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Our next podcast recording (26.3.22) - 512: Kentucky Route Zero (Patreon)

Published:
2022-03-19 15:34:07
Imported:
2022-03

Content

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Kentucky Route Zero for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

Comments

Harvey Jones

This game left me just as confused as entertained. I adore the universe theyve created, its deep mysterious and seems to rooted with history that I'll never discover. I felt like I was watching a surrealist art house movie with the strange writing, characters, and destinations. The multiple choice dialogue is extremely unique in the way you're sometimes choosing answers for both characters at once but most of the time I felt my choices were inconciquential and had to effect on the story line. There were times where I felt the developers wanted me to know this and were almost poking fun at me. This game feels like it has a meta context that I didn't quite get, I'm not a keen reader so perhaps most of it went over my head? Mixed feelings aside, I really enjoyed my play through, it was a wacky philosophical ride with a good dash of dry humor. Third floor....bears

Ben

Kentucky Route Zero is, in my mind, an all-time great accomplishment in video game writing. In its deep literary allusiveness (alongside interesting experimentations with various forms) I think it emerges as a game that, perhaps a lot like Disco Elysium, could come to represent a shift in what smaller-budget indie games can look like moving forward. It deconstructs the post-recession United States as well as any other piece of writing that I’ve come across. It’s magical realism works wonders, and resulted in one of the more unique narrative experiences I’ve ever had in a game. But as a particular highlight: the ending to The Entertainment affected me in a way I can’t really explain. It was so confronting, matched with the games routinely stellar sound design, and solidified a wonderful tonal shift to a well-paced story. I can’t speak highly enough about KRZ.

Robin Enrico

I went into KRZ relatively blind. I assumed it was meant to be quirky and funny. Accidentally letting the controller sit for a minute in act one and having the camera pan out to the blue grass players betrayed a deeper melancholy. As the game mixed the quiet empty country roads of my youth and the small scale art scene utopianism of my adulthood I knew I had found something truly beautiful. I didn’t know a game with so little “game” to it could grip me so hard. KRZ’s trick is to de-gamify every choice you make. You stop trying to find the optimal “good” choice as your choices rarely fall into such binary categories. The story always moves forward, but your have to move with it. You can’t take your choices back. You can visit the mushroom island, but you miss going to the bar, and that is just how it is. The stakes are low for video games, but high for folks like Conway. In all its strangeness the game becomes a mirror, a role play of how you might make your way through hard times and find your place on the zero.

AranPrime

I definitely preferred the the first 2 acts, basically the parts that came out in 2013, over the rest of this adventure. As it goes on, what enraptured me early on, the game's playful nature with both space and interactions, gave way to writing that didn't know when to stop, that sacrificed pure atmosphere for long melodramatic tangents that went nowhere. Gone were sequences like exploring the mine, navigating the Zero, traversing the forest, encountering an office floor full of patient bears, etc and in their place was text, text and more text. There were still moments later on that momentarily recaptured the same level of delight; the performance in the bar may just be the highlight of the game and the third interlude, Here and There Along the Road, represents the game at its most playful even if it's a bit too short. By the end of Act 5, I came away disappointed that the game was more interested in telling a decent if heavy-handed story over creating an atmospheric journey that would take the player to new and exciting realms of play. Taken on its own terms, KRZ mostly succeeds, but it's hard not to feel betrayed by its initial promise.

Chris Atwill

I played this game last year for another podcast's playthrough and felt overall it was an interesting if flawed game. The first chapter was atmospheric and had ideas that seemed to hint at a much richer narrative. The interludes added varying amounts to the experience. Highlights for me were the bar stage play and the TV station. Less fun was wandering around the art gallery. Music played a huge part and used incredible effects on the band scene. That song gets played on Spotify occasionally. The boat was over long, unnecessary, and honestly a bit boring. A final mention of the hall of the mountain King. This section was one of the longest, and much discussion was had about the pseudo text adventure/rpg/resource management game. I'm not sure that was really for me, to be honest. I came away from the game feeling I'd missed big chunks of narrative and also feeling a bit stupid. I don't like being made to feel dumb when you've hidden a key piece of the story in a maze (the zero) that had a sound effect with the uncanny ability to make me fall asleep. I can see the charms this game holds, and they are many. The graphics and sound design were overall impressive, but none of the characters seemed to matter. Overall, it left me a bit cold, which was a shame.

Scott Lamond

This is definitely a title where the discussion of it is much more interesting and enjoyable than the actual hands-on experience. I played this game along with the Playthrough podcast - I have to say that without that show and the community interaction on the Discord channel supporting it I would have given up in Chapter 3. After an initially intriguing first chapter, for me the game quickly descended into a frustratingly obtuse experience. There were some nice touches here and there but while an art-house aesthetic is fine for a couple of hours, over 10 hours some of it felt interminable.

Paul M

I "played" the TV edition on my PS4 after years of hearing how special this was from peoples whose opinions I respect. I think it probably doesn't benefit for being played in quick order, compared to its original release cadence. But either way, for me this is one of those games which, despite executing what it intended extremely well, just did not resonate with me. I can offer no critique or suggestion for improvement for the game. It is clearly exactly what it should be, I just wish it hit me the same way it seems to have done for others.