WTF? ...wait, I kinda like this thing!
Can I review something that is not really a game? Well, I'm being charged for it, so I guess that’s a yes.
I found myself purchasing this demoscene (unlike the other demoscenes I’ve heard about, this one is interactive) from PSN for about $2.99. So, the first thing I did was just watch the thing and then I interacted with it. Before I continue I have to say that although I enjoy art, I have little cultured in said area. Asa demoscene, Linger in Shadows almost seems to offer an epoch of an almost desolate postmodern world. When you are just watching it, you get an uninterrupted experience taking you from weird cool-looking areas to cool-looking areas with weird stuff in them that last about 20 minutes. When interacting with it, you get to manipulate time and space to uncover weird pockets of time that make no sense but look... bizzarly attractive. Not only that but if you don’t manipulate things in the demoscene, it will stop at a certain point, rewind, and pretty much ask you to find what needs to be manipulated to move forward in time. The demoscene will give you the prompts X to pause/play, controller with arrows pointing out (meaning shake the darn thing), O is kind of like an action button, select lets you take pictures, etc. What’s your reward for manipulating the demoscene correctly? You get those weird pockets of time and Trophies. But the demoscene has a bit more to it. It also has things scattered across the LiS world that are sort of tributes/recognitions to certain computer art groups. You find them and take pictures of them if you’d like to (I did) and you get the other trophies for your finds. You can unlock everything in just a bit over an hour but the journey is unique enough to make it entertaining.
What do you do with this after finding everything? Well, I’d probably visit it to just look at some of the things I might have missed, take pics of them to make them my XMB background, and then probably keep it in my HDD as a collectable thing. Maybe…? I think Linger in Shad is just that, a collectable (a piece of art that you might find yourself looking at seldom after that initial intense session with it). So, if you like interactive art (an interactive demoscene) than buy this. Just keep in mind that this is not a game.
