Gamer vs. Backlog: Tokyo Dark
In line with my quest to conquer my bloated backlog and finish everything that I start; I am pleased to say that I finished Tokyo Dark this week.
During a hostage negotiation, our main character Detective Ito ends the crisis by shooting the unstable girl who has taken a shrine worker hostage. Following this her partner goes missing only to turn up in a Shinjuku sewer held hostage by the same girl she shot. After her partner ends up dead and with no witnesses or murderer to lock up Ito is suspended, badge and gun stripped. From here she goes on to attempt to unravel the events which led up to these supernatural occurrences.
Resulting themes deal in pretty dark topics, such as suicide, child abuse and endangerment with possible implied sexual abuse, cults, and death.
Throughout, you are maintaining Ito's sanity, attempting to balance it with other traits which will slide in opposite directions depending on the choices you do or don't make. You are even given pills to take (since Ito pretty much had a nervous breakdown following the first blown hostage situation) that are supposed to help manage your sanity and neurosis. Downside to this is it will decrease your investigative skill points when you take the pills. I only ever took two in my playthrough. Just to keep Ito this side of sane.
Despite the serious tone of the game there are some very anime moments in it. Such as visiting a cat-themed maid cafe while investigating. It's just laughably silly. I often felt that the art style of the game was in direct contrast to the serious nature of the story line. Good or bad? I wasn't crazy about the juxtaposition. But I really liked the story. And when you finish the game you open up New Game+ options which I'm actually eager to explore.
Overall I really enjoyed the game. There were some moments where my frustration would build. This game is entirely driven by mouse. You spend a lot of time clicking to advance narrative. And there are no save options!! A source of true frustration when I would realize I made a choice I was not crazy about and wanted to go back and change it. Progress is tracked through auto-saves, so if you've already passed a "point of no return" there is no going back. Oftentimes choices are presented to you in a direct manner. If you don't really look around and well.. investigate, you can make some really crazy decisions that hurt the people around you. And, of course decrease your sanity. There's a horribly little part of me that desperately wants to go back and do absolutely nothing to manage Ito's sanity just to see what happens to the story.
All in all, I would totally play this again. I've heard there's a cat god ending. And I'm 1000% a sucker for cats. The sad part is, I can't even remember when I originally purchased this game. My backlog is deep folks. I have a long way to go to catch up to recent game purchases.
Should I feel ashamed of this? /blowsraspberry
Who can say? I'm just glad I'm finally getting to some of these titles.
Will post again soon with updates on the backlog titles I'm playing through.