Kentucky Route Zero

Route Zero: Act 4 constantly alternates between serene and unsettling, with the occasional dash of humor thrown in. The comic visual and dialogue nods help immensely, keeping the dense, introspective writing from simply becoming too much navel gazing. And Route Zero certainly seems to understand this about itself, poking cleverly at its own art-film aesthetic from within while still unapologetically engaging topics like spiritual exhaustion, death, orphanage, and existential angst. The balance works.

Kentucky Route Zero returns with an episode that meanders, but enraptures all the same.

Despite my sense that this chapter is not quite the equal of those before it, it is entirely unmissable if you have played those, still as beautiful and unpredictable and as forlornly romantic as ever, and this time it shows me at least two places I wish I could go and live in forever. And though some water may be overtly trodden this time, be in no doubt that things are moving towards a conclusion.

This game is one of the best story-focused titles I’ve played in a long time, and I feel better for it.

Come on, just play it already (you probably already have it on Steam!).

The game is one of the deepest and most different games of recent years by the industry, which showcases the true power of the eighth art, both in terms of storytelling and interaction.

But we will remind others of them through our memorials, whether built, written, or lived.

Kentucky Route Zero is an experience unlike any other. “There’s dignity in being forgotten” says one character at one point. Yet, when it comes to Kentucky Route Zero, being forgotten would be a loss. The quantity of beauty, its ability to make the player feel so very intimate, yet strangely distant from what’s being shown, alongside all the feelings it evokes make it very, very unique.

From the room of VHS tapes, to the security footage, to the bat sanctuary, to the theremin performance, to the camera’s final, extended retreat up the rickety helix of a spiral staircase; Act IV confronts us with scenarios that test and limit our perception.