Game Review #9: Emily is Away

As games progress in graphical quality to the constantly moving intersection of "more realistic" and "able to be complained about by immersion purists", there's something that can be said about games that just refuse to participate in the whole process and intentionally make their games look as though they couldn't be bothered to use more than two pixels per object, and that's half the reason the current indie gaming scene is drowning in rogue-likes. But then there's also some who just bypass the whole "graphics" thing altogether and call themselves "text-based" which at first glance seems a lot like saying "I don't know how to make any sort of graphics, so let me just tell you what's happening." But this isn't quite the case in Emily is Away, a free to play interactive story by Kyle Seeley that defends its lack of any visuals to shake a stick at by having the whole game take place in AOL instant message. Now for those of you who are asking your parents what that is right now because you're too young to understand how amazing this new-fangled instant communication through the Internets was back in 2002, do you think they'd mind explaining it to me as well? To tell you the truth, I don't entirely see why it needed to be such an outdated piece of technology. You probablycould've replaced it with text messages and it wouldn't have changed much. There may have at least been a couple of pictures here and there which the game probably needed seeing how the game has us attempting to date a girl that we never see and have no motivation to really go after. Come on, at least show us what she looks like! She doesn't even have to be that hot; just give us something to want. 

As I was beginning to explain, the game follows a young man named Yourname who is attempting to escape the friend zone with a girl named Emily by engaging in conversation over AOL instant message that definitely isn't digging him deeper into the friend zone. The plot advances through your various dialogue options which all have varying degrees of "Rogue Protagonist Syndrome." Several of them seem like they're about to be a great pick up line but then once you see the full thing, you're left scouring your entire keyboard to find the "Choose a Different Sentence" button. And you might be thinking "That couldn't be too much of a problem," but you're forgetting that you probably just finished criticizing some AAA game that happens to have a dialogue options system that isn't even close to its main gameplay feature for doing the same thing. And don't act like you don't know what game I could possibly be talking about, Vault Boy. So why should this game get a pass when you're barely giving one to this mystery AAA game that may or may not have Deathclaws? So is this game getting a 10/10? No. It never was. But is it getting a 0? Absolutely not. It still has a compelling story that keeps you playing until the final message is sent if for no other reason than you want to be able to think of your virtual persona getting some action from the hottest girl you know named Emily, and coincidentally, I happen to know some hot Emily's. Just saying. Hey don't judge me! Ok, fine the tone changed quickly and weirdly there; lets just pretend that never happened and instead admire how good I am at using semicolons. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go role play as Peter Griffin in a post apocalyptic Boston. The secret is dump everything in Endurance, Charisma, and Luck and never touch Intelligence or Perception. Do what you want with Strength and Agility.