jason64128 ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies Review

Zero Parades is a work of beauty with few parallels, and you should play it. I can only assume that most of the negative reviews out there are biased by their understanding of the studio’s situation (which is not as black and white as people on the Internet would have you believe) rather than evaluating the game on its own. The time ratings are equally distorted. It would be impossible to get through the game in 20 hours unless you just blasted through it without really experiencing it (clicking through the dialogues without letting the audio play or reading them closely). A 20-hour play through of this game is akin to pureeing a fine dining meal and swallowing it in one go, rather than actually chewing bites and tasting it. 35 hours for the main game is much more accurate. The writing and narrative design are impeccable. The characters have actual depth of character for you to explore. You know them, you care about them, you feel bad for things you may have to put them through. Your choices matter immensely and result in a high degree of reactivity and vastly different outcomes for the end game. And yet the plotting is so tight, and comes to a stressful climax with twists you won’t see coming, and possibly heartbreak. It will keep you engaged and wondering how things could play out differently throughout (unless and until you go back for another play through, which you’ll want to do as soon as you finish). You are roleplaying as an existing character, Hershel, who has dimensions that leave you able to play it out in various ways and still make sense, but, this player character isn’t a blank slate who the player can remake however they want. You have to reckon with Hershel’s prior existence in a tangible way, and your roleplaying is choosing to embrace one side or another (e.g. paranoia or professionalism). If you play this game to the end and don’t think it was a serious enough spy game, then that’s because YOU chose to play it that way. The skills are all great too. This game’s politics are much more subtle than Disco Elysium. It doesn’t spend a bunch of time talking AT you about them, but rather weaves them into the characters and narrative in smart and engaging ways. (Except for the Statehood skill, which is obvoiusly supposed to be a joke, SHOUTING direct translations from Mao and other propaganda lines constantly.) The art is rich and gorgeous. Zero Parades has a painterly style, but the specific style starkly contrasts to Disco Elysium. This game’s environment and character models are colorful and use spatter and streams of paint fluidly in a way that really suits the setting. And the character portraits contrast that color by being a bit more somber and realistic, but using poses and facial expressions to convey character. Despite what some commenters say, this game actually has great music. They probably aren’t playing with headphones (you should). There is ambient and atonal sound when you’re going about most of the world, which sounds a little bit like Fallout. When you get into particular scenes, chaotic jazz or moody electronic music starts to play that suits each one of those particular scenes. And the handful of music tracks with lyrics that can be played at pivotal moments make those moments really shine and will also be stuck in your head for weeks after (buy the soundtrack too!).