My 100 Video Game Challenge (2024) #23: Virginia

Played on: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC

I remember Virginia kicking up quite a controversy during the time of its initial release in 2016. After playing through the game myself, considering that it's been sitting in my backlog for many years now (on three different platforms, even!), I can't imagine for the life of me why. There's nothing harmful or offensive about it. It's just an intriguing, albeit fictional interactive drama about a fledgling FBI agent, Anne Tarver, who investigates a mysterious disappearance in, well, Virginia, during the early 90's.

The reason why I decided to finally play through Virginia is because it's the debut game from British indie developer, Variable State, who happened to be the developers of Last Stop, that third game leaving PlayStation Plus at the same time as The Artful Escape and I Am Dead, the two previous games I'd played at that point in my 100 Video Game Challenge for this year. Keeping up? Good. Regardless, I was curious to see why Virginia turned so many heads for the wrong reasons back in 2016, having recalled that I'd constantly skimmed past it within my Xbox queue for years by that point. Thus, I took a small detour (the first of several, actually!) before playing through Last Stop a bit later.

A distinct hook throughout Virginia is that its entire progression is devoid of dialogue. Boasting graphics that feel like they were loosely adapted from the Super NES Mode 7 polygon chip, or perhaps the short-lived Atari Jaguar console (if you don't speak gamer, that's a lot of nerdy stuff about the origins of early 3D graphics), Virginia is presented as a cinematic account of a mysterious event, one that the player must piece together without any vocal cues from the characters. This includes using context clues to interact with whichever people and objects are necessary to proceed the story.

Virginia's surprisingly breakneck pace, jumping on a whim between a series of fragmented scenes, none of which are voiced at all, proves to be a surprisingly good way to keep the player engaged. The game almost feels like an immersive reflection of someone struggling to recall a traumatic or confused series of memories, but missing those handful of crucial pieces that will make everything suddenly make sense. That especially feels evident when you see the rather eccentric way that Virginia ultimately concludes, and I obviously won't spoil the apparent end of its rather bizarre overarching mystery.

That refusal to truly let the player in can also be a double-edged sword though. Virginia definitely feels strong as a showcase of cinematic gaming, weird, polygonal graphical style and all, but its deliberately obtuse storytelling can also demand a fair amount of patience. Even the way it all comes together can feel intentionally alienating, risking the feeling that the game will come off as a giant waste of time to certain players. This might be an example of a rather lean length working in a game's favour, since it will only take about 2-3 hours to play through Virginia in its entirety, something that the developers tried to supplement by including an achievement/trophy for just playing through Virginia twice. Either way, Virginia certainly doesn't overstay its welcome.

On the note of achievement hunting, the Xbox One version of Virginia also does that 'cute' thing where its achievements don't allot Gamerscore in multiples of 5, contrary to the majority of Xbox games. Keep that in mind if you're concerned about maintaining a nice, rounded Gamerscore number at all times. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, my Xbox Gamerscore currently remains ruined with another multiple, thanks to my failing to complete Cyber Shadow, another game that does that same 'cute' achievement thing on Xbox, back when it was on Xbox Game Pass. Maybe I should chase that game down and finish the job someday.

Back to Virginia's Xbox One version though, I unfortunately found it to be the weakest of Virginia's three available builds. The game's achievements proved to be a little sluggish and glitchy on Xbox most notably, plus I found that the performance and visual polish in the Xbox build seemed slightly inferior to its PS4 and PC siblings. Overall, I got the best experience on PC in this case, especially when I could easily power through all of Virginia's PC version on my Steam Deck, making it a standout game to take on the go. Virginia's PS4 version was pretty much just as solid to boot, feeling a little smoother and more stable to play than the Xbox version, at least in my experience.

So, with its alleged controversy being stillborn, and its story sometimes leaving me with more questions than answers, I felt that Virginia was a neat little distraction that somewhat left me wanting more, if not always in the good way. This is a solid showcase of Variable State's talents as a cinematic game developer, but it also feels like a first effort before something more ambitious and memorable. Some of Virginia's quick puzzle-solving and context clues were fairly cool at least, plus the mute characters hook was a decent way to make the game stand out from most other interactive dramas. Even then though, I feel like Virginia is missing that little extra something that would have really made it shine.

IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 7/10