5/5 ★ – PigParty's review of American Arcadia.

Beaten: 8/14/2024 Playtime: 6 hours American Arcadia is a modern-day Orwellian nightmare which preys on all our worst technologically-driven fears both personal and societal. A sidescroller that seamlessly weaves the narrative with its gameplay so perfectly that it's unlike anything I've seen before. Each transition between gameplay and cutscene is perfectly explained to create a cohesive, uninterrupted experience. The game constantly shakes things up by introducing new mechanics for brief yet memorable sequences. These new mechanics almost feel designed with the intention of making a mini-game out of them but none of them are incorporated in a way that makes them mini-games. Instead they are fluid variations and escalations in the narrative and the required mechanics to progress it. American Arcadia tells an incredible story. Filled to the brim with movie references, American Arcadia is overtly heavily inspired by all the things that came before it - from Walt Disney to Robocop and The Truman Show to George Orwell's dystopias. Yet none of this game feels stolen. It's wholly original, building tremendously off of famous and beloved pop culture and entertainment franchises. The story is so well integrated into the gameplay as well. It constantly does very cool things to alter how you see the narrative while still being in control of the protagonist. There's very cool ways the game allows you to multitask through two separate peoples' eyes. The game is filled with plot twists that will leave you second guessing everything you believe, wondering if the people you think are the bad guys are really all that bad, and then realizing that yeah, they're at minimum not great. The ending cements this as one of the best dystopian narratives I've experienced across mediums - from TV to film to literature to games. The art is absolutely gorgeous. Boasting a 70s aesthetic with modern, even futuristic technology and nothing in the world feels out of place. The character design brilliantly avoids detailed facial animations while keeping characters looking like real, recognizable people. There's so much charm in all the design. The background set production is out of this world, always providing eye candy to look at and details to uncover whenever you're trekking from one side of a location to the other. The game has fantastic music that really immerses you in the world in ways most first person perspective still games fail to do. I always felt like I was both witnessing the story from Trevor's perspective, a second character's perspective, as well as from an outsider's perspective. Not entirely without its flaws, there's some dialogue bugs I encountered where multiple dialogue sequences would overlap with each other, and a couple of the brief gameplay mechanics/sequences were a bit more annoying than fun. That said, no game is perfect but the experience is one worth giving a 10 out of 10. Aside from the incredible story, beautiful art, mesmerizing music, phenomenal voice performances, and astounding set design, the game does some very unique storytelling and gameplay techniques not seen anywhere else which alone would make this game worth playing.