The Only Game in Town

Player groups can achieve incredible success
in ways you wouldn't expect, and that helps
keep real life fresh and interesting.

Gamespot always has great reviews of fascinating new games, but this week Greg Kasavin takes you to whole new levels in his brilliant review of Real Life

Real life is densely populated and features a wide variety of places to explore and activities to engage in.Real life isn't above reproach. In one of the stranger design decisions in the game, for some reason you have no choice in determining your character's initial starting location, appearance, or gender, which are chosen for you seemingly at random.

However, over the course of your character's life, you have tremendous opportunity to customize and define a truly unique appearance for yourself--not only can you fine-tune your hairstyle and hair color, but you can also purchase and wear a seemingly infinite variety of clothing and influence your body type using various in-game mechanisms. For example, if your character exercises frequently, you will appear fit and muscular. You may also choose from a huge variety of tattoos and body piercings, and later you can even pay for cosmetic surgery, though this is expensive and there's a small chance that the operation will backfire.

At any rate, real life offers a truly remarkable amount of variety in determining your character's outward appearance, and this depth isn't only skin deep. The only problem is you're relegated to playing as a human character, though the game does randomly choose one of several different races for you (which have little bearing on gameplay and mostly just affect appearances and your standing with certain factions)

Easily one of the most appealing and insightful reviews of a game in recent memory. Read it all. It might even make you want to play.

Posted by Vanderleun at July 19, 2003 8:43 AM