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A memory-manipulating thriller that would make Christopher Nolan jealous - RE:CALL Quick Review

21K View2023-01-18

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

RE:CALL is the first must-play game I’ve checked out in 2023. Plenty of cool games have released already this year, but this ambitious, effortlessly cool adventure game takes big swings and implements gameplay and storytelling mechanics I’ve never seen done before.

TIME PLAYED

So far I’ve sunk just under four hours into RE:CALL, but this is one of those games that I can guarantee I will be going back to finish as soon as I’m done writing this. I’m currently in the middle of the fourth of seven chapters. Each chapter has taken me around forty-five minutes to an hour to complete, although that time can vary a lot depending on how quickly you put together the pieces of each devious little puzzle.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Mind-bending story. Seemingly taking inspiration from psychological thrillers like Memento, RE:CALL weaves a compelling narrative about a random, disaffected young man named Bruno who gets pulled into a bizarre, supernatural struggle between forces far beyond his understanding. The plot takes plenty of twists and turns, and I’m still not done with the journey myself. I can’t wait to see where it goes.

• Memory manipulation mechanic. Ladies and gentlemen, the star of the show. RE:CALL uses an incredibly clever mechanic where a huge part of the gameplay is the protagonist recalling (thus the name!) past events. But when our hero changes details of his story, it instantly changes the state of things in the present, where he’s explaining what happened to an audience. These sudden shifts in reality range from minor—is Bruno dressed in a suit or in jeans and a t-shirt?—to massive—does the guard at the door have a gun or is he unarmed? I had a blast working out all of the changes I could make in each story and seeing how they would impact my present-day surroundings.

• Puzzles. As you might expect, those timeline-shifting powers lead to some truly clever puzzles to solve. RE:CALL’s riddles were never so challenging as to make me feel stuck, and in true adventure game fashion, they only allow for one real solution to move forward. But they’re just tricky enough that I felt like a big old brain genius each time I got all the pieces in place and finished a chapter.

• The look. Yes, it’s another pixel art game, but RE:CALL’s pixel art is gorgeous and detailed, especially the full-screen close-ups of the characters that pop up during dialogue sequences. Beyond that, the game’s graphics glitch out regularly in a way that provides a unique style while also emphasizing that something is going very wrong in this universe.

• Characters. RE:CALL’s small cast grew on me quickly. Bruno is a bit of a loner at first, but as events push him forward, he begins making friends—and in one case making up a friend. Characters who come across as shallow jerks in their first impression are revealed to have a lot of depth and personality, and always in a way that feels natural rather than forced.

WHAT SUCKS

• Some clumsy dialogue. I’m stretching to find anything to complain about here, so take this with a grain of salt, but I ran into a few lines of dialogue in RE:CALL that struck me as awkward. The best example is when Bruno pushes back against a bully, yelling, “I bet it really pisses you, doesn’t it?” Not “pisses you off,” just “pisses you.” RE:CALL developer Maitan69 is based in Argentina, so this could just be a case of something lost in translation. Honestly, though, these lines are few and far between and didn’t really detract from how fantastic the overall experience was.

💬 Ready to get your head messed with? Are you going to play RE:CALL, or will you be skipping this heady adventure game? Let me know by leaving a comment!

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