The Red Strings Club

The game opens to a rain-drenched neo-noir cityscape. In two seconds, I've already decided that I love this game.

The Red Strings Club is a cyberpunk bar-tending game. Sounds like a pretty unique idea, right? It's actually not the first cyberpunk bar-tending

game I've heard of though, so, clearly the zeitgeist is in need of them. You play as the bartender/information broker of the club, and your goal is to pour the right kind of drink to get people in the mood to confess their secrets.

The manual side of the gameplay, pouring the drinks and working the lathe (yes, you also get to play a robot who uses a lathe) are simple but satisfying. Where the game really shines is the choices you make. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a game that has done a better job of making me feel like my choices matter.

The story is great. It hooks you in immediately and quickly pulls you into a compelling narrative. I started this game at 3am, I was just going to check it out a little before bed. I ended up staying up till 8am so I could finish it. Although, that would be a more impressive feat if I wasn't the kind of person inclined to stay up until morning playing video games in the first place. But seriously, the story is terrific. It's good cyberpunk, and it's good science fiction. I have this ideal in my head of what makes good science fiction and it goes like this:

Good science fiction makes us question. What if this technology existed? How would it be used? And most importantly, what are the moral ramifications?

This game not only raises these questions, but puts you in a position where you have to answer them and deal with the consequences.

So, would I recommend this game? Absolutely. This game is, I dare say, a perfect game. If you enjoy cyberpunk at all, please buy this game. Also, I swear, I'm not trying to give such glowing recommendations for all the games I review. It just happens that a lot of the games I'm playing right now rock hard.