Purpose 1951

I've played a couple or three Tonguc Bodur games in my day, but Purpose 1951 is more annoying than most. Am I eligible to get a degree in Tonguc Bodur Studies? Anyway, Purpose 1951 is a walking simulator. What I will give the game is that you do walk in it. What I won't give the game is much else. The foliage and animals in the environments aren't very naturalistic. There are caverns lit by torchlight (for those who don't know, Americans invented electric lights, and by 1951 there were plenty of them around). The music is the mopiest piano meandering you've ever heard. The writing is definitely the star of the show, though. It's MEGA bad. The tone, diction, and even the message are all anachronistic, and it just hurts. The voice acting is sappy. But the worst part is the game preaching at you about how bad things were in 1950s America. That was peak America, peak global hegemony, maybe peak civilization, and this game applies every criticism you've ever heard about 21st century American healthcare and society to a time period that the writer clearly knows nothing about. Tone deaf would be an understatement. You think you're done hearing about it, and then the dialogue will start anew and you find yourself audibly groaning. The funniest part, and thus probably the best part, is the dilapidated hospital scene where you can see "#RUN" on one wall. The 1950s were the best decade for Twitter, as it turns out. But the fact that the developer would put in a hospital scene evidently made for a horror game in as a not-tongue-in-cheek example of a 1950s hospital in the US is insane. There's the red anarchy A (you know the one) on the wall--I'm sure the developer put a lot of time and effort into handcrafting that scene, but that was an odd choice of detail to include here. I don't know how much Dear Esther costs at this point, but this is not an acceptable substitute, though it's trying to go for the exact same thing in close to the same way. It's just lobotomized Dear Esther. One last thing. The bicycling section is epic. You play as the Terror of Tiny Town the whole game, it seems, but putting him on a bike is extra cute. Your little legs are so close together and move in such itty bitty circles that it sets off that part in your brain that activates when you see a hamster cleaning its whiskers or something. The "AWWWWWWW" reflex is on full blast. Also, props for figuring out how to bicycle backwards. I haven't mastered that skill yet, but now I know what I'll be doing this weekend. You'll be better off if you don't play this game. When you see someone trying to blow the lid off of a well-kept secret in a way that just reveals that they don't know anything, not just about the topic at hand, but about [i]anything[/i], it can be slightly comedic, but the comedy doesn't overcome the overwhelming urge to claw your eyes out the whole time.