Virginia Review

"FBI Trip"

Campaign

In Virginia you take on the role of an FBI agent on a case to find a missing boy in this small town. That's actually just your main goal as you're given a secondary objective of doing a performance review on your partner. Together you'll go about the time in almost a complete cutscene style discovering clues of what happened.

It's actually fascinating in the way it's done as this is very much a guided journey with constant time skips giving you only key glances at what's actually going. I was pleasantly surprised at how they were able to convey such emotion using only body language and music as the game contains no spoken audio. While this might seem odd I was still entirely engaged throughout the game trying to create my own conclusions on what exactly was happening.

I found this was never truly displayed through the game as most of the game is solid, whereas the ending I was left largely confused. It could have also been a bit longer as well fleshing out the story since it comes across as more artistic than story focused of which it was building a strong story around.

Gameplay

Virginia is a beautiful game bringing soft strokes of art that still perfectly captured individuals and their emotions. It's mostly guided being a cinematic experience though you do interact with scenes at certain times to discover events or find some minor details. I had no issues or challenges when going through the game as there wasn't really puzzles for say.

Aside from that the world was lovely and each room you visited had a distinct emotion to it. I was very impressed with the level of detail in the world and that there were so many distinct locations that ventured through. They did a great job of playing with emotions through other methods than voice and it worked well.

The Conclusion

I found Virginia to be an excellent story with deep emotional aspects that were conveyed very well. It did seem to tip a bit off towards the ending as I wasn't exactly sure what happened and it left me rather confused since I thought it was building to something more.

It was an interesting journey to search for this missing boy and it nailed those classic FBI investigations you see on TV or Movies giving off a good X-Files vibe. That aside I felt the ending missed the mark a bit and felt the experience was a bit short being under two hours in length and playing more like an episodic piece which this type of game would fit well into.

Virginia Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by Rogers and Cowan

Rating Overall: 7.4