Hard to say, but political and religious extremists will become darlings of social media by creating a conspiracy around them. There may be aliens, but those mysterious flying structures could also just be gases taking flight from the poisoned Mississippi River. Here, the town detective has juicy tales to tell, but he also can’t be bothered to investigate if nature calls. Like in “Kentucky Route Zero,” we spend our time in “Norco” with those living on the outskirts of society, only in this vision, there is no longer any center worth clamoring toward. “Norco’s” mode is dark but not foreboding - “Blade Runner’s” yearning for hope feels like an influence, as does the cryptic and at times spectral trappings of fellow game “Kentucky Route Zero.” Both are meditations on American class and kookiness, and making sense of a world that aims to confuse. Then there’s the hot dog stand that knows all the not-so-secret knocks peppered around New Orleans, and the Silver Lake-based film team that believes you when you tell them that, in the South, they would absolutely refer to someone evil as a “crawfish devil.” A cat, for instance, challenges us to a memory game just to earn a pet, with eyes that turn into hearts if we win the right to scratch it. Like a less frantic “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which is also looking for signs of life and compassion amid alternative takes on reality, asides can be found at every narrative turn. A bar filled with white kids culturally appropriating Black dances sits in a “subcultural estuary, only one change of ownership from becoming an upscale wine bar.” And early on, we can read a book that details how New Orleans can be reimagined as a live-action role-playing game for those who love disasters.įamily mysteries drive the story of “Norco,” but often they can wait. Little details abound: A traveling companion listens only to Christmas music. We want to linger with them as badly as we want to scour them for clues that will send this narrative into hyperdrive.īut our mission is constantly detoured by curiosities, narrative twists or clever writing. Each scene is a pixelated canvas - the sort of work of art that modern Redditors go crazy over - and filled with mysteries to uncover. “Norco’s” magical realism is at once patient and relentless. And we witness a world rattled by climate change, where the robots will outlive us, but they, too, are straddled with ennui, spending hours in stasis “like any discarded thing would.” We briefly interact with a crocodile who goes on a revenge mission, via a puppet show, against a man who tried to take him as a pet. We meet a giant bird with head-sized teeth. The inanimate monkey challenges us to a staring contest, and after we distract ourselves with a simple mini game of trying to match the placement of a pair of circles, we accept the dare and lose the bout to the plushie.įor the next few hours “Norco” takes us on a journey into a melancholic world full of imaginative amazement. A stuffed monkey sits next to a laptop, where her brother is hanging out on internet message boards that he should probably leave unexplored. Moments after being introduced to the dead-end oil town, the game gets underway with us controlling an adult woman named Kay, who has returned to her childhood bedroom after a family tragedy. It’s also the best game released thus far in 2022. “Norco” is our world, just slightly altered. In part, that’s because “Norco” makes us smile with wonder. “Norco’s” world is enticing - one that is, yes, full of web-driven conspiracies and nut jobs, but is also the sort of crash we can’t look away from. “Norco” paints the picture of a dying America, where the rich dream of privatized space flight and apps turn the talent-lite into niche celebrities. But this is not so much the future as it is an alternate reality. The game is at once familiar and outlandish, a text-and-art-driven interactive adventure with a sci-fi bent. Welcome to a part of America known as “Cancer Alley.” And then “Norco” gets weird. That horizon, we read in a rush of an intro, is all projected flames, implying the land and the people below are living out their lives as a slow burn. We’re told there’s a hum - an “endless sigh” - and we see a soft glow that cancels out the sun and the moon so its residents see only a translucent sky. The first time we see Norco, La., in all its pixelated glory, it’s in an image that frames smokestacks and refinery equipment like a mechanical city.
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