Best Month Ever! – Review
Best Month Ever is a visual adventure that follows Louise, a young single mother raising her eight-year-old son Mitch. Louise, who is suffering from an incurable illness, decides to take her son on a road journey across post-Vietnam America in order to find him a place to live when she is no longer alive. Louise (and occasionally Mitch) will be faced with a distinct set of options that will affect what kind of man her son will grow up to be, just like in a Telltale game. The story is told by an invisible adult named Mitch, who remarks on his mother’s thoughtful decisions and the challenges they faced along the way.
When making decisions, you’ll need to consider your son’s three characteristics: righteousness (which determines Mitch’s likelihood of following (or not following) the rules), intelligence (which determines Mitch’s likelihood of following (or not following) the rules), and courage (which determines Mitch’s likelihood of breaking the rules. Confidence (in oneself when doing something) and Relationships, which influence how he acts in public. Each option will add positive or negative points to these data, leading to one of nine possible outcomes. While there is a convincing appearance of choices, most of them will have little impact on the tale structure, with the exception of those that modify your son’s qualities. There are some quick time events, but if you fail them, nothing happens: no extra scene, no game over, nothing. This renders these QTEs completely meaningless.
Although the story’s idea is intriguing, there is a general lack of involvement throughout the several locales you will visit. With a slow-paced gameplay that is solely dependent on dialogues, you will occasionally be able to take a closer look at select goods, but nothing more. Although the voice acting is adequate, it is frequently excessively slow, and you must wait for the characters to finish their lines, even if you have already read the text, which cannot be skipped. Some may argue that Quantic Dream, Telltale, and other game developers do not allow you to skip text in their games. However, they have their own methods for keeping you engaged in the chat, such as using cinematic cutscenes and approaches, although in much more static 2D environments, skipping dialogues is ideal, like Night School Studio does.
The game has a nice visual style, with vibrant cel-shaded scenes and characters. Despite the scenes being small and simple, there are still some performance issues, such as prolonged loading times between chapters and occasional frame dips even below the 20s.
The primary issue, in my opinion, is that the game focuses too much on sensitive subjects like racism, paedophilia, and others, presenting generic caricatures and situations just to push its morals on these topics, rather than because of a well-written and engaging storyline. It’s essentially a nasty, but superficial, depiction of a world divided between black and white. The plot soon veers off course, and instead of focusing on Mitch’s development, it moves to a dying mother’s personal drama and her final (crazy) tasks. Even after circumstances that would be devastating for any youngster, the mother never speaks to her son about what happened. Some of the persons you meet feel as if they were forced to cross your path, and several situations are beyond of your control despite your earlier choices. Finally, you’re passively experiencing a game in the only manner it can be interpreted, which appears to be more like to sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture.
