![]() ![]() A stuffed monkey sits next to a laptop, where her brother is hanging out on internet message boards that he should probably leave unexplored. Moments after being introduced to the dead-end oil town, the game gets underway with us controlling an adult woman named Kay, who has returned to her childhood bedroom after a family tragedy. It’s also the best game released thus far in 2022. “Norco” is our world, just slightly altered. ![]() In part, that’s because “Norco” makes us smile with wonder. ![]() “Norco’s” world is enticing - one that is, yes, full of web-driven conspiracies and nut jobs, but is also the sort of crash we can’t look away from. “Norco” paints the picture of a dying America, where the rich dream of privatized space flight and apps turn the talent-lite into niche celebrities. But this is not so much the future as it is an alternate reality. The game is at once familiar and outlandish, a text-and-art-driven interactive adventure with a sci-fi bent. Welcome to a part of America known as “Cancer Alley.” And then “Norco” gets weird. That horizon, we read in a rush of an intro, is all projected flames, implying the land and the people below are living out their lives as a slow burn. We’re told there’s a hum - an “endless sigh” - and we see a soft glow that cancels out the sun and the moon so its residents see only a translucent sky. The first time we see Norco, La., in all its pixelated glory, it’s in an image that frames smokestacks and refinery equipment like a mechanical city. ![]()
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