Unexpected delight of a game. Looks like Policenauts but couldn't be more different in tone.
Hideo Kojima’s ‘Snatcher’ and ‘Policenauts’ video games were released on multiple platforms in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. They respectively drew from Cyberpunk and Sci Fi genres and told interactive cinematic stories from a first person perspective in a mostly anime art style.
In terms of its visual presentation and game play structure, Read Only Memories is extremely reminiscent of these titles but this is where the similarities to them end. While Snatcher and (especially) Policenauts had some pretty jarring attitudes towards women (particularly the narratively absurd and correspondingly gratuitous objectification of them), Read Only Memories is genuinely notable for how it presents a 'high-tech-but- low-life' version of the future where people have moved beyond this kind of nonsense. In the world of Read Only Memories people's discriminatory tendencies have re-focused onto emerging social groups such as gene splicers and machine intelligences that present a threat to people's conception of what it means to be human at all.
For the most part, standard adventure game mechanics apply throughout. You have an inventory that stores any acquired items that can latterly be used to interact with the world in some way. One of the first items you acquire in the game (the pair of GX headphones) is also the most useful. Try them on everything you can imagine to hear some cool, useful and occasionally funny titbits. Also, if a speech option appears, don't be afraid to select it even if it seems absurd to do so. For instance, I didn't talk to the pot plant in my apartment enough times (thereby not showing it enough love) and that had a small effect upon the late game narrative. I can only imagine how many mini-branched narrative moments I went through like that during my playthrough but my guess would be that there were a lot.
Navigation between the locations in the Neo-San Francisco game world takes place via fast-travel taxi and is directed via a game map. The map itself opens up slowly in line with story developments and certain locations also gain new areas as you find ways to open them up throughout the game. Most locations can be re-visited once you've left them but some locations are rendered inaccessible after specific story developments so beware.
The music is consistently great; the art style is super stylish; and without spoiling the plot I think it is fine to say that the narrative is fresh and positive in a way that at no stage bludgeons the player with its politics, but instead tells a cool cyberpunk story in a world that is also inhabited by teenage gay couples, lesbian cops, trans-gender hackers, trans-species lawyers, bad-ass fat lady wrestlers, bear (as in gay) bartenders, bear (as in the animal) doormen, and a whole bunch of other stereotype-defying queered characters who absolutely exist in this world naturally and normally and are present to be a meaningful part of the narrative, and not to just fill a token quota.
I loved the writing in this game, but outside of paying careful attention to dialogue choices (and their consequences) the game play itself was never exactly what you might call challenging. Puzzles generally weren't too tough, and shooting segments were forgiving. This is possibly for the best as difficultly spikes would interrupt the flow of the experience.
All in all, possibly because I went into this one on a whim (I was browsing steam as Jason mentioned it on the Bombcast and made an on-the-spot impulse purchase) and with no preconceptions or expectations, I had a genuinely excellent experience with this game and would thoroughly recommend it.
You’ve got every chance of having a great time with RoM so if the above seems interesting to you then give it a shot. I needed eight hours to complete the game.
