Virginia review: A confusing and sloppy adventure tale
Virginia excels with wonderful visuals, a great soundtrack, and suspenseful moments, but it falls short in just about everything else.
Throughout the past couple of years, many developers have been delivering incredible story-based adventure games. Many of these games focus on the choices you make, which directly impact the outcome of the game. Others focus on dialogue and on telling a great story; you see these stories take shape as you progress through them.
Some notable games like this are Dear Esther, Gone Home, and Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead. This year alone, we’ve been fortunate enough to play incredible games from the same genre. The ones that come to mind are Firewatch, Inside, The Witness, and Life is Strange. All three of these games are great in their own right and although they each play differently, they all deliver a memorable adventure.
The most recent adventure game to release just this past week is the first-person mystery thriller, Virginia, developed by 505 Games. After watching the trailer for the game, it resembled gameplay similar to Firewatch, which was very pleasing. The characters and the premise of the game also seemed very interesting and we couldn’t wait to try it out.
More from Gaming
- John Madden on the Madden NFL 23 cover
- Madden 22 adds 10 college football teams in ‘Campus Legends’ limited time event
- Look: Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes share the Madden 22 cover
- FanSided250: Overwatch League fan groups are bridging the digital divide
- Some creative genius made Street Fighter characters out of NBA legends
Virginia is set in the last days of summer 1992 in Kingdom, Virginia and you play as a graduate FBI special agent named Anne Tarver. In the game, you must investigate the disappearance of a boy named Lucas Fairfax. Being that you’re a rookie, you get paired up with a veteran special agent named Maria Halperin, who is also someone else that you must keep an eye on due to your supervisor’s instructions. As you play, the relationship between you and your partner begins to be tested all while you’re investigating the disappearance of Lucas Fairfax. As this goes on, a growing list of suspects makes the investigation even more confusing.
That last word sums up this entire game: confusing. The play through didn’t take very long, clocking in at about an hour and half, maybe two hours. It’s safe to say that Virginia is one of the most confusing and strangest games you’ll ever play. It isn’t necessarily a bad game by any means, but it doesn’t mean that it’s very good either.
When it comes to gameplay elements, all you do is walk around and observe the world around you. To interact with certain items, such as folders or doors, you press one button and that will move you to the next stage of the game.
There’s absolutely no dialogue in this game, meaning that there’s no talking or conversing with any of the characters. Everything you decipher within the game and the way you communicate with certain characters is by their body language. It’s very strange, to say the least.
The story is extremely sloppy and all over the place. One of the biggest gripes is you will be walking to your next destination and out of nowhere, the game will cut right to where you’re supposed to be. So, even though the world is gorgeous and you may want to sit around and admire it for a bit while listening to the spectacular soundtrack, you may not be able to do so since it’ll cut straight to the next portion of gameplay, which ultimately kills the experience a bit.
Touching on the story once more, the editing and cuts between cut scenes are extremely confusing and annoying. At one point, you’re in the present. Next, you’re having a flashback of something that happened to you in the past. Then, it’s a dream sequence of something that may have happened. It’s extremely difficult to keep track of it all.
The best part part about this game is the opportunity for interpretation. The problem here is that it’s so hard to interpret what just happened since you’ll be wondering what you just played. At the same time, the game was very suspenseful at times. You’re sitting there waiting for that one moment that changes the entire game and explains everything that’s going on. You wait and wait, but nothing.
There are certain scenes in the game that are understandable and they do explain some plot holes, but nothing really adds up in the end. Maybe we’re just one of the few who didn’t understand the game and that’s very unfortunate.
Next: Revisiting the greatness of Firewatch
The Verdict
Considering that there’s so many games similar to Virginia and most of them have actually worked, it just didn’t with this one. The world and aesthetics are great to look at and the soundtrack is easily the best part, but the lack of dialogue, the confusing plot, the random cuts between cut scenes, and the dull gameplay is too much to overlook. You may want to try this game out for yourself and see if you can understand it a bit better since it may be a great experience if you’re able to do so, but as of right now, Virginia is disappointing and a mess.