REVIEW : Paradise Lost (PC)
Video games have now assumed a leading role in the world of modern entertainment. As parts of a well-rounded medium, many titles are characterized by such multifaceted and multiple characteristics as to be almost unclassifiable. Of course, there are wide scissors within which many games make their nature explicit, but it is not always easy to frame a certain videogame genre. In the last fifteen years, there have emerged overwhelmingly those who are often labelled with little condescension as a “walking simulator”.
Predominantly narrative games, in which the protagonist limits himself to exploring the surrounding environment and reading some document or newspaper clipping. There are infinite variables of this “newborn” genre, precisely because of its predisposition to more elaborate and coherent playful digressions to the medium that hosts it. By solving simple puzzles, for example, occasional escapes from possible enemies, or even sporadic clashes. But this is not the case with Paradise Lost, which puts aside any playful ambitions to simply tell us a melancholy and twilight drift of mankind.
A Nazi anthill
The game starts from an actual Nazi plan, the “Giant Project”, which failed for logistical and economic reasons. Conversely, the developers of PolyAmorous hypothesize a perfect success of the crazy project, which lays the foundations for the narrative structure of Paradise Lost. In this oppressive uchrony, the United States of America does not take a definitive position to stop the rise of the Nazis and intervenes in the Second World War only in the mid-1950s, giving the Germans the opportunity to stall.
The strategic construction of these immense guts allows the allied forces to entrench themselves in the belly of Europe. Inside gigantic interconnecting bunkers, the Germans have a priceless opportunity to set up a deadly underground hive and amass a massive nuclear counter-offensive. Through a careful selection among the ranks of the most virtuous allies and the civilians of pure Aryan citizenship, Adolf Hitler thus creates a real underground microcosm, completely self-sufficient and capable of working in synergy with the surface.
Definitely, on the ropes, Hitler decides to replenish the bunkers with all the German civilians left on the surface and launch an attack using the entire atomic arsenal available. A nuclear hell falls on Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Eastern Germany, as well as on enemy territories, with disastrous repercussions for almost half the planet. Holed up in their bunkers, the Germans shield themselves thanks to the gigantic radioactive clouds, as well as to the sinister and devious strategic position. But what happened to the rest of the world? What was the real extent of this “suicide attack”?
The death of a world
Going further with the narrative incipit of Paradise Lost would be a crime for a game that makes history the only real element capable of keeping the gamer’s attention awake. The premises set up by the Poles of PolyAmorous are undoubtedly well written and intriguing, in their chilling exposition. In the early eighties, a 12-year-old named Szymon decides to visit one of these gigantic bunkers, in memory of his late mother. With a simple photograph to guide him, the boy begins with us the elaboration of his mourning. And maybe not just that.
Paradise Lost, for this reason, is divided into five chapters, each linked to the respective stages of mourning: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
A dream with your eyes closed
If on the one hand, it is commendable to give life to lore so deep as to go beyond the medium that contains it, on the other hand, we have an impoverishment of the medium itself, which is reduced to a sort of interactive guided tour. There is nothing wrong with this, especially if certain new video game genres are taken for granted. The regret comes from the excessively passive global experience, which tries to make up for it with somewhat false narrative choices, which clumsily fit together with some naivete in the script. Not to mention the technical component, too often in trouble; if it is true that from an aesthetic point of view the game remains very willing, it is clear how unquestionably it is the son of a budget that is not exactly stellar.
A completely normal factor for an indie title, but that does not justify the lack of general cleanliness, the shots during simple transitions or the locks of the console. All elements can be adjusted via patch, but today it is impossible not to take into account. As insightful and deep in its uchronic magnetism, as claustrophobic and limited in the dynamics of the game, Paradise Lost perfectly embodies a certain videogame genre, which aims very high, but ends up barely hitting the outermost part of a giant target.
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