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| Format: Nintendo 3DS, PSVita Genre: Visual Novel/Puzzle Price: £22 - £30 Out: Now Notes: The SAW films, only milder and with a better story |
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| Yes it's a Japanese game... yes the characters are extravagant and busty girls go around in skimpy outfits... |
You play as Sigma, a 22 year old college student who's a bit of a perv. On Christmas day 2028 you are kidnapped and awake inside an elevator with a girl called Phi, and are tasked with escaping the elevator. Upon escape you discover there are 7 other people in the same boat as you and Phi and you are forced to play the 'Nonary Game', the prime goal being to earn 9 points (you start with 3) and escape out the number 9 door which will only open once, by allying or betraying your fellow prisoners.
The game is quite complicated in terms of blot so that is just a brief synopsis. The game has hours and hours of story, ignoring repetition you're looking at at least 35 hours if you ask me. There are 24 possible endings that come about through the choices you make in the novel section, all of which are unique and strangely satisfying, even when most of them actually end with your death anyway, including one where everybody catches a virus and kills themselves, it's really quite graphic, hence the '16' age rating.
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| The game's flowchart, shows the different choices you can make/have made and all that, but yeah check out all those different paths, shame so many of them are so similar |
The escape portions of the game are strokes of genius, these involve you solving a number of puzzles using a variety of everyday items in order to find a code to open the safe in the room and consequently escape. The puzzles take a while and a lot of thinking, so there's a sense of real satisfaction when you put that key in the lock and the game tells you 'You Found It!'
You may of noticed earlier I said that to escape you must earn 9 points, by allying or betraying the others. This game makes a lot of references to quantum physics and thought experiments (not that prior knowledge is necessary), even the way you earn points is. The way you earn points in the Nonary game is much like the Prisoner's Dilemma, you place a vote in a room where nobody else, except your partner if you are a 'PAIR', can see what you vote, and you choose either 'ally' or 'betray.' If both you and your opponent choose to ally, you gain 2 points each, if one chooses to allty and the other picks to betray, whoever betrayed gains 3 points and whoever allied loses 2, and if both players betray, nobody gains or loses anything. All well and good I suppose? but throw in the fact that if you go down to 0 points you die, and everyone starts to get a bit frantic, especially considering one of the characters is a complete douche and will betray at every opportunity just to escape quicker.
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| Your bracelet dictates how many points you have, what colour team you are on and whether you are a PAIR or a SOLO, when your points drop to zero they kill you by lethal injection, and they only come off when your heart stops, but who cares about that, look at how cool it is! I want one! Now! |
Nevertheless one thing I must say is that if you only like games full of action where you want to kill shit all the time, this is not for you as action obsessed gamers will find it boring. The pace of the game is quite slow as it is all very technical with details, but if you love story there's little better than this game, buy it now, and prepare to lose a lot of nights immersed in the games complex world and rules.
VERDICT:
+ Brilliantly written and deep story
+ Puzzle sections are challenging and rewarding
+ Concept is brilliant and unique
- Story can get really repetitive as some story aspects with the same dialogue happen in many branches of the story
- Reaching a 'lock' in a branch and having to come back to it later on can get very irritating
FINAL SCORE:
91% >GOLD AWARD<