Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Wasn't What I Expected
And yet it was still very well crafted and enjoyable.
A couple weeks ago I reviewed Life is Strange: Double Exposure and I was disappointed. All it really did was make me want to play Lost Records: Bloom and Rage. So that's what I did. I wanted to wait until just before Tape 2 came out, which was yesterday. Once it went on sale for that release, I grabbed it and played through Tape 1 at the end of last week and Tape 2 just yesterday.
The game had me thinking I was up for some kind of immense paranormal journey for these young teens. That I was going to go in and get to see something weird happen and it was going to be a Summer that Changed Everything. While it was a summer that changed everything, it was not a big paranormal journey or even much of any paranormal stuff. It... wasn't what I expected, although maybe what I expected was my own misunderstanding of the game's pitch. This has lead to me having to sit and think a lot more about the game for this review than I usually have to do. What follows is what came out of that sitting and thinking, as opposed to me writing most of it while I'm playing the game.
The Premise
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is the newest game from Don't Nod, a studio that is fucking fantastic at making engaging story experiences that are inclusive and interesting with a paranormal edge to them. Lost Records is a bit more interesting because it has a new approach to it, the majority of the game is a flashback. You play Swann as she reminisces with her friends in 2022 for the summer of 1995 where some shit went down. The game starts in the present with Swann meeting Autumn at a bar in their hometown. They begin to remember '95 where the majority of the gameplay takes place. In that summer of '95 Swann meets her new friends Kat, Nora, and Autumn. They're all awkward and weird teens and you can really feel their teenageness in their very design and acting. Swann is meeting these friends in the present, despite making a promise at the end of the '95 summer to never see each other again, because Autumn's mom got a package with their bands name, Bloom & Rage, on it and as they reminisce we find out the reason the package exists and why the promise was made.
The Good
One of the things this game does so well is nostalgia. Seeing the CRT TV, the old camcorder, the VHS tapes and VCRs, the blockbuster equivalent, the landline phones, the N64 equivalent, the bulky headphones, mentioning discmans, the static lines across the screen when you flash between past and present, those fucking sticky hands. It all makes you feel like you're experiencing what the 90s was like. I wasn't very old in the 90s but I remember all of the stuff in the game, I remember having a Walkman and Discman, I remember holding rewind on VCRs because it was the nice thing to do when you were done with them, I remember playing N64 at my friends house. This game hit that spot, it made me remember what the 90s were like even though I was so young. I loved it because of this, I adored experiencing it, seeing the little touches of things that triggered nostalgia. It was truly wonderful and feels very directed towards people who lived through back then as opposed to a younger crowd.
As I've talked about in so many of my reviews, I love a game with good characters. If a game has shit characters I will really hate it (which happened with a lot of Kingdom Hearts 2). Lost Records creates a cast of characters that are both awkward teens driven by hormones and more mature versions of those same characters that look back on '95 with nostalgia and with embarrassment. They feel so relatable. You get to see first crushes, betrayals, Swann adjusting from being so much of a loner to having close friends, feeling like the adults in the world are just all assholes, them all being cringey because that's what all teens are, even losing friends after a big event that changes you as people. These are usually things that most people have had their own experiences in and the characters in the game are written in a way that you can see yourself in them. I was just as awkward with my friends as Swann was, I was just as awkward about my first crush. I got sick a lot and ended up going to the hospital a lot in my teens so I can relate to some of the issues that Kat had to go through. Although, I didn't have a time where I got together with my best friends in what is obviously a circle of mushrooms that the Faye will capture you in and then curse a guy who was an asshole. Yet, because I can relate to the other experiences, I can relate to that experience. The characters are very well written and because the game allows you to pick your responses you're allowed to create your own Swann that is, at least mildly, different from someone else's.
The story, as I stated at the start of this review, is not really what I expected but is still an interesting journey. The marketing gives off this feeling of being incredibly paranormal, that something spooky is happening and you don't know what. But that's not at all what the game is actually like. There are a total of 4-5, maybe 6 scenes where anything paranormal even enters into it (most of which happen near the end of the game) and besides that it's just a normal, punk-band starting, summer adventure with new friends, one of whom happens to be dying. There's this moment where the core group all wish for something at the abyss, a sinkhole filled with purple light that is essentially the only thing paranormal about the entire game, and you would expect those wishes to be examined more. To see if they really ever came true, but that doesn't really happen. Sure, Nor wishes to be a famous rockstar and becomes a big time fashion designer, but that's more likely having to do with the fact that her Mom literally works in some kind of Hollywood set up in LA and has connections so she likely would have been able to be famous anyway, as opposed to showing the wish actually being the deciding factor. You get to pick Swanns wish and while I can see the argument for it having come true, I don't think it did, but I can't go into a lot of detail there. Kat, meanwhile, is the only one that might have had her wish granted, in a way. She wishes to be able to escape the hell she lives in and she does...sort of. That's complicated and I'll go into more detail later but right now, her escape is probably the only thing that the Abyss granted. Despite those faults, the story is still compelling and made me want to keep playing. Not having as much paranormal stuff in the game is simply a reality that once I got past, I had a much more satisfying time with the game.
One of the shticks of the game is that Swann has a very 90's camcorder she uses to film a bunch of stuff just around town and with her friends. It is utilized wonderfully and made me remember walking around with my own camcorder, or watching the recordings of the camcorder my family had that we had transferred to tape so we could see what had been captured. It brought me back to my old film days where I was recording and taking pictures of a ton of stuff to be able to use it for editing and for just experience. The camcorder has this wonderfully 90's aesthetic in the film quality for it as well. It's just very well done and really makes you feel like you're watching the screen or through the viewfinder of one of the older camcorders from the era.
Lost Records' best moments are when all of the above mesh together perfectly, and then you add in some paranormal shit for good measure. Like when Swann is showing the group, in Nor's garage, what they recorded during their excursion in the woods for their music video. It all starts fine and, eventually, shit gets weird when the lights start to flash, they go out, and purple lights take over. Something is trying to communicate to them and only them. We find out later that the lights going out only happened in the garage, no where else in the entire town. It's moments like this of wonderful characters being their dorky selves, the nostalgia being top notch, the chemistry between all of the main group of characters, and the mild paranormal weird shit that the game really shows what it can be. There, unfortunately, aren't a whole lot of these moments, but the ones that are there really made me care for the characters much more.
The Bad
The game took 3 hours to get to any mild paranormal stuff, when the Abyss is introduced. I don't inherently have a problem with a game doing buildup, but it feels like it took too long. Those 3 hours are you getting to know the core crew, and it does a good job of that, they really felt like awkward teens in the 90s. Despite the build up being well done, the game felt as if it was torn between trying to tell a non-paranormal nostalgic story about the 90s, and a paranormal influenced nostalgic story about the 90s. It felt torn, like the game should have included more evidence of a paranormal influence going on in the story. There are some moments that you have that felt like they were really leading up to something interesting and kept being a let down. It's not until the ending that I really felt like there was a payoff for the small amount of paranormal seeds that had been laid out during the story. I still think there should have been more seeds though. Even just a couple more. I shouldn't be playing a game and feel like the story isn't even mentioning this Abyss that opened up that possibly grants wishes for a couple hours. Give me more paranormal stuff, the game needed it. For instance, there's a moment in Tape 2 when Swann has snuck into Kat's room, they're discovered by Dylan and Corey and have a big fight. This isn't that long from the end so it would have been a perfect time to do something that was done once in Tape 1, show that Corey is being influenced by the Abyss to do shitty things. Again, this happened in Tape 1 during another fight he had with Kat when his face glowed purple for a second or two. It was the exact moment to lead into it again. Then...nothing. Just a normal fight which will either end with the camcorder being broken or Kat being choked. I just felt let down by the potential.
I wish the game told you more obviously that when you were gonna select something that it would progress the narrative. A few times during the game I had moments where I completely missed a couple parts because I didn't realize the thing I selected would progress. For instance, about 4 hours in you're cleaning up a cabin with the core group. You're able to help each of them with their clean up, but if you select Swann's backpack then you progress the narrative. I didn't know this so I only helped two of the crew do their thing before selecting the backpack. This didn't change the narrative much, just made it so later on when the group is going to see the lake nearby Kat mentions that "We cleared a path" then corrects herself and says "well. I cleared a path" because I didn't help her clear it. Which kinda sucked. I felt bad. This is both a sign of a good game that it can make me feel bad, and a game that needs a more obvious way to show you what your selecting of things will do. Partially this is my fault as they do have a symbol to show you'll be leaving the scene, but it's harder to notice that for me than words for some reason, probably just how my brain works. Regardless, I think if they had added in parenthesis under the Backpack text a simple (progress) or something, it would have completely solved my problem. They could even have it be a setting where you can pick between the symbol and text. Again, probably just a me issue.
The controls in this game needed a little bit of work or at least two small changes. For instance, Swann needs to move faster because, fuck she moves slowly even when running, and if you know anything about me you should know that I fucking hate slow walking. Then, you move what feels like even slower when you are using the camcorder, it sucks. Next, this game needs an FOV slider. The camera is so damn close to Swann, waaaaay too close. She literally takes up half the screen. I felt claustrophobic walking around because of how little of both the world I saw and how close I was to her. I hated it. And this should be a simple fix since this is an Unreal Engine game and that's built in. I also wish I could choose when to start and stop recordings on the camcorder as it only does a few seconds at a time and it would have been much more interesting to be able to choose stop and start so I could get better shots of...everything.
The Ending
Obviously, with the basis for the game being that you get to make choices to determine your narrative, some of this will be different than an ending you could get. So keep in mind that not all of this is a spoiler, just almost all of it. Also, there's a lot to this ending so I'm trying to describe it in the fewest words as possible which is still a lot.
The core group destroys and vandalizes Kat's family's business because she is pissed at them for locking her up and tolerating abusive pieces of shit like Corey. You go around spray painting and destroying shit. Then you sneak into the barn to let the deer out of their cages to be able to finally roam free without Kat's family making money off of selling them to be hunted. Corey discovers this, the team runs away, Corey pursues on his motorbike. Shit goes south, he gets shoved off his bike by the very deer that the group had released (whose eyes were glowing green seemingly in a paranormal fashion but could have also just been the light of the bike).
The team hides out at Fawns Rest, Corey and Dylan discovers them after they have had a party and are sleeping, he enters after waking them, seemingly gets possessed because his voice sounds demonic while he's hurting Kat, Swann stabs him (how could I not pick that option), then everyone flees. He pursues...again... and you make it to the Abyss. Where Kat and him have a fight where they both seemingly get possessed and then Kat starts beating on him, and in my case, so does Swann and Autumn. Eventually, Kat, Autumn, and Swann all push Corey into the Abyss for him to perish in whatever way it wants I guess. Then, loud noise that makes everyone freeze and get overwhelmed with pain, their eyes glow purple, and everyone passes out.
Dawn breaks, everyone wakes up, the Abyss has been closed after it accepted Corey as the final offering, thus fulfilling it's end of the bargain for at least Swann's wish, and definitely the curse. The team makes a promise to never see each other again, since Kat says that's what the Abyss wants, and then Kat fucking up and fades out of existence.
Present day, Autumn gets overwhelmed by the memories and refuses to be there to open the box so leaves, you open the box, and go over how Kat had a note for the whole team and mementos from everyone that had made her summer feel special. Eventually, after going over all the mementos and Kat's thoughts on the team, Nor and Swann leave and end up spending a bit of time together, just them, including Swann filming Nor playing some guitar that just so happened to still be in the old garage she used to hang out in while the purple ghosts but not really ghosts of Autumn and Kat look on. Then they go back to their cars, Nor leaves, and Swann sees the glowing purple butterflies that had popped up multiple times in the game. Credits.
Post credits you see a little recording on the camcorder of Kat seemingly trying to communicate to Swann saying that she is in the Abyss and needs help. We then take over Swann who goes to the Abyss while Kat calls for help, and then I chose for her to enter it, I assume to save Kat.
The ending felt like there was definitely some payoff. It felt like the small amount of seeds for the Abyss influencing both Kat and Corey really came to fruition. The game provided some truly interesting decisions that I didn't quite expect and overall, I was happy with it. At least, until the post credits. I had figured Kat was probably alive in the Abyss or something, but to know that I was right, and that the game was simply setting itself up for a hopeful sequel was simultaneously undercutting Kat's death and intriguing me for where Kat actually is and how Swann could even save her.
Honestly, it was a mixed bag here. Some really good payoff, but the teaser at the end was frustrating. Honestly, I just wish there was a Tape 3 where we play in the present and manage to, with the help of the older group, save Kat from the Abyss.
The Conclusion
I think Lost Records: Bloom & Rage has a lot going for it. It provides a story that takes some interesting turns, it has characters that have that nostalgic teen awkwardness to them, it provides a wonderful setting that makes you feel like you're back in the 90s, and it even has a pretty damn good ending. The game just needed more seeds. It needed to have the devs lean more into the paranormal aspect. Not necessarily answering any questions about what the Abyss is, or how it came to be, or any of that shit, I'm fine not knowing that. I mean, I wish we saw the impacts of the Abyss outside of just a handful of scenes. The game is only about 10 hours long, not a super long game, but still plenty of scenes that would have benefited from more seeds.
I really enjoyed Lost Records. But an important thing for you, the reader and possibly future player of the game, to know is that it's not a game so steeped in powers and paranormal as other games from Don't Nod that were similar in structure to this game were. You don't have powers, you don't really have much interaction with anything paranormal. It exists but the main driver of the story is just that Swann, Kat, Autumn, and Nora had an amazing Summer of '95 and that they managed to forget it and are now having to go over it again to remember what happened and why they promised never to see each other again. Don't go in expecting a Life is Strange, go in expecting a personal story with emotional moments that is much more grounded than some of the marketing would make it seem. If you keep that in mind, you'll have a lovely experience seeing these characters make mistakes and have a life changing summer. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage was a great game that had some problems, but overall kept me interested and has made me hope there's a sequel.
Meow,
Cat