Type of experience that I appreciated more than I actually enjoyed. “Norco” is a visual novel with walls of text to get through and very little interactability, most instances of which are pretty underwhelming anyway, with the most irritating example being the combat which the game could’ve very well done without.

The environments and the writing do an excellent job of bringing to life this God-forgotten (?) town in Louisiana, with its unique sci-fi flavor and really dark humor. But as the story goes along, the game shifts its focus to plotlines/themes that I found to be some of the least interesting ones presented in the game and with each passing hour (out of roughly 7 it took me to finish the game) I kept losing interest and watching, sometimes in disbelief, the direction the writers decided to take. I can totally imagine an alternate “Norco” set in the same universe, utilizing many of the same levels, including many of the same plot points and NPCs (many of them are really fun to talk to) and overall themes (finding faith, impact of automatization on job opportunities, environmental externalities, the growing chasm between the haves and the have nots) but utilized in a more efficient way that doesn’t lose its focus in a major way.

My biggest gripe with the game is its artstyle - the combination of hand-drawn character models with environments and interactable objects that might as well be taken straight from the Unity Asset Store felt off and I wish the developers had come up with a better way to combine the early 2000’s nostalgia evoking cartoons and the plain, ubiquitous 3D assets. Other than that, I was left quite satisfied with ‘Open Roads’ - for most of its 3 hour ‘runtime’ I felt almost as if I was watching a Sundance indie movie. The mystery at the center of the plot isn’t particularly high stakes, but it doesn’t need to be - it provides a good excuse for a mother-daughter road trip where they can bond and learn more about each other. The dialogue is mostly well-written and the two voice actresses work really well together.

I spent about 15 hours with the game, and looking at walkthroughs I’m guessing I made it about halfway through the main questline with a bunch of extra exploration sprinkled here and there.

I remember enjoying the first entry quite a bit, with its competent blend of light soulslike elements and Tomb Raider-like traversal through open environments that rewarded exploration. I don’t know what happened, perhaps my taste has shifted significantly, because playing ‘Survivor’ felt like a waste of time. This is the kind of game where you can point to almost each mechanic and tell which game it took it from. Same goes for the story - it’s the most cliched, uninspired Star Wars fluff you'd come to expect from the Disney era SW. The NPCs are usually nicely animated, they exchange quirky dialogue clearly inspired by the Marvel movies, the environments are vast with plenty of opportunity to explore (although the reward could be something more substantial than a new grip for the lightsaber or a new haircut for Cal). The combat usually works just fine and there is some variation in how you can utilize your weapons, which this time include a laser pistol. But it all just feels so bland, generic and safe that a couple of hours in I couldn’t bring myself to give a damn about any characters fighting, once again, against the evil Empire. I was forcing myself through the main story because I try not to abandon games, but this time the game simply wore me out.

One other thing I need to mention is the game’s technical state. I was playing on Series X and in performance mode the actual performance was far from perfect. Apart from losing frames regularly the backgrounds would often flicker, as if some objects would take too long to load when I was moving the camera around. There were some odd hitboxes here and there, at some points I wasn’t able to use the right stick to switch lock on between targets which I found particularly infuriating. Every time I’d wake the game with Quick Resume I’d have to wait a good 10-15 seconds for it to stop stuttering, and one hard crash made me lose quite a bit of progress. There are also tons of awkward animations, where Cal gets blocked on various objects.