Time isn't much at the moment, due to professional stuff, so I can't write the reviews I want, but I have been playing. Three games, to be exact. One of them I even re-played (Oxygen); other I won't bother to review (A Quiet Night At Home); I'll start with Gigantomania, which marked a turning point in this first IF Comp experience of mine.

Gigantomania by Michelle Tirto and Mike Ciul

I want to start this one by stating that I do like when something other than a z-file or a blorb file or a XYZ-file comes with the package. I'm talking cover-art, hand bills, feelies, etc. I've been finding a lot of covers in IFDB, but the lazy me wants them in the nice zip thing, inside its own folder. How nice that would be, right? The thing is, without the cover, I was thinking Gigantomania would be a alternate-universe-fantasy-tale about a guy who wants to build the coolest and biggest theme-park ever. With the cover, I could have guessed differently: Gigantomia is a this-universe-historic-tale about a guy who wants to build the coolest and biggest theme-park ever. See the difference?

Spoilers are watching you right after this important request.
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This was a turning point for me because I liked it. Well, not that much, but I did ended it with a feeling of something well done.

Gigantomania is about fascism. Soviet, Stalin fascism, to be exact. It is sliced into four sections. The first section is, as far as I'm concerned, the best one. You're a hungry peasant in a soviet commune farm. You respect the regime, but you also need to think about your wife. This section tells you very little, but shows you alot - and it makes you feel that alot. Comrades are taken away in blood, a beggar blackmails you, you have to work, you have to feed yourself, your wife and the regime. The feeling of it all is dark, heavy, and well assembled.

Then comes the second section, and most of what I liked in the previous one falls here, where you are a blind Stalin-lover factory worker. The political and social subject is addressed in such an exaggerated tone, that it feels cartoonish and over-simplistic.

The third part starts out fine, mostly like the first one: a simple task and the heavy consequences of failing it - at least until the interrogation scene, where the cartoonish feel comes back. The scene had potential: it putted you in the shoes of a delator, with nothing else to do other than die or turning someone close, but the conversation falls very easily into the "look how stupid fascism is, and how insane these people are for believing the Soviet regime."

The last section is a curious one. It's not interactive at all: you almost just press enter - but it puts you inside Stalin as he thinks about his social and political views, and plays a chess game, a complete chess game. A very big part of this section are plain chess moves, and that stroke me as interesting (Stalin was an avid chess player, so I'm thinking those were probably real chess moves - author? are you there?) The complete lost of agency also left me with a strange (strange-good) feel - but, again, the cartoonish and over-simplistic social and political writing came and left me sad and bereaved.

So I'm thinking this could be more with less. It is a tough subject. It is a tough piece of history. What the game does in low-tone, it does well. The problem is the high-pitched tone of the rest, constantly screaming at us.
25/1/2012 08:51:22 am

THX for info

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27/1/2012 12:58:46 pm

Great info, thanks

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25/3/2012 12:36:25 pm

Many thanks for information

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29/3/2012 11:41:26 pm

Nice one info, thanks

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11/5/2012 07:08:37 pm

Fine info bro

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24/9/2012 10:19:58 am

Fine post bro

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