Zero Time Dilemma

I've gushed twice already on this blog about the Zero Escape franchise. First there was Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, which consumed all the non-celebrating parts of my Christmas week in 2011. Then came Virtue's Last Reward, which occupied me for another week-long chunk, this one causing me to arrive late for work. Here and now, in this crazy busy summer of 2016 where all logress has slowed to a standstill, leave it to Zero Time Dilemma to get me going again. This one was also beaten in the span of a week, which is maybe more impressive when you realize that said week included stays at two different hotels. What can I say? These games are addicting as all hell!

I'll tread lightly and promise no spoilers since I know Sween is currently busy with Virtue's Last Reward (yes, finally!) but the way that game ended absolutely screamed for a a sequel. And then a year later Aksys was like, "shit, sorry guys, no one has any interest in a third Zero Escape game. We're pulling the plug." Crushing! But then just last year out of the blue Aksys was like, "hey guys, it turns out we're absolutely making that third Zero Escape game." And roughly ten thousand peoplegot, you know, hype. I was one of them!

Zero Time Dilemma once again combines escape the room puzzles and branching "choose your own adventure" decision trees to weave an elaborate and intricate visual novel that isn't afraid of getting philosophical or pseudo-scientific.

Unfortunately, this was easily the weakest game of the bunch, not only failing to resolve a few of the threads left dangling in the second game, but also kind of wimping out on its own internal loose threads. Not helping matters is the switch from text-based character interactions in the first two games (visual novels) to cutscene-based storytelling this go-round (so, basically just movies). And with four of the nine characters in this game being returning characters from the previous two games (June and Junpei from 999; Sigma and Phi from Virtue's Last Reward) we're left without a whole lot of mystery surrounding the five newbies. Two of them fall horribly flat, in fact - talking Mira and Eric of course - and at one point the game pulls a bait and switch that probably would have made for a great twist had it not left me so utterly confused.

Okay, so both the story and the characters are the weakest they've ever been. The good news? Zero Time Dilemma contains the hardest escape the room puzzles yet (either that or I'm getting rapidly dumber with age) and this is absolutely the scariest and goriest and mind-bending-est game in the bunch as well. Comparisons to Saw have always come easily to Zero Escape, but here they've really kicked up the gore a notch and even the central nine-person game is pretty stark and bleak; once six people have died, the remaining three may escape.

All things considered, I'm stoked and jazzed and tickled to bits that we got a third Zero Escape game at all, and even though it doesn't quite live up to the first two, it's a great game in its own right.