Far From The Stars - To The Moon Review
Developer: Freebird Games
Publisher: Freebird Games
Review Platform: PC (Steam)
Release Date: November 1, 2011
With a pleasant soundtrack and an interesting premise, To the Moon’s trailer left me with high expectations of a charming story with characters I could get to know and care for. Positive reviews plastered all over the web describe the game as having a touching and heartwarming story, one that is so moving that you will break down in tears. For many, it’s written to be the best game they’ve seen in a year or even two.
What a beautiful way to be greeted by a game. The light from the moon shines on your selection.
The game begins by introducing Dr. Neil Watts and Dr. Eva Rosalene who are entrusted with fulfilling the final wish of their patient, Johnny. In order to do this, they use a machine that allows them to travel through memories and change one pivotal moment in his past. As you travel through time, going from Johnny's recent memories to his deepest and most hidden, you uncover more of the story and mysteries.
To the Moon showed so much promise but never quite reached the stars for me. The game's story, which could have been an enjoyable and emotional ride, was littered with too many bumps in the road. These came in the form of snide comments from Dr. Watts, a character one would expect to show some amount of professionalism; his counterpart, Dr. Rosalene, was only slightly better when it came to the constant back and forth banter. Every touching moment was completely lost by off-the-wall remarks and childish, dated references.
One of the lines in the story that struck me as odd and unnecessary came after Johnny was asked why he wanted to go to the moon and replied “I just... do”. Dr. Watts whispers to Rosalene, “I can already tell this is gonna be a pain in the ass.”
My thoughts exactly when thinking of this game.
This pattern of commentary only gets worse later on when you get to see more of Dr. Watts' disrespect toward his patient, Johnny.
When the doctors walk inside the house and see a collection of paper origami rabbits, Dr. Watts says:
“This is creeping me out.
We should have checked his record for psychopathy first.”
This isn't something you'd exactly expect a doctor to say, but then again Dr. Watts never comes across as a believable doctor in this story.
One moment that should have been touching is ruined yet again by Dr. Watts' character. While Johnny is playing a song that was written for his wife, River, Dr. Watts can hardly stand the moment and says:
“Y’Know what. I’m too manly for this.
I’m heading on.”
Later, Dr. Watts resorts to insulting his patient directly with lines like, “The kid’s in the theatre all by himself! What a loser!”
And:
“I ain’t talking to no emo teenager.”
But Dr. Watts isn't the only character in this story that says things that destroy the mood. No character is immune from the horrible writing in this game.
A wonderful scene of the two lovers can't even be saved.
When the two are dancing in the lighthouse, a remark from Johnny comes out of nowhere. It doesn't even make sense in the context.
“Oww, my ass.
I think you stepped on my toes.”
None of the dialogue added much to the story, and the conversations were overly vague and unsettling for no apparent reason whatsoever. It's one thing to be mysterious, but this “Oh hey, so did you tell River that thing from back then?” (Direct quote) is just ridiculous. Hours into the game, I was finally thrown a couple bite-size answers that were mere annoyances, like the name of the lighthouse, instead of anything I really wanted to know. The pressing question of what was wrong with River was never answered.
And now to the gameplay, which felt more like a chore and an afterthought. The mini games did nothing to enhance the story further nor were they fun to play. I traveled into a dying man's memories to spend the majority of the game walking around a small area until I stumbled upon five colored balls that were collected to proceed to the next level with a tile-flip puzzle at the end of each. Perhaps the funnest part of the game was galloping around on horseback, but even that is made dull, because the goal is still to collect five balls by randomly walking around the screen. As far as the gameplay works, there is no challenge, no reason, and no purpose other than to waste time. What wasted opportunities!
What a magical game; no wonder Johnny has bothered to remember it for 60+ years.
There were so many potentially moving moments throughout the game, and every single one was destroyed by self-destructive writing. I was confused how an old man could say, “When I was a kid, I loved the Animorphs series”; the present date in the game was even established as “201X”. There were so many references to games, shows, and popular characters from other series that I probably lost count.
Here are the ones I recognized: Twilight, Dr. Who, Dragon Ball Z, Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky, Final Fantasy, and various comic book references.
Every time one of these cheese ball reference jokes were mentioned, it took away from the magic of the actual story. To the Moon's story could be related to its character Johnny's heart rate monitor; as the story progressed, the heart rate monitor shows us that he is slowly dying, like my patience for this game.
Quite honestly, the game decided for itself to not allow me to go any further which was a blessing in disguise. The game glitched out on me when I was listening to Johnny and River talk on the cliffside. This glitch allowed me to walk through all visible and invisible barriers. I could walk past the lighthouse into the sky and even touch the moon, but it would not let me collect the final ball I needed to activate the memento to travel through more memories.
I still watched the rest of the gameplay on Youtube which was also painful but marginally less.
I suppose it isn't a surprise to me that this glitch was overlooked when the game had a series of typos as well, including a misspell of the word beautiful (beautful), Rachel from Animorphs had her name spelled as Racheal, and there was “Oh... Yeah, that's sounds just swell.”
Overall, the gameplay, the story, and the characters all came across unpolished, resulting in a “game” that hardly deserves that title. It was more like a drawn out short story that probably wouldn't have gotten any recognition without the soundtrack and quaint pixel style.
This glitch was the only time in the game that I was able to soar “to the moon”.
Rating: 2/5
Review Summary:
While this game had a lot of potential, it fell short due to its immature and unbelievable writing. The soundtrack and pixel art are sure to attract a lot of attention, but other aspects of the game lack the same quality to make this game magical. Gameplay was trivial, including only a few, repetitive mini games and scavenger hunts. The conclusion of the story is neither surprising nor enough to generate emotion from gamers that desire more than lifeless one-dimensional characters.