2064: Read Only Memories

The game has four endings, but they only vary slightly, and a bunch of different dialogue options with no long term impact on the story. It is primarily linear, but I still enjoyed my time with the game. Turing is charming, the art and music is good, the writing is funny and while point and click style puzzles were rare (and, often, a little convoluted), they were never the irritating, arbitrary adventure game puzzles everybody dreads. The story is largely your standard cyberpunk fare, but I enjoyed how inclusive and diverse the game was! That this is, thematically and symbolically at least, worked into the story without usually being too obtuse was great. It's not without it's flaws. More non-linearity, more interesting puzzles and a stronger first act would all improve the game quite a bit. I'm not sure I'd be satisfied paying full price for the game, and I also had some minor freezes when playing the game. It seems to be not quite what some people were anticipating going into it either. But if you want a chill, sweet and entertaining visual novel that'll make you laugh every so often, it's worth picking up on sale.

Ever since seeing Ghost in the Shell as a kid, I’ve had an obsession with cyberpunk. Dystopian futures, androids, body augmentation, VR….man, that’s the stuff of my dreams. Needless to say when Erik recommended Read Only Memories, a game by MidBoss, featuring all of the above and more, I absolutely could not resist dropping the $15 on it and I was not disappointed. Read Only Memories was worth every penny, but it also wasn’t everything that it could have been. It’s wonderful when a movie or game is everything we expect, but in this case, I can’t help but wish it had surprised me more instead of choosing to play it safe. Regardless of this, Read Only Memories is a great game and has a lot to offer. Audio/Visual Upon first booting up the game, you are inundated with gorgeous and nostalgic inducing 16-bit style graphics. This aesthetic may not be for everyone, but for those that like it, it’s well executed and brings a lot of charm to the experience. The low fidelity nature of the visuals can make the interface clunky at times as it’s not always easy to make out what you’re looking at (especially for really small things) but those instances are infrequent and are easily resolved by choosing “look” to get a brief description of the object. All-in-all the visuals are stylish and really bring a lot of personality to the game. This nostalgic visual style is complemented with a tight 80’s synth inspired soundtrack by 2 Mello that provides an atmospheric backdrop to the locations and a sense of personality to the characters you meet during your journey. The music rarely feels like a bad fit however at times it is more understated than I would have liked, as the overall vibe is very mellow throughout. One funny note though, I found that some of the tracks would not have sounded out-of-place in a classic Sonic game... To read the rest of the review visit: http://www.nerdfit.com/2016/04/15/read-only-memories-review/

This Adventure plays a bit like Shadowgate, for those familiar, but without the countless silly deaths. In fact, I played it without consulting a walkthrough, and the only time I really screwed things up was because I was doing something that I absolutely knew was wrong; I deserved it. The game has relatively few puzzles, opting to use conversation as the way to progress through your adventure. Normally, I'd hate this, because I don't like Visual Novels, but there's a fair amount of exploration, and the characters are just incredibly-written. I loved almost every single character in the game; the worst thing I felt toward any of them is a vague sense of distrust, and that character wound up being the main villain, so to speak. Not only are the characters lovable, but the humor is top-notch; some of it references other works, and some of it is wholly original, but I got quite a few good laughs from this. My only real critique of the story is that it seems a bit lopsided. It was great running into lots of queer characters, but when there are only a small handful of straight characters, it comes off as a bit pandering, and I say this as a queer woman. It's a very minor nagging issue for me, but I can see how some might be a bit turned off by it. The visuals are supposed to be reminiscent of an old PC-98 title, and they certainly deliver; despite technically being a cyberpunk game, the world is bright and colorful, and is a pleasure to experience. The music is great, too; it reminds me of the best that the SEGA Genesis has to offer. That might also be reminiscent of a PC-98 game; I've seen them, but don't have enough experience with the system to say how they'd typically sound. I'm a big fan of the Adventure genre, and this is easily one of the best games I've ever played within it, maybe second only to Yume Nikki.

I'm not one for point-n-click games( still need to finish Grim Fandango). So it's a feat when a full game in this genre actually gets me to beat it. The characters are great, colorful and relatively fleshed out, the story and plot get you pretty invested and make you think on questions like the title, the music is a good bit of synth, funk and rap( also genres that usually aren't my cup of tea) that fit the moments of the game really well, the setting is beautiful and active, and the gameplay has a lot of stuff to play around with. Totally worth it to get it if you can.

This game is amazing. I would recommend to any fan of technology and science fiction. Being a computer science researcher I found the story is really clever. It is so funny without being gross. The dialog are also actually profound: I got really attached to the characters. And cherry on the cake, it is really inclusive, one can plays any gender/pronoun or have any diet. It is quite open minded. A little drawback is the game is quite linear, but I had such a good time! What a marvellous little gem!