ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies

One thing to consider: it is a lot easier to get deeply immersed in a world-class CRPG during a global pandemic that gives you a reason to invest the time and energy. I'm sure many someones will have as transcendent an experience with Zero Parades as many of us had with Disco Elysium. I just have to admit that work of this caliber really shines best when you have the uninterrupted time and attention to savor it. An accomplished, sometimes sparkling sophomore album from talented minds who probably didn't deserve what their success brought to their door. May the band get back together some day. Until then, light a candle for them.

It's a shame that so many people will give this an automatic pass because of the legal drama around Disco Elysium. I know that Za/Um were the bad guys in that and everything, but the fact of the matter is that I love Disco Elysium and want more games like it, and so I was happy to give this a try. Anyhow, so this is a game about being a Communist Spy during a fictional Cold War. You are in a sort of middle territory playing a game against both Capitalist and Fascist spy agencies. There's a lot of world building in here, but honestly... it felt like a story that was supposed to take place in the Disco Elysium universe and the fact that it isn't... well, again, let's not dwell on that. My favourite thing about the setting would have to be how it talks about music. The fascist nation in the world is called Luzen and they are spreading their fascist influence throughout the world by promoting 'L-Pop' and, while this was a great general critique of mass media and the prolefeed that sustains our dying culture, it was also the funniest take down of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ K-Pop I can conceive of. "He heard music designed to fine-tune the estrogen-production centers of prepubescent girls, and it destroyed him." lololol Anyhow, let's talk about three aspects of it without spoilers. 1) Story. The way the story unfolds is sort of like Disco, but at the same time isn't. I once heard Disco Elysium described as the most complicated personality test in history, given the vast array of political and personal stances you could take in it, whereas this more has you playing a set character that you can tweak along the edges. That's not bad in itself (it let the game focus more on the ensemble cast), but it did mean that this didn't have that amazing immersion that Disco Elysium had from start to finish. But the big problem with the story was honestly time. Disco Elysium had the three day limit that pressured you to move things forward and the game's content matches that pace. In this, there is no real time limit and you reach a certain point in the story where you have a dude say 'okay talk to me when you're ready to finish the game', which for me is shorthand for 'go do all the subquests now'. This really robbed the game of urgency and turned the latter part into a bit of a box ticking exercise. There were also a lot of points where I would go have my international super spy go tend bar or mop some apartments because I needed some time to tick by so I could continue one of the plots. That's never great. 2) Gameplay. The dumbest part of Disco Elysium were the clothes. Having to change your outfit to optimize yourself for a skill check is not a good time for anyone. Can we please just remove that part of these games? Because that's really dumb. I did like the intense spy battles, but the fact that you never know what skill these are going to rely on before they happen is irritating (due to the clothes thing). I didn't save scum very much in the game, but generally when I did it would be because I got into one of these encounters without my birthday suit on. That sucks. Stop it with the clothes stuff already. 3) The Ending At the end of the game, you are given a Spy Rating by your handler to assess your performance. This is based on how well you did on your final mission and I actually got an 'X' rank (where the highest is 'Z'). I looked it up after and apparently the only way to get a 'Z' is to pick the most blatantly evil option at the end of one of the big side quests. And you know, that feels like cheating. Giving me a low rank because I wasn't able to deduce something or didn't find a hidden secret, sure. But give me a low rank because I didn't toss a metaphorical puppy into a woodchipper? Screw that. There's probably an argument to be made that the rank at the end doesn't matter because it's coming from your spymasters and who gives a ♥♥♥♥ what they think. And that's fair enough, but I would have still like to have been able to solve that problem without the woodchipper. Anyhow, in spite of all this, this is a great read and worthy of your support. The other fragments of the Zaum-that-was will make their iterations of the Disco subgenre eventually and I look forward to playing those ones too. Final Score: 8.21345468765767409/11

Zero Parades is another one of those games I can say is "unfortunately really good"; though unlike any other game I've used that phrase for, it is a unique case of the reason not being immediately apparent as the game on it's own would likely be easy to declare a masterpiece in the CRPG genre had it existed under drastically different circumstances. It is ultimately bittersweet that the writers and devs pulled off creating something so damn great despite living in the shadow of Disco Elysium and the horrible business practices of their higher ups, because no matter how great it is, it is doomed to never be judged on its own merits and forced to exist under the thumb of a company that cannot be trusted to keep the souls of it's IPs alive. I didn't go into Zero Parades expecting to like it all that much, I felt it was sure to be a very poor attempt to create Disco without any of the charm, but while certain reused and referencial aspects can certainly make it feel that way, I feel that the team behind the game (sadly whatever is left of them now) proved that they could create something compelling enough that it honestly stopped being all that distracting the more I lived in the world and got to know the people in it. I did not expect this game to exceed my expectations in any way, I went in thinking that, given a miracle, it could end up being a pretty solid game marred by the company's reputation and then when it ended I felt like it was a phenomenal game marred by the company's reputation. There are elements unique to this game that I even slightly enjoy more than how Disco handled them. The Fatigue, Anxiety, Delusion system makes the protagonist feel all the more human, and Hershel as a whole feels a little more freeing to truly roleplay as. I also feel like the world building and character writing almost reaches something near the heights I felt when I first played Disco, though maybe taking a bit longer to really wrap my head around and live with. Of course it's too bad I cannot trust Za/Um to properly allow this setting to expand and live up to it's true potential. Many of the aspects I'd consider flaws here I feel boil down to it presumably being rushed out. It seems they wanted to ship the game fully voiced like Disco's rerelease, so the text to dialogue mismatches and vocal deliveries with incorrect tones and misreads feel a lot more numerous than they did in Disco. There's also just a lot of random unvoiced lines and sentences that cut off too short. In a similar vein is how buggy it can be. My only real complaint is that the game feels like it only really needed a stupidly short time left to cook and they just threw it out there for a quick buck. Really wracking my brain for anything else to complain about, I guess I don't really love the map screen, it could have been a bit more clear and interactive. Maybe the inventory system could have been more sortable but neither of these really felt like a big deal. Zero Parades compelled me in ways I never thought a game with Za/Um in front of it would ever be capable of doing again, I fell deeply in love with it's characters and the twists and turns of their mission, I deeply resonated with many of its themes that manage to feel familiar while standing on their own, and ultimately it left me wanting to play it again and do everything I screwed up as "correctly" as possible. It's only sad that I have to keep reminding myself that not even something I love as much as this game could ever make me trust the company that made it. In the end, I got another fantastic game, but it'd be nice to have something to look forward to

Я тоже был предвзят Со всей этой историей, когда у творца отжимают его детище, которое еще и сумело так громко выстрелить. Вполне понятна реакция людей на подобную «политику» студии ZA/UM. Но… Игра то хорошая получилась. Да, это уже не то Диско с Амброзиусом Кусто, который пахнет осенью, спиртом и абрикосовой жвачкой. Тут нет таких запоминающихся квестов и персонажей. Нет такой драмы и вовлечения игрока в вполне понятные эмоции человека, опустившегося на самое дно в компании собственных демонов. Но, как уже было сказано, Zero Parade – отличная игра. Мне она чем-то напомнила Slow Horses с Олдманом, где все классические элементы шпиономании замешали на основу игры прародителя. Каскад хороша. Вот только открывается она этак часу на 10+, когда ты начинаешь понимать основной квест и то, как он с ней взаимосвязан. Сюжет (и его структура) – на любителя. Он неплохой, но местами сквозь него нужно продираться. Как, впрочем, и сквозь намеренно возвышенный слог. Курвиц куда лучше буковками жонглировал. Музыка и визуал – отвал жопы. Что не понравилось. Основной рассказчик-женщина – посредственна, местами ужасна. Больше никаких песен о маленькой церкви. Навыки скучные. Ну и сам геймплей, когда на протяжении всей игры создается впечатление, что ты не успеваешь по дедлайнам, из-за чего часть контента намеренно пропускаешь. Проверки с кубиками теперь практически не создают запоминающихся ситуаций. Если сможете абстрагироваться от ситуации со студией, то, конечно же, рекомендую к прохождению.

im the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spy

Traded a pack of cigarettes to a talking monkey for a technologically advanced fleshlight. 10/10

FOR CASCADE ALL WILL BE FORGIVEN 致飞流 一切都将得到宽恕 КАСКАД ВСЁ БУДЕТ ПРОЩЕНО

Очень интересная игра. В разы более проработана чем нудный диско. Диско не плохая игра, просто эта часть закрывает её слабые аспекты. Жаль что комьюнити засрало

To put it simply, compared to Disco Elysium: it’s less absurd (though still a little weird) and less funny, but more focused and better written. I actually preferred it to Disco Elysium, which I already loved, because I felt much more invested in the story. My only issue was the whole “one unique dice roll per day and limited rests” system. It took me a while to realize that you could simply pass the time (by sitting on the bench near the tree), and the system ended up pushing me to tackle every quest simultaneously: you hit a roadblock in one, switch to another, get stuck there, move on to the next… and so on. I understand the game design idea behind it, but it clashes a little with my very “logical” and “organized” way of approaching quests in an RPG. But aside from that, it was absolutely fantastic. The atmosphere, the soundtrack… I still listen to it regularly.