Hey, a charming game that turns the subliminal commentary about turning people into products and taking away their privacy is now a video game. But instead of having one Truman, this game has many in its world. American Arcadia is actually a fun romp of an adventure unlike any other.
Yes, I am a month late, and I am also disappointed that nobody's talking about this. It does things not many games out there have fundamentally achieved at doing. Shifting perspective between two different characters. One is trying to escape a dome he was bred within as a product through 2.5D style platforming, while the other hacks and multi-tasks in first-person.
It's also a funny game, taking jabs at 80s and 90s pop culture, the way Hollywood and Television does their business and how in today's age, it's easy for big money to bend the rules to get what they exactly want. Still not a perfect game, but for most part it goes all in the silliness.
It is Inside inspired regarding gameplay, but replacing the dark tone for something a bit more lighter, without taking the edgy subject matters away. Character changes during gameplay, shifts the line between reality and fiction.
With Trevor am surrounded by this retro future reality of tomorrow, that soon falls apart with the Truman kind of revelations, while Angela the one planning his escape, is on the opposite spectrum of some Cyberpunk version of real world with mega corporations taking over. A blend of ideas from a bunch of Sci-Fi medium. But much more.
It manages to create this amazing world that is ruined by corporate bureaucracy, nepotism, and poor government supervision. I mean, a concept like this would have been seen as novel years ago. Nowadays, with the reality we live in, nothing's certain.
We're not sure if any rights we have are properly recognized, because politicians care more about popularity and voting points than doing things tangible. Then again, if you don't want to deal with that kind of commentary, you don't have to.
Trevor is just a normal guy who just wants to live his boring life the way he sees fit, he converses with his office colleague, Gus, there's some foreshadowing that he knows something he shouldn't.
And this routine of him waking up in the morning and heading to work is repeated through montages of scenes. But something's changing, he's seeing things and hearing voices out of nowhere. And the next he knows is Gus winning some travel lottery.
When in reality, Gus was made to disappear from the town due to his lack of popularity, and so Trevor was next. A disembodied voice helped him escape from and helped him realize the entire truth behind it. This while being chased by a group of enforcements what they called "Beastie Boys", literally an adult pulling Baby's Day Out kind of silly stunts.
This is actually a fun game, it's a combination of turning levels into mini-games where he does both platforming and puzzle-solving. Even escaping the man in blue means I have to press a few buttons through Angela to help him escape.
They're not easy either, I've gotten past these places through trial and error, like it was easy at times, but the difficulty spikes really didn't prepare me for the next stuff. There are puzzles that even require a lot of thinking and spatial awareness.
But in the end I started appreciating for how ingeniously they designed them. Not only do these places feel like homages and referential to popular culture we know of, the game uses them to immerse into its world and move well along with the story.
Shifting to Angelo in first-person, I have to trick security systems and get access to restricted areas in order to further help the other guy. You know, hacker stuff that is realistically portrayed as well. Though, I felt like playing her was a bit easier than Trevor. At least the difficulty spikes stopped at some point.
I mentioned Truman Show, but it goes pretty further than that. Like there's a cartoon mascot from the old days of Arcadia that looks similar to something from Looney Tunes or Disney if they got reboots. I saw one thing, but I've read more into the closer I looked.
It's obviously made by developers who grew up watching sitcoms, cartoons, movies from the 60-80s era. Because Arcadia represents a bubble filled with amazing stories but also greed, going to absurd lengths to get every penny possible.
And then you have guys like these, investigators that give the aura of a human terminator. Angela has to multitask by answering his questions while I sneakily move Trevor past the agents. I had to pause the game several times thanks to this guy.
There's more of these tense moments like being almost caught, but the only saving grace was to give the right dialogue choice that becomes a convincing lie. The tone of each moment changes from being a thriller to comedy to drama.
At times, flashbacks, old footage or interview clips are played to surface out the backstory of each character and the world building. Like this scientist from a classic TV show showcasing how Stenography is used to hide information. The next objective I would get is using Hexadecimal coding in a VHS tape to hide certain bits of information.
Before taking that to her place for further decoding. This isn't something you make up as you go along, like the ideas are obviously borrowed yet the writing presents them in a much creative fashion.
Even Trevor did something to pay homages, like climbing out the window and leaving the building from there, just Neo from The Matrix did. Or this literal chase on the freeway for crying out. My anxiety was all over the place.
It's not all bangers though, I have issues with its difficulty spiking and there were a couple of technical problems I've faced along the way like missing textures popping out of nowhere, and performance problems. Nothing too excruciating, just a bit problematic.
But man, was this a fun joyride to hell. After the first 2 hours, I was all aboard the corporate conspiracy uncovering and its own story being fleshed out. 4hrs in, and Trevor disguises himself as Steven Spielberg. This bit was funny.
It also kind of sucks that nobody else is talking about it, either. Would make sense since it was released in holiday season and many other people are just busy playing major releases and being broken afterwards. Now that I manage to get your attention here, you should check it out.
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