[i]Mouthwashing is a first-person adventure game, focusing on claustrophobia and drama, told in non-chronological order. It has received a lot of praise for its storytelling by youtubers, which is what drew me in in the first place.[/i]
[h1]Flows[/h1]
[list][*]PSX graphics look good. You understand what you are looking at without it losing its uncanny, dream-like feel.
[*]A small claustrophobic environment (the whole available station is like 4 rooms and a corridor).
[*]Drama between the crew-mates as supplies dwindle and tensions rise. The spaceship is disabled, and no rescue can be seen on the horizon.
[*]Believable, fun personalities for most of the cast. You have the alcoholic grizzled engineer, the hyperactive hopeful Japanese teenager, the hemophobic doctor Anya, the co-pilot and the character you play in the "future" timeline, Jimmy, and the pilot/captain, Curly.
[*]Uncovering the mystery of what happened and the reason you have a mutilated, burnt half-corpse with you in the crew is kinda interesting...[/list]
[h1]Flaws[/h1]
[list][*]...Uuuntil half-way into the story when the whole twist is revealed, and then you have to spend the rest of your time in what is essentially a drama class, facing your materialized guilt.
[*]I HATE the trope of the monsters being in your head. (Honestly I blame [i]The Babadook[/i] for it, even though the trope precedes it. It's a storytelling device designed exclusively to please critics for finding "deeper meanings" or encouraging analysis videos.) Thanks, so I replace existential dread and survival instinct with thinking the protagonist is retarded.
[*]The story is not exactly Shakespearean for a game so focused on its story. Spoilers: [spoiler]Jimmy banged Anya (I mean, it's a lone young woman on a spaceship with 4 dudes for a whole year, the fact that she "only" banged Jimmy is a miracle by itself, what was HR thinking? Edit: I keep hearing from other reviewers that it is implied Jimmy forced himself on Anya. That is not the impression I got at all.), and got her pregnant. Then when she told him she was pregnant, coinciding with the news that the company they work for is shutting down, Jimmy decided the best course of action was to crush the spaceship into an asteroid and get all 5 of them killed. The crush instead just disabled the station and Curly, who was trying to fix their course, leaving them stranded. Jimmy lied about Curly making them crush instead. [i]Bruh.[/i][/spoiler]
[*]Spoilers: [spoiler][i]Mouthwashing[/i] that the game is named after, is the name of the cargo they are carrying, which is literally just that. The game does make a point of it being pointless, but the metaphor does not really land with the horror vibes they had going for it.[/spoiler]
[*]The non-chronological order of the story actually works against it, since you know the characters are not in any immediate danger, even if the situation is dreadful. With the time-jumps, you know for a fact that they survive at the very least for months.
[*]A LOT more could have been done with the puzzles and the exploration. I get wanting to put story first, but the PSX kind of graphics Mouthwashing employs evoke gameplay-intensive experiences/approaches, of which Mouthwashing has very little of. It's basically a glorified walking simulator. Frankly the game might have benefited from not being a game at all, but rather just a youtube horror series, or some similarly formatted video form.
[*]Some of the achievements are completely absurd (we're talking "intentionally die 10 times in a single section" kind of absurd. Great, I love playing video games to fail at them. TEN TIMES.).[/list]
[b]Thumbs down. Mouthwashing is a visually impressive waste of 2.5 hours and 13 euros that is better left to youtube analysts for you to listen to while playing actual games.[/b]
