Else Heart.Break()

Else Heart Break. This one is a headache. I’d call open area quest adventure/slice of life. Worst of all it is Swedish game. This is my second experience with Swedish gaming and I guess I’m too thickskulled to understand mysterious Swedish soul. For the most time I’ve played his game (the whole 52 minutes of it) it reminded me of real life. Mostly by not having an UI and the fact that not a single soul gives a feck about you. And what happens when I get lost and confused in an unknown place? I give up and go home. 

Since I barely know plot of this game I’ll just talk about how it went for me. So we play as a young man named Sebastian. He’s having a dinner with his parents when he receives a call. It is job related, so I guess Sebastian was looking for one. So our contact says we meet him on this artificial island where the company is, it is soda company. We need to meet him in the lobby of the “Devotchka hotel”…. If you don’t know “Devotchka” mean girl, small one to be precise. Why such name? No idea. Whatever, Sebastian says goodbye to the parents and walks off to the ferry.

That’s where we get to experience the gameplay. We can walk around, turn map side to side and up and down. We can interact with some items. Looks like you average quest and it probably would be average quest for me if it weren’t for two things. There are time limit and non-linear nature of the game. Well time limit is not exactly time limit… well it is but not in terms average gamer used to. Example is “we need to meet a person at place name at time name”. Got it no go find the place, the person and be on time. You know I don’t suffer from topographical cretinism like characters such as Ryoga or Zorro. But it is terra incognito for me and times go quite fast. So expect restarts or like in Morrowind the thread of fate would be cut and nothing would safe this world. 

Let’s continue. So I arrive, I walk off the boat and start to ask where the hotel is. People are kind enough to tell me how to get there and even inform me that I can get the map for easier navigation. I got the map and I found the place. After that I went inside and paid for room for couple of nights. That’s where the bad and weird things started to happen. First thing, the room I got turned to be a toilet. Turns out it’s a glitch in the matrix and door teleported me to the wrong place. It’s not in game bug it is story related and intended. Well that was easy to fix, I asked manager and he ringed some guy who did some weird stuff so door stopped teleporting me into toilet room. Second bad think. I guess Sebastian got tired from the sea riding and woke up halve past ten. We went down to the lobby where manager informed us that our job contact didn’t wait for us and left. Where? I have no fucking idea! But manager also said to ask around in Pointy Café since it is popular place to hang around and island is not that big. Ok real shit starting now. Open map... sorry, open inventory, map in hand, open map. We do not have an indicator so we have to navigate. Ok tedious but not hard. I found the place and even ride a trolley there. BUTT of course the contact wasn’t there. It’s just GREAT! I have no idea who am I looking for, I’m in an unfamiliar city and our contact is an irresponsible fuckwit. I asked around, of course nobody knew the guy and I looked like a creepy autist. But I was told to ask around Yvonne bar, aww hell. OF COURSE NOBODY KNEW HIM THERE TOO! That was a point I just gave up. I was supposed to meet the contact in the morning but it was 21:50 already. Man fuck this shit I’m taking next boat home, you can shove those soda cans up your arse.

Sooooooo…. That was my second experience with Swedish gaming, first one was weird post apocalypses game called “Krater”. You know, I’ve never played Shenmue, just watched some gameplay, but I think these two games are quite similar. I have no idea if I wasting the entire day was also intended but as a pedantic person I hate when someone’s late or doesn’t give enough shit to give proper directions or contact information. I don’t know was I supposed to call him again? Don’t remember seeing many phones around and I don’t think Sebastian had a cellphone. Whatever I don’t even know recommend it or not guess it’s up for you to decide. It is awkward and annoying that’s why it reminds me of real life so much.