Virginia

To begin with, it’s not really a game. And not even an interactive movie. In Virginia the player has no right to vote, it just has to lead heroine in the only possible direction and to press a single button. Some games can be forgiven a lack of interactivity, but Virginia turned out pretty weak and as a movie.

But all right there: here you are missing child of the local priest, and the mysterious dreams, and planned a conspiracy theory.

Will unclean hands on the heads the newly formed FBI agent Anna Tarver gets caught up in an internal investigation against her new companion – Mary Halperin. But the girls are slowly beginning to tie a warm friendship, and even Anna dream very strange dreams. They definitely mean something.

In the first half hour of Virginia throws several storylines rods. The characters do not speak, but that only gets more interesting to explore the chamber location – do not want to miss a single piece of slowly evolving mosaic.

In many ways, the charm of Virginia is based on the award-winning soundtrack. Music in the game does not work only on the creation of an atmosphere, but also to the disclosure of the characters. Skillfully selected compositions performed by the Prague Symphony Orchestra flow smoothly into one another, just modulating the emotional state of the protagonist.

In Virginia rather pleasant minimalist visual style, but if you turn the sound off, as the game becomes a series of lifeless boring corridors.

Another pillar, not allowing the game to fall apart into pieces, – installation.

Typically, developers are trying to implement as much as possible smooth, seamless flow of history, to increase the sense of immersion, to create the player a false sense of reality. But Variable State.

In an effort to ensure maximum cinematic Virginia, developers have used aggressive installation. Bonding through darkening here helpfully eliminate a player from walking and traveling by car, which would have turned the game in passing many hours of boring hell. Due to a non-standard installation, Virginia maintains a relatively brisk pace.

In the picture, constantly being something meaningful, but neither geography events or expressive scenes, no atmosphere sleepy provincial town, lost in the woods of Virginia, for the sake of developers do not donate.

Sometimes, however, the intervention in the narrative pace is too uncompromising. Proceed to the next stage will be zastigat you unexpectedly, without permission.

If you do not have time to read the document or would like to check if there is something interesting out of the rock in a cave – your problems. Who did not – that was late.

But neither the music nor the schedule, nor an original approach to installation can not save Virginia from a disastrous scenario. Start the game just amazing. She throws all new puzzles and ephemeral clues, makes guesses about how the same may be linked the missing son of a priest, the military, the FBI leadership and local teenagers. And what’s all this fucking Buffalo?

And there is nothing. In the second act at the forefront of Anna internal conflict on the basis of an internal investigation entrusted to her. And she do not care what happened to the unfortunate child. And plotting war. And that in fact her workmate learned of the conspiracy to the FBI manual. And the buffalo. But who is at all interested?

Instead of original untangle the famously twisted conspiracy theory, Variable State simply throw it go and go on a jungle strained reflection. Virginia Final – rambling mess of soul-searching, LSD trip and rough knock off all dangling in the air with a rusty ax lines.

I was waiting for a powerful climax – with the active tense action and unexpected but logical outcome. Variable State just animated all the scenarios outline, spice it up with empty surreal images and issued in the form of a narcotic visions, which was supposed to explain everything. No, it does not work.

Even despite the fact that the player is given the answers to most puzzles, it does not bring satisfaction.

The essence of detective stories are not peeking in on the last page, in the search for the name of the killer. The bottom line is hard to keep track of the characters that are a step-by-step approach to its unmasking. A missing boy … if the writers do not care it, why should we worry about his fate?

Virginia is very difficult to assess. On the one hand, this is a big step for the development of games as art. Aggressive cinematic installation worked perfectly – in the future, I’m sure, work Variable State will leave an imprint on the genre of interactive cinema.

In addition, Virginia bravely comes to the territory of the acute social themes. Racism, sexism, religion rotten Institute, unreliable, corrupt authorities – for the game is not taboo. All this leads Western liberal critics in ecstasy.