SIMULACRA 2

First things first, spoiler alert! I finished the game about 5 minutes ago and while the overall story was okay, the first game was much better. The story wasn’t as great and it had that “social media is the devil” vibe to it. It was a sort of copy and paste of the first game but this time, social media presence is the main focus rather than a dating app. There were less scares, (I only really thought the background got scary) the acting wasn’t great, and most of all, the glitches. I get that the development team is doing everything in their power to fix it and they had a timeframe. But this game could have used a lot more patching up. In some of the most crucial situations like the final talk with the rippleman, I got booted out of the game in the middle, making me go back to the beginning all over again. Some of the problems were confusing and not explained well at all, and in the middle of solving them, the game would glitch or kick me out and I’d have to start over again. Very frustrating, but overall a fun experience.

As the game before, Simulacra 2 is innovative, powerful, and skin-crawling creepy. It’s worth every bit of money you will spend on this. The time and dedication, the attention to detail makes this game and it’s predecessor superb. Until the bugs come in. There is a game-breaking bug I’ve come across. During the second round of individual interviews, the game breaks when one asks the Aludren (I’m pretty sure I misspelled the company’s name! My apologies) employee who’s application was sent in for her to review. It does not allow one to put in the proper name. Because of this, the game came to a complete halt, unable to continue forward. I collected all the evidence available up until that point. When this bug is fixed along with a few others that I’ve come across (but they’re very minor in comparison to this one), I will give the game five stars. It truly is worth five stars! Give it a try! Hopefully, the wrinkles will be ironed out by the time you reach this part.

I love the story and the way the game is structured... it’s a great, immersive, and spine chilling game IF it can be run smoothly. I have encountered several game breaking bugs that have hindered my playing experience and left me with an empty feeling as I had to exit the app and make a whole new game. The first one was where you had to talk to Mina- I had all of her evidence but the game apparently didn’t register the cue for allowing me to interact with her. The second one was when I exited out of the video of Maya doing “yoga” (located in the computer files). After I exited, the game took me to a screen where the only thing I could interact with was a guy named Greg. It wouldn’t let me open up the other apps, go to the home screen, nada. The third one was when I was interacting with Mina and confronting her about her lies on social media- the game froze and Ruben’s contact never came up in the game, causing me to have to restart. Like I said, it’s got a good premise, but with these bugs that set me back two-three hours, I can’t give it the full five stars

Wanted to love this game, but despite it being titled as a full sequel, it feels like a retread of the same ground. The story feels derivative, and the acting is somehow worse this time too. At least in the first game they minimized the live performances and knew which performers were compelling - in this game the bad live performances make up a much larger chunk of the experience, which really hurts immersion. It was much easier to connect with these characters when I didn’t have to look past bad acting and could just imagine their voices. Now it forces you to endure the mediocre theater for like half the game, making it very difficult to suspend disbelief. I gave it 3 stars because I still beat the game, it’s buggy but functional and provides a similar experience to the first. It just does it worse in most ways, and as a fan of the first I feel kind of cheated out of a proper sequel. I regret wasting my money on this though and hopefully others will think twice before doing the same.

So, I played Simulacra with my girlfriend. She had a great time watching me squeal and scream at each wrong noise and unexpected turn. That was fun. Simulacra 2. Not only have I experienced it, but nearly every review on here mentions it as well. The BUGS. I’ve put four hours in now to try and get the good ending, and now because my phone decided to refresh the app when I went to text my mom, I can’t interact with Ruben, and cannot progress with the game at all. I really, REALLY don’t want to have to restart because finding every clue and taking screenshots of stuff so I wouldn’t forget them was really tedious and I don’t want it to be for nothing. So please, do something. I know app design and coding is hard but please, I really do not want to redo all of that. I want to give to this game a higher review but the very fact that the game costs $5 and was released in an unplayable version is unforgivable. Please do something. Thank you for taking the time to read this.