Virginia Reviews
A slick cinematic thriller, but interaction is limited and the story loses focus in the final act.
While extremely confusing at times, Virginia manages to keep players glued to their screens thanks to the wonderful scenery and camera work, mixed with a wonderful story that is to some degree up to those at the helm to interpret. While to some it might be rather annoying to be trapped in silence, never getting a true grasp of what is happening, the pay-off of this style of storytelling allows the adventure to make up for that. Few games manage to capture the mood as well as this one, and some of the surrealistic segments are truly disturbing, making people question the line between reality and imagination, and even whether or not there is actually one to begin with. Virginia is a game that is easy to recommend to anyone who wants to experience something that is truly outside of the ordinary in the industry and truly flexes its creative muscles.
Some may dismiss it as just another pretentious walking sim, but this innovative Lynchian drama is one of the best story-based games of the year.
Even if you recently watched Stranger Things, you might notice a few similarities with Virginia in the subtle and sometimes explicit otherworldly allusions to the masked reality that we cannot actively perceive. This whole feeling that something could be hiding around the corner definitely adds to the suspense that runs throughout most of the game. One might get a fourth-wall-breaking sense that the developers are slowly peeling back the mystery and everything that unravels is for you to behold and try your damndest to make sense of it all.
Virginia represents the evolution that video game media represents over other entertainment products. The game lasts as much as movie (2 hours), its priced like a movie ($ 9.99) but different from a movie, it goes deeper as an experience, including you in this narrative as an integral part of it, allowing you to explore scenarios where the plot rolls, increasing and allowing an immersion that other media are unable to offer. The story is only one, but the nuances will be unique to every player, and just like a good movie with a divisive ending, Virginia is a product that deserves to be consumed and discussed.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
There are very few games as emotionally affecting as this. The story is thrilling, powerful and thought-provoking, and the music sends chills straight through your soul.
Players are offered no real choices within this tersely edited walking simulator, and yet the contemplative nature of the game keeps things feeling unusually satisfying. That’s because you’re given the imaginative freedom to engage with what they’re seeing, more so than in Dear Esther, such that the game feels like an interactive studio tour through a detective’s dreams.
Virginia shows instead of tells, with a raw, understated power and a calculated nuance that make even the smallest, most mundane details brim with narrative and emotional significance. While I never found a way to impact or change significant story events, the tale of family, friendship, career, and identity that Virginia tells (without uttering a single word) was enough of a reward for my limited input. The mysteries that remain by the end especially justified a second and third visit, and even now I can feel the secrets of Kingdom, Virginia and the two women whose lives changed there luring me back for another.
While its basic mechanics and emphasis on story over gameplay won’t be for everyone, it’s a unique ride that mature and intelligent gamers should take, especially if they happen to be a fan of The X-Files or Twin Peaks.
Virginia needs to go back to film school
What an incredible year: after Inside, here's another software taht will influence and change the way we'll experience a story. Virginia is not a good game. Neither a good movie. It is something different: something new.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Virignia is an experimental title that blends cinema and videogame in an unique mixture. The story is rich in mistery and requires a lot of ability in reading between the lines but the experience is worth the challenge.
Review in Italian | Read full review
If a virtual museum of chekhov's guns is your thing then there might be something to it.
Virginia shows what can happen when people with a passion for games, story telling and perhaps a touch of avant garde get together and let their collective subconscious flow. It is not too out of place to say this is an art house game… perhaps the more populist thing to call it would be an intellectual game… the important thing to know is that it has the capacity to make you think and feel and any game that can do that is certainly a worthy title to add to your collection. Virginia helps solidify the notion that games can be art!
It is easy to come away from Virginia inspired and reeling from the vision that the team at Variable state have conjured; it is impossible to come away unchanged.
Variable State's Virginia is by and large an unsuccessful attempt to make something interesting. An absolutely incredible soundtrack and great environmental art fail to lift the game from a bog of issues. There are some severe technical issues here, but real criticism should be pointed in the direction of the oftentimes incomprehensible narrative, which needed to be much stronger given the general lack of interactivity elsewhere.
I wanted to enjoy Virginia, but the nonsense ending left me annoyed and puzzled as to its meaning. Even playing a second time, I still am not sure what really happened. Some aspects I understand, such as a scenario in which the player character ascends to her bosses rank and basically becomes him down to both the smoking and tossing a file to the person at your desk. I had someone else play for any insight, but the continual edits and metaphysics left them confused as well. There may be something there for others, but for me it was simply a good mystery gone wrong, and not one I enjoyed upon completion.
With Virginia, Variable State has created a grounded piece of interactive narrative, free of the waffling conceit of the genre’s worst offenders, but not quite evocative enough to be a true classic.
Virginia invokes breathtaking visuals to tell a story about... Something.
It’s a good thing that Virginia is such a neatly-packed experience, because I definitely needed to run through it twice to get a firmer grip on the story being told. Clocking in at about two hours, it’s a good idea to run through once for the story, and a second time to explore more deeply into the minutiae and context clues that help fill in the gaps, once you have an idea of the overarching plot – and if you want to fill out your trophy list, to boot. Having a (relatively) firm grasp of the story, I’d be curious to learn more about the real-world FBI case it draws inspiration from. If you’ve been itching for another ‘thinker’ game, Virginia might just be right up your alley.