Dealing with the issue of the contemporary refugee crisis while at the same time being deeply rooted in a classical cyberpunk atmosphere à la Blade Runner, NORTH features a dark synthpop soundtrack, a sprawling mega-city and weird monster-like inhabitants.
The worst quality of North isn’t its obtuse game design, rough visuals, or jumbled storytelling, but rather the self-aggrandisement encompassing it all. Outlands saw an interesting real-world topic and settled on exploring it through a vacuous, insincere art-house demo.
NORTH carries an important message that it wants to impart, but whether it manages to successfully convey it to the player is debatable. The cyberpunk atmosphere helps it to stand apart from other games on the Nintendo eShop. But, with the developer having exerted more effort to create unpredictable and trippy scenes, you soon come to the realization...
While the game set out to invoke some sort of feelings in people regarding refugees and their plight. I feel that it failed on that message and really was just an unintelligible mess. It just became a walking simulator where weird shit happens unexplained. It seems that their intended message just didn't translate over in to gaming as well as they might...
NORTH is rather brilliant game, but poorly executed. It's a commentary about asylum, immigration, and proving your worth to the society. It's not as good as it may seem. Or is it?
North is an interesting game with something special to offer despite its flaws.
