noescape

Digital Culture and its Discontents

A place where video games get picked apart to examine the gooey Ideology inside


em-being
@em-being

Since twitter seems tenuous I figured I'd try some cohost plugs from time to time, and the most recent one I have is our Abnormal Mapping on Norco. Abnormal Mapping is the monthly game club podcast I've been doing with my friend Jackson for NINE YEARS (it's our anniversary), and Norco is a great adventure game from this year about coming back home to your run down Louisiana neighborhood and the oil field that looms next to it in the wake of your mother dying.

Norco's really good, it has a moody noir sensibility with a heavy dose of magical realism and a dark sense of humor about the inevitable grind and implosion of living poor and sick in America. The way it discusses this through a desperate, embittered clinging at anything that provides an out, be that cynicism or religion or just outright nihilism is really striking in both how uncomfortably real it is and how sympathetic to the cast of jerks and society's losers the story ultimately is.

Anyway, enjoy the pod, if you want, and enjoy some screenshots of Norco!


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @em-being's post: