We're only a few days into 2013, but I think I may have already found one of my favorite games of the year. Kentucky Route Zero, an adventure game from Cardboard Computer, doesn't feel the need to teach you how to play. It doesn't hold your hand, guide you to where you need to go, or really care if you get lost. But honestly, that's kinda the point. You want to get lost in this adventure game, because it's in those moments of the unknown where you find some of the most remarkable characters, locations, and scenes that you'll experience all year.
I only became aware of the game's existence a few days ago when the nominees for the 2013 Independent Games Festival were announced. Alongside games we've already praised like Thirty Flights of Loving, Gone Home, and FTL stood a title that was completely foreign to me. And yet, this unknown quantity called Kentucky Route Zero appeared as a nominee in nearly every single category. Intrigued, I searched a bit further and discovered that the first of five acts is currently available for purchase. I suggest that anyone who loves a well-told story that trusts and respects the player to do what I did and set aside 90 minutes to experience what is sure to be one of the most memorable games of 2013.
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JANUARY 7 | ODDS 'N ENDS
Policenauts and Hideo Kojima's Adventure Game Roots
Cover Story: Why you should care about the non-Metal Gear side of Konami's biggest star.
K
onami hasn't been shy about celebrating Metal Gear's anniversary -- and neither have we, I guess -- but in the company's excitement to honor their most profitable and acclaimed series, they seem to forget that Hideo Kojima's gameography consists of more than just walking tanks and Solid Snakes. If you look at things from a business perspective, though, Konami's approach makes sense; after all, to your average American, Kojima's career came into being alongside 1998's Metal Gear Solid. Sure, the original Metal Gear hit America ten years earlier, but in a compromised format that Kojima himself had nothing to do with (and in an era where few kept tabs on the name of individual developers -- the ones that weren't masked by mandatory pseudonyms, anyway). And while the Sega CD port of Snatcher managed to make it over here -- and with an impressive localization at that -- few members of this add-on console's tiny user base took an interest in Kojima's cyberpunk thriller.
In recent years, we've seen Konami make a few attempts to bring some of Kojima's previously Japan-only Metal Gear titles to the US; 2006's Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence gave us officially localized versions of the original MSX2 Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (albeit in revamped cell phone port form), which finally let an English-speaking audience experience the early chapters of a series so reliant on its own history. These efforts came as a welcome surprise, but Konami has never really extended the same respect to Kojima's history with developing adventure games, which consumed nearly a decade of his career. Snatcher at least had some presence in America, and a 2011 revival in the form of a Japanese radio play, but, in comparison, Kojima's other adventure game feels as if it's gone completely forgotten.
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