Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Feb 12, 2022

  feels like watching CNN
• gamedeal user

  Feb 12, 2022

  So Far so good. 1st hour review. It steps away from the darkish tone on Not tonight, and makes it a bit more extreme/sillier/fun. And to be honest why not? new mechanics to deal with and it leaves me wanting to play more to see what else is thrown my way. So good first impression, currently i would say if you enjoyed the first one your bound to enjoy this just as much if not more. Any new players, i still think you will enjoy it but check out videos to make sure its your type of gameplay.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 12, 2022

  Not Tonight 2 takes all the fun gameplay of the first Not Tonight and it's even better now! I'm loving the story so far and the little mini-games (ie the poutine sauce, etc don't want to give away too much). They add an extra challenge to the game and made it even more fun. If you played the first game, I highly reccommend this one. If you didn't play the first one, watch some videos on the gameplay to see if it's your type of game, but I would suggest playing it before this one because it is a great game! Plus this one has cute easter eggs from the first game. :)
• gamedeal user

  Feb 13, 2022

  Just finished my first full playthrough, with some re-loading but accepting imperfect plays. A straight playthrough without any reloading or deaths would probably take about 5 hours. Overall, a true sequel to Not Tonight (and Papers, Please). There is more variation in the mini games compared to the original, which got a bit aggravating as they continued adding more things to check etc. This time, each location has different mini-games/requirements, so even if you hate one of them (looking at you, Montana), it's only for a couple rounds. The save style allows for easy re-loadability, and it was fun enough to consider replaying from the beginning at hard difficulty. I missed the keyboard function additions from Not Tonight 1. Dunno about the good ending, still seems like a dystopia to me... makes me wonder if there's a hidden ending. And what self-respecting Canadian would eat poutine with green gravy?
• gamedeal user

  Feb 13, 2022

  Super fun, loved the first game and have been super excited for this second one. A totally new concept, focusing more on the story, which I like, but I miss that real bouncer focus from the first game. Laughed a lot at the chicken level. Tons of re-playability, as there are different difficulty levels and different MapO quests along the way. The soundtrack is great, though the first game's was just sliiiiightly better. Definitely recommend.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 13, 2022

  The art, and character/location design is all top notch, and while it's an interesting twist on the Papers Please formula, the experience is dampened by poor controls and design choices. I would occasionally have click issues that would cost me. The radio where you get information about how you're doing is terrible, as the text bubbles are huge and often cover information you need to read, or buttons you need to push, you can move the radio, but some of the boards get complicated enough that there's no good place, other than pushing it to the top of the screen where you can no longer read the messages at all. The MapO quests are also frustratingly vague, I ended up with so many B grades due to 'gotchas' on the quests, e.g. there's a quest called 'Robert-no?' which implies you should deny a character named Roberto, but surprise, you should let him pass to complete that. I feel like the vagueness was put in there to encourage replays to get all the A grades, but I can't even bring myself to complete the first play through, I gave up half way through the 3rd act. Grab it on special.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 15, 2022

  Oh boy, writing a review for this game feels weird. I very much enjoyed "Not Tonight 1" and was hoping to see big improvements and expansions of game mechanics. The promotional material with the US map and branching roads especially made me think there would be some kind of choices in jobs and places to visit, maybe even re-playability through different paths in which you could stitch together the story after reaching all of them. Alas the game is painfully linear, but it was made from the same recipe than the first game, so i can still somewhat recommend it when taking it out of the context of being a sequel. The good: Gorgeous pixel art like always as well as fitting music. I encountered no bugs and the game ran smooth. Solid core gameplay à la "Papers Please". The bad: No innovation really. The travel map serves more as a tool to facilitate the plot than any meaningful addition to gameplay. There is way less customization and many of the gameplay additions feel gimmick-y, although they kept me entertained enough. You don't really manage much anymore and I am very sad that they dropped the player agency and time management from the first game. Where in the first game you tried to amass money to get cool upgrades and progress the story, money here is relegated to being something you simply need to get on with the linear levels. I get that they wanted to double-down on storytelling and I also get that the absurd politcal landscape of the US lends itself well to that, but this somehow ended up feeling disjointed and weird. The political message is obvious, as is expected if you played the first game, but feels a lot less poignant and stylish. Having this multiple POV story also takes away the very personnal story that was being told in the first game. I have to comment on the big final judgement as well: It is way too easy and there is no way to fuck it up. In the first game you had to actually somewhat think and work towards getting the good ending Getting some ressources and making good choices is relegated to knowing pop culture trivia and sometimes choices are just opaque and I felt like I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Instead of clever management of time and ressources you now have to remember names, USA trivia and little visual quirks on character and I do not appreciate that as much. But I do understand the devs are trying to do some things different. It is important to note that this sequel is also somehow a lot shorter than the first game, this is compounded by the fact that a quarter or more of your time in this game will be spent reading text boxes. I just listed a lot of negatives, but I still recommend this game. My personal dissapointment stems mostly from a lack of innovation and a departure of many more complex aspects of the first game, as well as US politics as the story backdrop, something I am just so incredibly tired of as it is just everywhere. The gameplay still makes it a fun ride, but I truely hope they try to actually expand things for the next game and make things more complex and engaging. TL;DR: As a fun little game? I think it's okay. As a sequel? I don't recommend it.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 17, 2022

  I really liked the first game, which is why I'm so disappointed by this one. [list] [*] This game is extremely story driven and is entirely linear, there is one thing to do and one way to get there. [*] The politics of the story have absolutely no nuance and come off like a child's idea of the American political climate. [*] You benefit by playing the way the devs want you to play, and that's it. You are highly incentivised to complete all MapO missions at A grade, which means making very specific choices made purposefully vague. You're going to have to load previous saves and do it again to get your A grade at least once during your playthrough. [*] Even if you want to deviate from the obvious choices, either you die or it continues as if you hadn't even tried. Some examples of this include, while playing as Kevin in the first roadtrip you encounter Bo's Diner, the only thing on the menu is soup. Either you order the soup, or you run away. The obvious choice is to run away since the place is extremely sketchy. However if you decide to stay and order, you get knocked out and killed, and you must start again, there's no alternative story there. Also while playing as Malik in the second roadtrip, he visits a cult in Kansas. Before the second job you are spoken to by a cultist (who even if you deny to speak with him, forces you to speak with him anyway) he gives you placebo pills to give to the cult party goers that night. On the job you are supposedly given the choice to give the party goers placebo pills or the pills the cult leader asked you to give them originally to help them "transcend". Even if you give every party goer the original pill, you will still be treated as if you gave them the placebo. [*] Despite the huge emphasis on completing MapO missions to be able to buy MapO security items, you never actually use these items yourself, and when they are used it's right at the end of the game and they don't even do anything. They are literally worthless. [*] The whole point of MapO missions was to facilitate the plot. "Do what you should do" to stay in line with the story type of thing. [*] Nothing mattered unless relevant to the plot. A strange example of this was when Malik was going to find Angel at the Cult location and on the way had the option to help a man he saw being mugged on the road or ignore him. If you choose to help him, you get jumped and mugged and lose all your money. If you ignore him, you lose all your money at the Cult entrance anyway. There is also no reward for trying to be the hero later, despite there being a VR battle you gain points for by being assessed by your previous actions and their morality. [*] There is one ending, even if you mess up the last mission on purpose it's just a loss. [*] The dialogue is painfully millennial and boring, and you spend most of the game having to read it. [*] Out of all 3 playable characters, none of them were even vaguely interesting. They all have very baseline personalities. [*] Customisation is very limited. You often also (after getting an A grade on a MapO mission) receive an outfit suited for the state you just left. I really don't see the point in that. [*] Money is meaningless. I can think of one time where money was actually necessary for something other than just being allowed to leave the state to continue on your simple linear journey through America. [*] The added gameplay mechanics aren't particularly fun or interesting, especially when rehashed a couple times over. On some of the jobs I decided to just chance my luck rather than engage with the new mechanic. [*] Total lack of focus on gameplay. The gameplay is just a much less complex and engaging version of NT1's gameplay. [*] As the Steam description states, this is not a time and resource management game. It's more akin to a point and click adventure with minigames. [*] Zero replayability. I finished one playthrough, and once I've got the achievements, I can safely say I will never open this game again. The first one I played at least 4-5 times over. [/list] TL;DR: If you like Paper's Please, do not play this game.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 17, 2022

  I give this game an above-lukewarm thumbs up. Regardless of one's political leanings, I believe most people can agree that everything across the board has been exaggerated to the point of farce. And that's okay! Farce in itself is not bad, I found it enjoyable and amusing enough, save for the odd moments where the game tries to take itself too seriously. At one point you have a character grappling with having killed a man/seen a man murdered in front of him, then almost immediately after you're checking the IDs of chickens for nugget processing. There was a lot of hype regarding the diverse cast, but like most everything in the game, the experiences portrayed were all very, very surface-level. None of the protagonists' unique circumstances manifest themselves in a narratively or mechanically meaningful way. The astonishingly uncritical, pretty much all positive portrayal of the "hip" tech CEO manipulating politics and monopolizing everything was particularly baffling, though I suppose they know their market and publisher. (a character toothlessly, vaguely griping every so often about how it's kinda creepy is not substantive) The gameplay's simple: approve or rebuke a given number of folks in a time limit based on the level's criteria, usually with a tacked on minigame. I played on hard mode and only had to redo a few levels, mostly because a few of the minigames were primarily reliant on chance. Engaging enough, if not particularly challenging. These segments are broken up by text segments with the occasional blatantly obvious choice or blatantly obvious inventory decision. The characters in the text portions are mostly broad-strokes; no one's very deep here, not even the protagonists. There's the pretense of having to manage stats and money, but even on hard mode I'll admit I didn't even really have to think about those at any point. You do the easy "action" segments well, pick the obviously correct choices in dialogue, and that aspect of the game will literally never give you any challenge. There are some technical things that could use improvement: Audio settings are not saved between sessions, which is a pain. The delay for text boxes and texts in the in-game phone are a touch long, and needless inventory items linger throughout the whole character's playthrough, perhaps to add some artificial difficulty. Overall, I'd say the game has an identity crisis, I want to like it more because I find the core gameplay loop of the action segments enjoyable, and find farce an underutilized genre. There's a lotta fun ideas and aesthetic designs here! But the work itself and the marketing cannot decide whether it's an all-out farce or a darkly comedic political look at the logical conclusions of real world issues. It cannot decide if it wants to be an adventure game, it cannot decide what it wants its story to be and say, and it cannot decide on what level it wants to engage the player.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 18, 2022

  As much as I enjoyed playing this game, I can't in good faith recommend it. While I found the original NT's story to be confronting, and I realised it's political analogy, it was so overtly in your face this time that it would break the immersion of the game itself. Gameplay wise, it's a superb upgrade from the original with innovative and creative levels with unique mechanics that are fun to learn. But just because of how ham-fisted it is with it's story, it makes it very hard to enjoy. If you're okay with real-world politics bleeding into a story overtly, then this game may be fine for you, but, in my opinion, it was just handled badly.