What is art, if you think about it?? Since we are talking about video games, why do we call some Call of Duty a “popcorn shooter for the evening”, and Silent Hill 2, Journey and Shadows of the Colossus – art?
Trying to find the answer to this question, Russian-speaking gamers often turn to the creations of Ice-Pick Lodge, a Moscow indie studio whose games have always been out of this world. Their debut project, Pestilence (Utopia), occupies a special place in their work. A game that divided players into two camps; a game that the "Land of Games" put above the excellent Fahrenheit, when the golden composition of Gambling Mania trampled it into the mud. A game that perfectly reflects an important part of any art – ambiguity.
Footsteps outside the window
So, what is “Pestilence (Utopia)”??
To put it bluntly, this is a quest with elements of role-playing and survival. There is a seamless location where you can move relatively freely. Every day we receive (or find that it happens much more often) a task of the day and several side tasks, which we complete during the game day. Along the way, you need to take care of yourself: get food, weapons, medicine, things for exchange… Following this plan, we conditionally collect evidence of our theory regarding what is happening in the city, save the lives of our Close Ones (more on them later) and in the end, if everyone is alive and well, we get the ending. Most tasks boil down to walking from point A to point B and talking while collecting items; sometimes they let us look for something or shoot at someone. Basically, this is how the game plays out.
However, this does not mean that the game will be easy.
Firstly, there is a catastrophic lack of time. Pestilence (Utopia) can be compared to Dead Rising – no one was waiting for us there either; if we didn’t have time somewhere, it was purely our problems. The city-on-Gorghon itself is small, but the hero does not move quickly, and the ubiquitous fences designed to calm the AI do not provide room for action. As a result, sometimes you don’t have time to complete the mission of the day, not to mention side quests. Secondly, the situation in the city is constantly changing. Prices fluctuate from day to day, bandits roam at night, the NPS generator inadvertently generates random events that love to end badly, and with the advent of the plague you generally begin to be cautious, sneak around the back streets and literally shy away from every sound. In general, the Sand Plague is a separate conversation, because it plays an important role both in the gameplay and in the plot, being the apotheosis of evil. I’ll tell you about the plot in a separate line, but for now let’s talk about the influence of the pestilence on the gameplay.
The Sand Plague appears in the city on the third day, and immediately begins to drive its line, falling on the northeastern quarter. The Infected City itself, despite all the shortcomings of the local graphics, looks quite creepy. The screen is painted in swamp-green tones, disgusting growths appear on houses and streets, rats run everywhere and spread infection, clouds of infection and groans of people are in the air, sick people roam the streets, and it’s impossible to enter the apartments of citizens without a protective equipment. Over time, the plague subsides (the block becomes boarded up), but even then there is no more joy – the infection goes away (this does not apply to the ubiquitous rats), and instead the looters are called upon to bother the player. It is not surprising that in such an environment one can easily get sick, and from that moment the player begins to feel the full power of the Sand Ulcer. More precisely, his wallet begins to feel it, because the pestilence eats money out of his pocket with stupid efficiency (ahem-ahem). To keep the infection at a low level, you need to take immunocorrectors, to reduce the level of infection, you need to take antibiotics, and taking into account the harm of drugs to health, you need to regularly raise it. And all this requires money, which is not lying around, and most importantly, only the Bachelor has a relative abundance.
The third point is connected to https://luxestakecasino.co.uk/login/ this – the three characters differ from each other not only in storylines, but also in gameplay features. So, the Bachelor has no problems with money, his reputation is always at a decent level, and in his pocket there is a lens that allows him to track the clouds of infection. With the Haruspex, everything is different – at first no one likes him, they don’t give him a coin, but he finds a common language with the steppe people, loves to cut out human organs and exchange them for local herbs (or simply collect them), and from the herbs he can cook all sorts of decoctions and similar antibiotics. The Changeling is even more interesting – her reputation is constantly falling; most of the arsenal, already very meager, is not available to her, but in hand-to-hand combat she is stronger than other characters, she can heal the sick and dying by laying on hands, thereby raising her reputation; collects herbs, and is also constantly looking for herself (literally). Because of these features, each character most often wanders through his own, specific areas: the Bachelor is a regular at sights and hotbeds of infection, the Haruspex’s element is the steppe, and the Changeling sneaks through all sorts of nooks and crannies in order to gain a reputation and not get hit in the face. Different locations combined with music create different atmospheres – and, in my opinion, this is a good place to start talking about the plot of the game.
We are leaving along the steps..
You’ve probably already been surprised by the name of the game, which is really strange. Initially, the creation of the Ice Picks was called “Epidemic”, but due to the cliché it was abandoned, “epidemic” was replaced with the Old Slavonic word “mortem”, and in brackets (and not with a period!) attributed to "utopia". If my viewers were a little interested in philosophy, then they would understand the reference (after all, I only became interested after the game). Of course, we are talking about the philosophical dialogue of Sir Thomas More “Utopia”, which talks about the structure of an ideal society on the above-mentioned island. The game makes an allusion between itself and this book. City-on-Gorkhon is, roughly speaking, a cocktail of personalities of all stripes and ages, who do not fit together at all and are constantly in confrontation. Next door to the rulers of the city, the Saburovs, lives a drunken architect, not far from the theater where Mark Bessmertnik hangs out – the only one who understands what is happening – lives the growing Mistress of the city, Capella, and the head of the double-minded Notkin and the local chieftain Grif have completely settled in the garages across the road. Moreover, these guys – our Close Ones – gather in groups, and each main character represents his own group, or more precisely, his own view of the future of the city, and of life in general. And it’s really interesting to follow all this. Each character has their own story and motivation, which are well written, and after ten hours you begin to see real people in these angular models, and not every game is able to give these sensations. And, after studying the townspeople of the City-on-Gorkhon, there comes a misunderstanding of how they can all live together. Ha. You probably don’t understand what I’m talking about, so it’s time to tell you more about the main characters and their entourage.
The first group is the Utopians. For them, the idea is more important than people; in order to make their dreams come true, they are ready to sacrifice anyone and anything. This group includes the Cain family – the spiritual rulers of the city, the Stamatin brothers – the creators of the Polyhedron, as well as Mark Bessmertnik, whom I already mentioned, and Eva Yang – a courtesan in love with a bachelor. These guys are headed by Daniil Dankovsky – Bachelor of Medical Sciences, creator of "Tanatics" – a manual on how to cheat death. Our doctor ended up in the city for not entirely scientific reasons – the authorities did not like his work, and in order to save his work from an unenviable fate, he comes to the city-on-Gorkhon to meet with Simeon Cain – a man who lived for two hundred years. Daniil is the voice of reason, he approaches events from the side of logic and common sense, so the first campaign takes place for him to introduce the player to the world of the game.
The second group is the children of the City-on-Gorkhon, the so-called “Termites”. They will be replacing the old guard in the future, so they are smart and savvy beyond their years, and also love to throw out controversial quotes. Termites offer a return to the earthly, a rejection of utopian ideas and unjustified sacrifices. The present is important to them, not the future. The Termites are led by the haruspex Artemy Burakh, from the Menkhu clan. He arrived at the request of his father – he felt the approach of death, and called his son to succeed him. Artemy is the voice of traditions, earthly passions and deeds.
The third group is the humble. They are ready to give their lives for the sake of preserving this miracle – the City-on-Gorkhon, a place where incompatible things come together. The humble are superfluous people, and their death to save the city is the last thing they can do. They are led by the Imposter – a girl who came to her senses in a cemetery and discovered that she has superpowers and a twin sister, who is either the embodiment of Ulcer, or the fruit of the heroine’s sick imagination. The impostor is an angel and a devil at the same time, the embodiment of the city itself on Gorkhon, and maybe the Gerbil.
Each of the heroes wants to defeat the Sand Plague, but each has their own method, depending on their goals. All the same, in the end you will have to sacrifice something, give up something. But if nothing is done, it will get even worse, because Sand Ulcer.
Yes, Gerbil is not a simple bacterial infection. This is a weapon of logic, of the normal world, which has come to destroy everything that goes beyond this norm. It is called the apotheosis of evil, but take my word for it – even a single playthrough is enough for this one-sided perception of the disease to disappear. At a certain moment I even had a thought: “Or maybe the Plague should destroy the city? Maybe these dummies should die?“This approach to infection gives the game’s plot good depth, and its contrast with the heroes is indirect and therefore powerful. The Gerbil has no face, but there is an image – the image of an inexorable element, an executioner, an arbiter of destinies. Even the clouds of infection take the form of infected individuals writhing in pain.
Yes, the whole game is completely metaphorical. The City-on-Gorkhon from above resembles the body of a bull (this symbol becomes clear after the Haruspex’s campaign). The head of this bull is a Polyhedron – a symbol of a dream, pure, fragile, but so beautiful and unattainable. It is not surprising that children chose this place and turned it into their kingdom. Slaughterhouses are located in the stomach – a place where the way of life of the steppes still preserves decrepit traditions. Slaughterhouses are like an old spring from which water flows, although at the source the water has run out. The traditions and their meaning have been forgotten, but the breath of the Steppe is still felt in these stone corridors… In fact, the feeling of approaching death is incredibly strong throughout the game. Children grow up, the covenants of their ancestors fade into oblivion, and Ulcer flies over all this, like an angel of the apocalypse. Themes of death, life and choice in a dying kingdom, where the beautiful and the ugly could live side by side – that’s why you need to play Pestilence (Utopia).
Three doubles
But if you decided that the gameplay is just as exciting, I hasten to disappoint you.
The developers call the game a “decision-making simulator”. But no, that’s not true. The game is a simulator of a blissful homeless man who wanders around the city, climbs through trash cans, exchanges every trinket he finds with his children for antibiotics and cartridges, and to whom anyone with even a modicum of self-respect comes down to talk. And okay, this would only take place for the first couple of hours, but such walking takes up the entire game. Moreover, the city does not change from campaign to campaign, the infection devours the same neighborhoods; even the soundtrack for different characters does not change (and the atmosphere of the campaigns is different – I already said). The gameplay eventually turns into a kind of “obstacle walking”. During the day we walk around the city and rummage through garbage dumps, at night we sometimes cut up bandits and climb into other people’s houses for bread and lemons; Since the beginning of the epidemic, jogging through infected neighborhoods is accompanied by dodging clouds of infection and sick people, and through boarded-up neighborhoods – dodging the knives of bandits and catching up with rodents. If you don’t know how to play, then added to this is a shortage of ammunition, food and medicine, and also the Sand Ulcer lying imposingly on your wallet. Looks complicated? Agree. The first week, and at the end of the game everything becomes automatic: I woke up, ate, took some pills, put on a bandage and went into battle – wandering around a dying city and laughing at the screams of marauders, which can be heard five blocks away and are not at all naturalistic. I’ll put in a good word about the bugs – but, fortunately, they are practically incapable of ruining the entire game and are often just fun.
The combat system is a different story. The weapon is not felt at all, be it a revolver or a scalpel. Close combat is done poorly – it’s unclear how your knife hits, how much damage it does. I had an interesting case when I went behind my back and cut with a knife. But at that moment the mouse moved, the knife entered the shoulder blade, but the game did not count it! The weapon breakdown system, while realistic to some extent, is extremely unfair and drains too much money. At the end of the game, I generally walked around with a “zero” knife, and exchanged new, whole knives. The only thing that really pulls out the fights is a good rhythmic soundtrack, to which you get at least some pleasure from clashes with bandits. And fighting, understanding animation and AI features, is not difficult and even interesting. But this only applies to edged weapons. Things are much worse with firearms. At the beginning of the game, situations when a perfectly cleaned and polished revolver, which was disassembled, every part lubricated and reassembled by a ninth-generation gunsmith, misses the head from a distance of five meters, cause nothing but a persistent desire to prove Newton’s third law by colliding the mouse and the monitor. And this would not be so noticeable if instead of average enemies they had not placed snipers who are physically unable to miss (I’m talking about soldiers).
Well, since I started throwing around beautiful words that supposedly should decorate my review, let’s talk about the decoration of any game – about the graphics. And here she is… Well, it could be worse. Doesn’t bother you. Of course, it’s simply impossible to look at the faces of some local goons without tears, but sometimes you come across quite charismatic faces. In general, the city looks normal, as do the insides of ordinary houses. The furnishings of the homes of those close to them are quite nice: paintings, some notebooks, books, characteristic furniture – in general, there is something to see. And this is all great, but seeing the same paintings, furniture and textures in different houses quickly gets boring. Plus the quality of the textures is lame, and I really don’t want to look at a soap opera. Since I touched on the characters, I’ll say about the animation – things are worse with it. The animation of the surrounding world is practically non-existent (I found only one door opening), all the movements of the characters are a little unnatural, and the faces… Brr. Only the gaits were a success, as for me.
Well, our favorite bugs. The characters get stuck at every corner (literally), they love to dance in circles (once this failed a quest for me – I had to redo it), there is a task that is impossible to complete (thanks to the developers that this only affected side quests). But, as I already said, bugs are not capable of ruining the game, sometimes they relieve boredom, and there are also code errors that help with further progress.
And so in everything – the game is simply woven from contradictions between its various elements. Characters with creepy faces talk about fate and death; monotonous walks around the city force you to think about philosophical topics in order to somehow entertain yourself; during shooting, excitement overwhelms you, because the bullet may not be counted in the game… And all this – I don’t know why! – gives “Moru” a special charm. Not a single game made me reconsider my life. Not a single game managed to reflect on it. And not a single game prompted me to write a review on it. And the creation of Ice-Pick Lodge succeeded! How? Magic!
That’s why I want to advise… No. Ask. To ask you to give this crooked, oblique, physically unpleasant game a chance. ‘Cause she can take up residence in your heart.
