Well, this has been one hell of a journey. Now that the finale is here, I can safely say this is my favorite game I’ve found on this site so far, overall a 7.5-8/10. Full spoiler warning ahead though, I wanted to get my thoughts out on this for a while.
The Review
The setting was something that kind of put me off at first, the description and image chosen didn’t really reflect much about the game, but once I began playing it, I was immediately intrigued by the finer things at play here. Who is Someone? What is Someone? Why do they want to put humanity inside a hivemind? Why is the number 1997 repeated everywhere, and why is it Amber’s birth date? While some of these were answered, some were not, while other things I didn’t have the opportunity to ask about went on without one, like why in Bruce’s 1st mission there is a cracked open container with what resembles a small office in it, in which there are many different things that to the player seem very significant, like the contents of the computer and the picture of the family with the husky puppy. When I first found this, I was very intrigued and thought I’d get an answer out of it, like trying to put a puzzle together with these scattered hints at something greater. While I got them for some things, some went on unanswered, like what was the computer about, why there’s nothing older than 1997, or what Amber’s role is based on her birth date being the central point to all this. Because of that, for a while I thought that the game was gonna end with a “it was all a dream” type of ending, which seemed to make sense, but there’s no way something like that would actually happen.
The story was great at keeping you hooked at all times whenever the ball got rolling, but the start seemed quite generic, since it was more of an anthology than something concrete, kind of like Part 4 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (Annie’s ability to pull down meteors in combat is straight of out JoJo btw, Planet Waves is the name), where there’s not much of a story but more of “here’s this quiet town where bizarre oddities happen”. This is thrown out the window once the bandits are introduced and now we have a proper antagonist, but not exactly the “main” villain, since the big bad is much harder to actually handle with how little we actually know of them so far. As the Acts progressed, the story properly got its own footing, and now we have concrete goals to work towards to “stop” Someone, whatever their goals are, it got to the point where (and I believe some others might’ve experienced this as well), I wasn’t playing the game for the fetish anymore, I wanted to know where the story was going and what was gonna happen to the characters. That’s especially the case with Act 3, which is by far the best this game has to offer, the road trip aspect and how high the stakes really feel, with how they’re going to raid fuckin’ Area 51, build a portal to different dimensions so they can escape this fucked reality, all while an Eldrich being wants to kill them and place them in the hivemind, all while having to deal with whatever roadblocks appear on the way, be it Someone’s doing or not. The ending though, after everything you’ve been through in the finale, it felt a bit… Hollow, in a way. You get introduced to Something, a being that, from the description of its creation alone, sounds a lot like genderbent AM from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, you’re not exactly clued in to what’s actually happening, other than it all sounds like a simulation of sorts, and that it’ll all happen again, whatever that means. To me, it all more like a setup to what Cascadia XL will be in the future, whatever that’ll be.
(so as of typing this i realized that the whole section i’d written for the characters was gone once i tried transferring it to this block so i’ll just tl;dr this i ain’t typing all that shit again)
Characters: Jackie and Jen are my favorites. Love how Jackie is more of a tomboy and a bit of an ass, Jen is big mean snake lady. Janet always got a laugh out of me because of how much of an asshole she is, love her. Wires is the best character in the game, from introduction to last time we see her. Rachel is by far the funniest character by how her brain’s so fuckin’ smooth to criticism and self reflection it all just slides right off, her shenanigans are always hilarious to watch. Keith was funny to watch and read his dialogue because the first time I read his name my mind immediately went “did I ever tell y’all ‘bout the time my friend Keith tried deepfryin’ a turkey? Third degree burns all o’er his body!” And ever since then, I’ve read his voice lines with Elis L4D2’s voice. Vlad is by far the most intriguing character in the game and is a bit of a shame we never get to spend much time with him, since he seems to know more than he leads on and most of it goes unnoticed because of the way he talks. Ending feels very unsatisfying, given how much time you spend with some of these characters it really stings that out of the whole cast only 4 of them get a proper send-off. At least show where the more meaningful ones turned up, like Annie, some of the anime club members, show if the thing Keith said about Cat being sent to a different universe when Rachel walked through the portal is actually true or he was talking out of his ass again, and I can’t believe Wires of everyone here gets a post credits scene. Sure, she might’ve joined late into the game, but by God she was shining brighter than a Supernova once the Area 51 raid was done, she really earned being the 3rd party member. Yet, she doesn’t even get one scene showing how she turned up? That really sucks. It all kind of feels like some sort of setup for Cascadia XL, with how Keith says the network stopped sending him stuff after Someone cleared the mind cache, but it doesn’t shake off that bitterness of not knowing if they’re doing fine or not.
Apocalypse XL was a great experience, start to finish. It started off a bit bland, but quickly managed to pick up steam and just kept delivering more and more. Sure, it might’ve left a few things untouched here and there, like Someone’s true nature, or what Something is, but those might be answered in the future with Cascadia XL, considering how the ending kind of feels “off” in a way, like there’s more things that’ll show up later. Thinking about it now, as I’m typing this, it kinda feels like the ending of Dragon Ball GT, “yeah, this is the end of your journey with Goku. I know it sucks, but he’ll still be having adventures wherever he’s going, and you don’t really need to follow him on those anymore, especially since you’ve been through so much with him all this time. It was quite the journey that got you here, wasn’t it?” And I kind of get it, but it still feels a bit sour not getting a proper send off for all the characters I’ve seen here, especially not the ones I liked the most.
I’ll be gladly waiting for what Cascadia XL has in store for the future, even though it’s just a concept in Zenthicks’ mind at this point.
also i don’t think i’ll ever get an answer to this, but wtf is the purpose of Zerma.png? i went through the whole game and all the side content and this wasn’t used once, is Zerma Someone’s true’s identity? is Zerma Something? Jerma is canon to the XL universe???
the suspense is killing me.
