5/5 ★ – Mandy64's review of Hypnospace Outlaw.

The Internet. We hardly refer to it as such today. With the development of web browsers and social media platforms, the scope of what the internet means for you is way bigger than when it was first popularized. Back in 1999, The Internet was The Internet. It was a mixture of different bite-sized experiences that was just called The Internet. If you want that "authentic" 90s internet experience, Hypnospace Outlaw is a great way to get it. Released in 2018, Hypnospace Outlaw is a 20th century internet simulation game. In an alternate universe, people didnt explore the internet through a screen, but through headbands that you wear to sleep. You are assigned as an enforcer for HypnOS, tasked with searching through the various pages of HypnOS looking for violations of the rules set for HypnOS. Case by case, you learn more about the users and discover the darker side of HypnOS. For this review, I played the game on Nintendo Switch, which you'd be surprised at how well the controls actually worked. For this version, the controls work as such. The left stick is used to move the mouse cursor while the right stick will snap the cursor to the next clickable object in the direction you move the stick. To click with the cursor you can use either ZR or the A button. B cancels and L & R allows you to switch from your last visited pages. Holding ZL will give you the option to scroll with the joystick, which is extremely helpful with longer pages. There are some other minor controls, but these are the most important and most used. The variety of ways you can control the game makes it much more accessible for consoles considering it originally released on PC. Exclusive to the Switch, the game is fully functional in handheld mode with the touch screen. You can detach the joycons and play the game as usual just by using the touchscreen. This gives you more options to how you can experience the game. Now, as stated earlier, the main gameplay loop consists of recieving a case, scrolling through the browser and finding violations. Each case comes with different objectives like removing copyrighted images to reporting illegal file sharing. During the gameplay loop, you are encouraged to explore each page it all of its early internet cheesiness. Its easy to get lost for hours discovering hidden messages and learning more about each person represented on HypnOS. As you complete each case, you can earn Hypno Coins, the fictional currency of HypnOS. These can be used to buy songs, backgrounds and even virus protection software. Each case has a set goal, with the option to earn a higher payout if you find more violations that fit the case. Once again, it gives you a reason to keep surfing HypnOS and falling deeper into the madness. This is where I think the game is at its best. The amount of detail put into building the world of Hypnospace Outlaw is what lets you get lost. One minute you are reading a blog about horror movie reviews then the next you fall down the rabbit hole of why HypnOS causes Beefbrain. Hypnospace Outlaw is a fantastically weird experience. The game does an amazing job at recapturing what the early internet was really like. Bad midi files and all, its hard to not see how much detail went into recreating 90s internet culture.