Immortality Reviews
Immortality is a one-trick pony when it comes to gameplay, but there's a brilliant story buried beneath its hundreds of film clips.
Sam Barlow's epic mystery of self-reference and cinema is an elaborate, ingenious enigma - one that would be even better if it didn't want to be solved.
Immortality is Sam Barlow's best, most thought-provoking game yet, and a barnstorming debut for Half Mermaid.
Immortality is a thoroughly mesmerizing mystery and one of the most surprising video game stories of 2022.
Immortality feels like a logical endpoint for the last seven years of Barlow's work. Though his cast has expanded to include a full Smash Bros. roster's worth of characters, and the script has expanded to include three full movies with contributions from several writers, it feels like he has ended up, basically, where he started. Like Her Story, Immortality is really about one woman. As in Her Story, she may not be who you think she is.
Nothing less than a whole new genre of video game, that evolves the interactive movie into something that feels dynamic and excitingly different.
Sam Barlow has somehow done it again, raising the bar for the FMV / interactive movie genre once more. Immortality is yet another masterpiece of storytelling.
In exploiting this fan-like thirst for knowledge as authority and authenticity — even if it occasionally undercuts the storytelling — the game also creates an easy choice for the curious outsider: Either play, or don’t. Immortality embodies the most enticing hallmarks of the “if you know, you know” meme — there’s no quick recap for a politely interested stranger that can adequately sum up the question What happened to Marissa Marcel? The only way to fully appreciate the scope of this project, flaws and all, is to throw all expectations of story and structure out the window, and realize that the simplistic divide between film and games is holding us back from doing so much more with either medium.
The latest game from Sam Barlow and Half Mermaid builds on what you've come to expect while also subverting its own genre in clever ways.
I want art to be a place where I can find love, beauty, or truth. Without these things, Marissa Marcel was better off lost.
A hallmark of excellence. There may be flaws, but they are negligible and won't cause massive damage.
The non-linear narrative is a double-edged sword in Immortality, leaving us with brilliant moments of discovery but also points where the experience is "dismantled". Despite this, it is a truly unique game, essential for those who want to delve into the narrative possibilities of the medium.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
I’m not sure I’ll ever stop wondering about the snakes, the apples, and every other prop laced with subtext. I think that’s what Immortality set out to do; transform how many of us think about, and approach, all forms of media – as well as the people who play a part in shaping it, and shaping our lives in the process.
The most ambitious and intense Sam Barlow's game is a brilliant interactive mockumentary about movies and our relationship with the sense of narration.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Immortality is a phenomenal piece of work, filled with great acting and direction, centred around the story of one woman's life in front of the lens in all its fragile yet powerful glory.
Immortality is an ambitious and considered look at art, storytelling, film, religion, and many other things, but it doesn't quite catch all the metaphorical apples it throws in the air.
Some writers have described “Immortality” as being about burnout or auteurism (the final few scenes can be read as evidence for that theory). But that’s not quite right, akin to saying Star Wars is about space. Artistry does not grant privileged access to decency or good nature. That is what the game is, not what it is about. It’s text, not subtext. For so long as “Immortality” uses that as a starting point to probe further, it is a high water mark for gaming in 2022. When the characters are allowed to be people — not vampires nor aliens nor angels but people who are tired, embarrassed, horny, funny, naive, voyeuristic, creepy and more — each frame’s richness is its own reward.
Immortality is an astonishing work of interactive fiction that's every bit as unsettling and unforgettable as the films that inspired it.
Immortality is the antithesis of the belief that games are an art form, as its lofty attempts to establish prestige are built upon the language of another medium entirely (cinema). It relies on the spectacle of the project alone and not the substance, leaving an empty shell confident in but not convinced of its own self-importance.
The latest game from the creator of Her Story and Telling Lies has you piecing together the puzzle of a missing movie star