Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is one of the first truly great reasons to own a PlayStation Vita. Nine people wake up in a locked complex, where a masked figure calling himself Zero forces them to play a game of trust and betrayal: everyone has a point account, pairs decide behind closed doors between cooperation and backstabbing, and only those who accumulate nine points are allowed to leave. On top of that, you first have to get out of each individual room, which splits the game into long dialogue passages and classic escape-room puzzles.

The escape rooms are the best thing the puzzle side has to offer. Each has its own theme, set of objects, combination locks, and hidden codes, and they're solved through real deduction, not random clicking. The Vita's touch controls make sense here, since examining objects and combining inventory items is fast and intuitive. The story side runs on a branching flowchart that remembers the game for the player: at any point you can jump back to any decision, take a different branch, and carry knowledge gained elsewhere into it. This isn't just a convenience, it's literally part of the plot. The game also keeps a clear log of information found and a glossary of terms, without which it would be easy to get lost in the tangle of clones, viruses, and timelines, and any unfinished room can be left and returned to later.

Graphically the game swapped the predecessor's drawn portraits for three-dimensional models, which cost it a bit of character but allowed full voice acting and much more dynamic direction. The sound design works with silence and a claustrophobic electronic loop that turns empty corridors into an unpleasant place to be. Critics received the game very well, praising above all how the puzzles and the storytelling reinforce rather than get in each other's way. Today Virtue's Last Reward remains an essential title for anyone who likes detective and sci-fi plots built on paradoxes, and on a handheld the short-session format suits it even better than it does on a big screen.