izigame.me

From a narrative designer's perspective, this is a pretty awesome game. Being in the booth is immersive, powerful, and the mechanics aren't always realistic but it's part of the fun. It's the ultimate "pretend you're actually doing this job" experience of live control of newscasts; meanwhile, though there's a whole story unfolding.

And it gets pretty dark, pretty quick.

You realize that the control you have over the news has become control over events. As always, spin matters, and the public's perception is something you can change moment to moment. Air an interview a certain way, and something major happens in the world as a result... now you're affecting the reporting on that, however you see fit.

The plot escalates deliciously, with moments that range from hilarious to deeply uncomfortable to chilling, to horrifying. You find yourself caring not just about what's going on outside the newsroom, but also the people in it. The control you have becomes a double-edged sword, as you affect everything but also everyone you know.

Here's where it falls down.

It feels like somewhere in production someone said "just having the player in the control booth isn't enough; they don't have a life, or reason to care about events." They didn't trust the strength of the actual narrative, and so at that point shoehorned in some really ham-handed point-and-click choice text to give you story about your home life and relationships, as well as some unnecessary conversations with your boss.

We never needed it. It's actually immersion breaking, as it takes us out of the booth and now we're reading events in text instead of seeing them unfold on the news. Our partner is a faceless, genderless person who has no life or texture compared to the characters we see every day on our camera feeds. It's impossible to care about them.

If there were a way to skip those moments I'd recommend it; there were UI ways to do some of the same things; phone calls for example, which come in on the phone in the both. What about email?

That said, it's forgivable, especially considering where the story is so strong -- in the booth but also on tape. Again, the UI is smart, the story plays out as it organically would. You can play back your entire recorded broadcasts, or see individual rushes, hear new dialogue you missed as you were focused on other feeds.

As FMV games go -- and ultimately this is what NFB is, very beautifully set into a near-perfect UI and mechanics -- it's probably one of the best out there. If you can get past the intrusive and clunky story "extras," the rest is pretty golden.