https://kotaku.com/game-pass-norco-review-adventure-southern-gothic-raw-fu-1848726472
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norco_(video_game)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1221250/NORCO/
Has anyone played this? What did you think?
I loved it. It's a short adventure game with a great story. I gifted copies to all of my friends who I exchange steam games with at the holidays.
I have both played it and grew up right next door to the actual town of Norco (named for the New Orleans Refining Company), Louisiana, where my dad worked at one of the refineries.
It's so chock full of references I wonder if other people enjoyed it as much as I did. I DM'd Yuts on Twitter and we shot the shit a little bit about some of the references. They seemed stoked that someone local was playing and enjoying the game.
As for some overarching commentary on the oil industry or capitalism as a whole, if there was one there, it went straight over my head. The ending is so weird and divorced from what precedes it that I think the message had way more to do with family than it does with the petroleum industry.
As for some overarching commentary on the oil industry or capitalism as a whole, if there was one there, it went straight over my head. The ending is so weird and divorced from what precedes it that I think the message had way more to do with family than it does with the petroleum industry.
spoiler
I might be misreading it, but to me it felt like dealing with large systematic issues like your town being a big extractive industry cancer town may as well be an unreachable alien thing when you're bogged down in dealing with day-to-day problems like paying the bills or dealing with family issues.
You can be aware of the problems all you want, but your ability to make an individual impact on that is near meaningless and won't immediately help you with the problems you have right now. Like, the fugitive guy is :ecoterrorism:ing his way around, but is that going to change anything? The company is going to continue doing what it does and making people's lives worse.
All of the people in Norco have some level awareness of the bleak situation they're in, they just are trying to cope with it in their own ways.
Have not played it but I have heard great things about it
Was this the game that someone did a video comparing it to How to Blow Up a Pipeline?
Edit: lol, yes, it's the comment above.
Heard good things about it, it's in my list once Elden Ring ceases to be the entirety of my gaming time. Jacob Geller put it in his best of 2022 list, if I'm not mistaken, and I like his taste in games.
There's a neat interview on castle super beasts with one of the devs of the game, docsquiddy.
Episode 121: If you had one nut (they are known for their wild podcast titles), but it was a super sincere and nice to hear some back story and what went into the game
Edit: ok its more centered around a game called Adios, but he did work on Norco, sorry for the sidetrack....
