Kentucky Route Zero Feels Like A Rough Brick Between Two Stale Pieces Of Bread – Review (Switch TV Edition)
Kentucky Route Zero is a point and click, choose your own adventure game from Cardboard Computer. It’s been a long road since the first episode was released way back in 2013. Somehow Disney was able to produce an entire trilogy of Star Wars films in less time, but that’s a topic for another day. Originally developed for PC, Kentucky Route Zero finds a new home on Consoles as the final episode is released thanks to the Annapurna Interactive’s “TV Edition” which brings all five episodes together in one neat little package. So the big question after all of these years….was it worth the wait? That, my friends, is a loaded question.
There’s a fine line between art and nonsense and nothing tiptoes that line more this game. It starts out harmless enough. The main character named Conway is tasked with making one final delivery for his current employer before they close shop for good. Sounds simple enough right? Well, anyone that’s played last years Death Stranding knows just how hard some deliveries can be. For Conway, this feels like an impossible task. He’s looking for an address on Dogwood Drive which he’s told he can find by hoping on Route Zero. The Problem is that nobody, his trusty map included, can seem to tell him where exactly this road is located. The journey that he goes on is so ridiculous that I could type out my entire playthrough and not only would you not believe it, you may have a completely different experience.
Anyone familiar with find your own adventure novels will feel right at home. For crying out loud, this game basically is a novel. I can see the value in playing it as the episodes were released instead of in just a couple of sessions for a review. The amount of dialogue you’ll read through is enough to make your eyes bleed. I’m sure due to budget issues and the fact that the player has so much control over the dialogue choices made it nearly impossible to have voice over work here, but it’s worked in games like Oxenfree so it’s not completely impossible.
The deeper you get into the game the longer it seems to draw out. You can put as much or as little time into this game as you want, which all depends on how much you’re enjoying it. Some of the game is spent on the highway driving around looking for locations. Most of the locations are pretty simple to find thanks to your handy journal that lists every direction that you receive along the way. Once you’re on Zero the road is so absurd that I found myself taking advantage of a feature that lets you skip the driving. By selecting the zzz function you can turn the wheel over to another character while you sleep and wake up upon your arrival. If you feel like exploring the world and spending more time there this option won’t be for you, but anyone just looking to advance the story and move on to the next hard to find location will find themselves taking full advantage of this feature.
There were times that I was completely enthralled with everything that was happening around me. One example involves a band playing at a bar. You make decisions that lead to how the song plays out. Picking from a selection of lyrics will piece together a song that can be more personal to the player than just a random song. Want the song to be about lost love? You can do that. Heartache? Sure. There are multiple paths the lyrics can go down, which was a fascinating feature I’m not sure I’ve seen in a game before. Dialogue trees, sure. But lyrical paths were new and worked well.
Between each episode is an interlude that, at times, can overstay its welcome. This is especially true between acts two and three. I found myself skipping through quickly towards the end just hoping that it would be over. Some of the interludes, like the game, can be given as much or as little attention as the player wants. Sometimes they just felt unnecessary.
In the past people have raved about the graphics and how the game was as beautiful as it is poetic. I’m not sure if that just didn’t translate well on the Switch, but at times this game was downright ugly.
The final episode is by far the strongest and it does feel somewhat rewarding, but a lot of the game just felt like it was wasting my time.
Recommendation: If you’ve already played the game on PC there is little reason to revisit it unless you absolutely loved it and want to replay it on the go. Though there are tons of options when it comes to dialogue and exploration, I never felt like I missed anything along the way or made a decision that I regretted. This makes the idea of replaying the game to see other paths of dialogue and possible outcomes pretty slim, but if you loved the game during your first playthrough there appears to be a ton of places that this game could go even if it ends up in the same place. Sometimes when a game like this takes so long to release the hype around it can be detrimental. On paper this is my kind of game, but it just never got its hooks into me.
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*Kentucky Route Zero was given to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
