Her Story

cuidado com o rosto que aparece no PC de vez em quando

great

Her Story is a game about the truth, as the player finds themselves in front of a police terminal, with access to footage of several interviews from 1994, in the wake of a murder. Each clip is a different moment of an interview with a woman, and the goal is simple. Explore the video recordings on the terminal, and learn about what happened in 1994. The gameplay focuses on a terminal station with access to police recordings from 1994. Within the terminal, players can search for key words from video transcripts such as "murder," which prompts the database to return clips with transcripts containing the searched keyword or phrase. There are a few small applications on the computer, such as a game of Othello; however, none of these matter meaningfully to the gameplay or story. While any word can be searched, the database can only return five results at a time, which limits the player's ability to randomly access every recording (though through other means does not necessarily eliminate that possibility). After the player searches the terminal for some time, they're offered the chance to end their investigation, and the game ends. Her Story is an interesting example of a type of game which became increasingly popular in the years which followed its release, which is the solo-detective/sleuth style investigation story centralized around a terminal workstation. While it definitely pioneered many tropes for the genre, I believe some newer releases have evolved beyond the building blocks this game laid out, and in many aspects surpassed it. In particular, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of activities beyond the terminal itself, feeling more of a passenger to the story than a true investigator. Her Story received high accolades for its narrative and acting, particularly for its depiction of an almost true crime like drama. While I'm sure this will earn the ire of some fans, I personally found the narrative to be a bit soapy, with writing that felt predictable. The narrative is challenging to engage in when the twist is cartoonish, and evident within just a few searches of clips. Granted, there is an element here of praise for the actress, in the way she acts which makes that twist not only possible, but also identifiable across hundreds of clips of video recordings. There are some clips that were surprising, simply due to not anticipating their contents in relation to the rest of the videos; however, I sadly found myself rarely caught off guard with this story. However, for all the negatives, I also found it to be a surprisingly intimate narrative, as Her Story provides (likely) hours of video interviews, which show a range of emotions from the lead actress, as stories are shared of both past and present. I don't know that this would be a game I generally recommend to others, if for no other reason that in some regards it feels less like playing a game, and more like engaging with an amateur film. I can see fans of true crime, or investigation finding something to enjoy here; however, I also believe there are newer titles which better realize the foundational building blocks Her Story pioneered.