"Zero Parades" review: Spy in a disco outfit
Every game must stand on its own. But most stand in the shadow of their predecessors. How is the new game from the "Disco Elysium" studio, by the way?
(Image: ZA/UM)
Video games are not all the same, but occasionally they feel that way. Shortly after the start of “Zero Parades”, the protagonist finds herself in a shabby room after a freshly occurred catastrophe. The camera looks from above. As in a graphic adventure, you can now click on objects in the room, which are then commented on in detail from different aspects of your own personality. Virtual dice rolls are constantly determining which thoughts and insights are blooming in the heroine's head.
No one intends to develop “Disco Elysium”
Anyone who knows the studio ZA/UM's previous game will inevitably think of “Disco Elysium“ from the very first glance. The exceptional hit from 2019 is closely linked to a creative team that fell apart after the game. Serious accusations are being made, about which long YouTube videos have already been published and competing studios have been founded. Why this is important when looking at “Zero Parades”: The game equally shows that this team also developed “Disco Elysium”. And unfortunately, it also shows that part of the team is missing.
“Zero Parades“ takes the previous game as a blueprint and pours completely new content into the form. The new game is also a narrative computer role-playing game on the border to adventure. Here too, the game world looks like a single large painting, and you play a broken, complex character with a constantly struggling inner life. Here too, dice rolls on countless more or less important questions determine whether something is achieved, thought, or perceived. Mechanically, there is nothing to criticize about the repetition. This is exactly how surprising and entertaining narrative games can be developed.
But “Disco Elysium” wasn't great because of the isometric camera perspective, but primarily because of its biting, witty narrative. And that is not repeated.
Follow the leader
Anyone who wants to enjoy “Zero Parades” has to ignore all that. Once you've overcome the initial impression, that's quite easy. It's set in a new world, it tells a spy thriller, and it's very exciting in a much more conventional way. The spy Hershel Wilk alias Cascade is broken, but she's not a drunken wreck. On the contrary, she's a smart and dangerous agent, quick-witted and reasonably unscrupulous. The voices in her head sound less dysfunctional, more like frantic deliberation: Has Cascade seen this type of combination lock before? Is she unmasking her conversation partner when they lie?
At the beginning of the story, everything seems completely hopeless. Cascade emerges from years of obscurity to accept a mission. But the matter was already botched before her arrival, so she first has to find out on her own what the mission would have been. Unfortunately, how much fun that is also depends on the language version. If you play in English, you'll have “Unassigned Assignment” in your journal in the first few hours of the game. Very correctly, but also very dryly, this becomes “Die nicht zugewiesene Aufgabe” in German, and that is symptomatic. The English original captures every pun and every nasty punchline – the German version often doesn't even try to translate the joke. In addition, it is factually incorrect a few times and distorts a “lead” into a “leader” – “follow the leader”.
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You can play the German version and understand the essentials, but you read a lot of language that nobody would ever say or want to read: “For an entity dedicated to 'human prosperity', EMTERR seems indifferent to the state of actual humans. How liberal,” says a character in the game, for example. The original can also be strenuously original, but it has a clear style and sticks to it. If you feel up to English literature, you should play the original. The voice acting remains in English anyway.
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A beautiful cart in the dirt
Cascade carries her self-doubt with her, but beyond that, she's quite a chameleon. She quickly finds clues in the narrative and collects freely usable experience points, so she really gets stronger and can face the absurd, deadly shadow play. “Zero Parades” features a large cast of characters, which is always slightly exaggerated. The agents in the story have a touch of comic book heroes, not just because of their dramatic code names.
The look maintains a certain vagueness. The world is ruined all around, in this fantasy scenario, the cart between three political blocs is even more chaotic than in reality, and the nervously scribbled lines on all surfaces fit this. The world looks sketched, it could be torn apart and reassembled at any time. When playing, you have to be careful in the hustle and bustle not to overlook any objects or paths. But if you do, it's rarely bad. There is a map, a proper fast travel function, and you can save at any time outside of dialogues and fix mishaps if you'd like to.
The main thing is that it goes wrong
Failing checks are the engine of the narrative. Things going wrong is part of it, but it can be frustrating. If Cascade finally finds the pliers and stands in front of the padlock, she can still fail an 83 percent chance and then not get the door open. She can try again, but she has to wait a while. At least you usually don't have to load a save game after mishaps. The design is remarkably good at always keeping a few locations open. In 19 hours of gameplay, we haven't found a challenge that can only be solved in exactly one way. And we haven't managed to maneuver Cascade into a complete dead end or a game over. However, we are still in the middle of the game after the playtime.
Conclusion: Good Elysium-like
Muddling through tricky situations remains a lot of fun. The tone is over the top, but entertaining. Over the hours, you actually collect various clues and piece together absurd puzzle pieces into unheard-of insights. And that is a new strength. Getting lost in this thriller and then progressing layer by layer is really well implemented.
After the unprecedented success of "Disco Elysium," a whole flood of psychological role-playing games is coming. This one is at least successful and entertaining in the first half. Here the narrative is much more conventional. The result is not a masterpiece, but good entertainment.
“Zero Parades” will be released on May 21 for Windows. A PS5 version is to follow. It costs approx. 40 Euros.
(afl)
