Virginia Reviews
A surreal love letter to detectives and David Lynch.
Saying that Virginia is unique is an understatement, there is nothing like it on any Xbox-console. The storytelling and music are sublime making the game an easy game to recommend.
Virginia is the only thing which prevents itself from achieving greatness, as it tries to imitate a TV show, while attempting to abandon the fact that it’s a videogame. As previously stated, a combination of videogame mechanics, with a structure and direction of a TV series, is borderline impossible and Virginia is a great example of that.
Virginia is extremely well made and a sight for you to behold, a well-developed drama that should be experienced by all. There are issues I found with it, which detract from the experience, but outside of the controls I can see why they were used.
An engaging and surreal first-person narrative adventure packed with mystery and effective emotional moments
If you’re a little bit curious, or if you enjoyed any of the games with which it shares its DNA, Virginia may be one of the oddest and most fascinating things you’ve played in a long, long time. Vivid Virginia is a hell of a lot more than plain old “walking.”
Virginia's an astonishing piece of narrative design, and a game that goes where few others are capable of following.
Virginia is a sharp thinking, plot driven single-player adventure like few out there. It borrows heavily from other games of its ilk, yet twists it into its own strange beast. Unlike plenty of others, such as Firewatch, Virginia also manages to actually live up to its premise and deliver a satisfying, thought provoking conclusion. I'd love to go deeper on this because Virginia is a game all about its story and it's delivered, but a mystery such as this best served piping hot with a cup of joe on the side.
Virginia’s tale of intrigue and mystery quickly comes full circle. In that time, it will take you to some pretty surprising, extraordinary places, and easily warrants a second playthrough. The closing moments may not be to everyone’s taste, though the journey to get there is certainly worthwhile.
Like all of the best first-person adventure games, or "walking sims", Virginia works better than its movie inspirations because of the inherent interactivity that comes with telling a story in this medium. It goes all in on delivering a surreal, Lynchian narrative and hits that nail of unreality on the head, all the way down to leaving you wondering what exactly you just witnessed.
As a whole Virginia is wonderfully cinematic, and a fantastic story to inhabit as it unfolds.
Virginia is powerful and original
I found Virginia to be an excellent story with deep emotional aspects that were conveyed very well.
Virginia is, at its best, a gaming mechanism that provides slightly more immersion than watching a movie -- and at its worst, a failed walking simulator with a convoluted ending. Because it is a scripted experience light on interaction and choice, I'm not entirely sure I can recommend it as a game. There may be an inkling of promise in its budding story, but for many I imagine it will be hard to read between the lines and even harder to consider it a worthy experience.
Virginia’s intimacy makes it more than a Twin Peaks wannabe
Variable State’s title offers a different way of storytelling, but relies heavily on unrelatable and abstract imagery
Virginia takes the adventure game to new places, and while not everyone might want to join in on the trip, those that do will be rewarded with a thoroughly mesmerising experience that stays with you long after the credits roll
It’s a game to savour and talk about for years to come, one that left me, just like the inhabitants of Kingdom, Virginia, speechless.
It's rare for a game to make me swing back and forth a full 5 points on the score, but Virginia managed exactly that, and that's probably a sign of exactly how divisive this short piece of interactive story-telling is going to be. Let's settle around the middle.
An interesting idea that has flashes of brilliance, but is hampered by baffling and counterintuitive design decisions.