complicated stressed and living individuals, and government and environmental factors that work in such mysterious and incomprehensible ways to the denizens living underneath and on it that they might as well be supernatural, and which they are shown as within the entire work.
Every Act has interesting messages to tell, and lives to reflect on and shed a tear with. By the time everyone comes together to mourn the end of the journey, each person is fleshed out further than the featureless faces that adorn them would suggest. The game touches on several aspects of a decaying shifting void that is midwest America, whether that be the brainwashing ghastly denizens of corporations that push people into the neverending spiral debt hole they craft, or the old denizens on the high mountain scattered long after their nature project failed with an attachment to a dingy computer program that sounds constant static. There isn't really a single piece in here that feels without purpose or really in the wrong space at all. It is dense, certainly a less explicit piece than most, and a large amount of factors that make up the whole are something that it intentionally encourages you to research on your own. Each dialogue in their own points to several meta and thematic factors that don't just have to do with the characters at the receiving end of each line.
The visuals and music are just as thematically placed, each a perfect painting and screenshot in of itself. A lot of work was put into matching the perspective of the characters and where the camera is placed. A few specific examples that stand out to me is the revolving passage of time in Act 5, as a cat hearing everyone mourn and discuss where they're going, or the overbearing perspective when you move about the Hard Times. Or my favorite part, The Entertainment, as you bounce between each painfully depressing line.
I won't claim to understand all of what I saw as I played through the game, and honestly there are a lot of things that are too subtle for me to catch on, or maybe I'm just not in tuned enough to just get it. But that's fine. It's still a masterpiece of the medium, something I wish to see considered in high regard for the recognizable future. I hope it inspires people as much as it teaches me on aspects of life I've never been a part of or could directly relate to. It's a perfect encapsulation of what it sets out, and I was very emotionally invested. I highly recommend getting Kentucky Route Zero.

this is miles better than what we got with the lost and damned. for one, i actually care about multiple characters and like them, which i couldn't say about TLAD. it also helps that, in terms of mission variety and structure, this is one of the strongest GTA games. i think the addition of parachuting is great, the triathlons are fun (if a bit samey), and the ability to replay missions is something that i'm shocked isn't in more rockstar games. i have next to nothing bad to say about this DLC.

but there is one thing. this is a narrative about a gay man. and rockstar, being rockstar, has to amp up the homophobia. it wasn't enough that base GTA IV had its share of homophobia, but now we have to have a DLC almost dedicated to it. it's a shame, because i think tony prince is a decently written character and probably one of the best lgbt characters they've done. he has nuance and is an active participant in the narrative. it's a shame that so many other of the gay characters fall into the "closet case or effeminate flamer" stereotype that rockstar leans into. i literally cannot name a single gay character outside of tony that doesn't fit either of those categories and there's like. 5 named gay characters now. that's still bad to me. and like yeah, i get that making multiple characters call tony a faggot over and over again is an easy shorthand to demonstrate the struggles he's faced as a gay man + the immediate dislikability of the slur sayer in question, but it gets to be a bit much. we start out the DLC with luis' friends immediately being homophobic to him (one of them explicitly calls tony a fag in his very first scene), and we end with ray bulgarin shouting "I AM NOT A FUCKING FAGGOT!!!!". like okay. cool. did every character have to be this way? you can make a lgbt character without them immediately getting slurred or victimized, rockstar. it's not impossible.

either way. i had a good time with this game. i can't recommend it to anyone who hasn't built up the ability to compartmentalize homophobia as one of those things that just exists, but otherwise, it's a great DLC and a good cap GTA IV.

oh wait, i forgot one thing. SO TELL ME HOW LONG BEFORE YOU DROP THE BOMB, BEFORE YOU TURN IT UP, TURN IT UP, TURN IT UP, TURN IT UP