The following is a review which I wrote for LSD on the PlayStation over at GameSpot. However, unlike the version found on that site, this one does not contain a score for reasons which are made very apparent in the review. While some may wonder what a review actually has to do with writing about the development process of video games and other such topics, it fits in quite nicely with the other posts with enough contemplation. With that, here is the unabridged and unedited review of a game whose eclectic qualities top even those of vib-ribbon.
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Creative ideas for video game concepts come from all corners of the globe and in spades at that. But whereas North America and Europe are known for conceiving things which are often more less able to be incorporated into the mainstream with a little effort, Japan is essentially synonymous with much more abstract ideas which make for much tougher sells. Some, like the notion of playing as male cheerleaders in rhythm games and monster-capturing with the help of balls, have nevertheless gone on to be popular outside of their home country and can hold their own against more “normal” western styles. Others, however, such as ones involving adventures in tomato kingdoms and using fishing lines as grappling hooks, have remained squarely within their homeland for a variety of reasons. LSD for the PlayStation falls squarely in the latter category, but because of completely different things than most other games with such a fate. With a premise so imaginative that it really could only from someone who has experienced the titular drug for themselves, LSD is bound to remain forever an extremely obscure import game solely because no words can really justly describe it. That hardly hinders it from being a highly memorable experience, but it certain makes things difficult when trying to determine what it actually is for oneself. LSD is truly the one game ever developed which requires playing it firsthand to even begin comprehend what exactly it does.
LSD essentially revolves around the idea of it being a “dream emulator,” as it calls itself. While those two words may seem somewhat oxymoronic in nature, that is indeed what the game is essentially about. LSD’s only job for its entirety is to simulate the sensation of what all people undergo whilst sleeping: dreaming. However, it is not necessarily fond of conveying ordinary dreams. That sort is hardly dinner table conversation-worthy, so it chooses instead to focus on the more bizarre variety which defy explanation. Those are the ones which people have a tendency to remember years after they have had them and, thankfully, LSD has plenty of those in spades.
Getting to the “trippy” parts, though, is a journey in and of itself. The game considers accessing them to be a privilege and as such requires that the player put a little bit of work into it before actually having the chance to experience them. This work is extremely simple, as the game only allows the player to do two different things throughout its entirety: move around in a first-person viewpoint and bump into nearly anything and everything in the game’s environments. While most games would benefit from a bit more nuance than those two things, adding anything more to LSD would likely be distracting and it is therefore excusable that not much else is included. It simply does not need anything else for it to stand tall and proudly, even in this day and age in video games.
How those two previously-mentioned actions are intertwined with each other forms the core of LSD’s experience. The game is split into a number of dream sequences, each of which only last for a relatively short period of time. They all begin simply and normally. Nothing too terribly out of the ordinary is ever to be found in the beginning of any of the dream sequences. The start of the sequences commences in modest environments, whether they be the indoors of a house, a small-scale Japanese town, or something else. It is then up to the player to just explore these places until something distinctive draws them to come closer to it. Once they get near enough to it, the game then loads a different environment which is a bit more absurd. This process continues until things get so insane that all rational thought should be thrown out of the metaphorical window, which typically happens rather quickly. They all have a definitive ending in that the game suddenly concludes them all and then doles out a quasi-grade by placing the dream sequence on a scale equally as bizarre as everything else. But for all intents and purposes, LSD is otherwise a game which has a seemingly never-ending cycle of degenerative sensibilities.
To put into perspective what just one dream sequence could entail, it is very possible to encounter things such as flying elephants, nuclear missiles suddenly emerging from grassy knolls, sumo wrestlers circling each other in a cave, toy soldiers marching in unison, and much, much more. Even the environments themselves in which the player pursues these oddities are often altered in addition to the things which inhabit it. The current world might be completely plastered in Japanese hiragana, for example. Or, the location to which something such as a tunnel or stairwell leads may reveal something else which is not the same as the previous time. All of these different things ensure that LSD never provides something completely familiar. With enough combing through even the most visited locations, there is always something new to be found so as to show that consistency is not something for which the game strives. Variety being the spice of life is the mantra by which the game fervently abides constantly and it never fails to follow that the very last letter.
Even describing the core components of any video game is a struggle when it comes to LSD. There are a number of seemingly very deliberate design decisions in those areas which might normally garner criticism but are extremely ambiguous in nature in only this instance. For instance, while the graphics can be said to be extremely simple both technically and artistically, that seems to avoid the very possible fact that they could be designed to actually be that way. They may very well be simple so as to actually accent the game and grant it some additional flavor it may not have had already. Who is to say that low-polygon models, fog, and other so-called “blemishes” actually have some ulterior motive for being that way in LSD and only in LSD? The same things can also be said about LSD’s sounds and music. Again, while they are definitely low-key in nature, the traits to be found within them prevent them from getting demerits which other games might receive. This extends to the controls and virtually everything else which makes up the game. There is not a lot to any of it at all, but it seems that they are all the way they are presented so as to serve whatever greater purpose it is that the player should perceive to have for it. It is all enigmatic if and only if because that is the only way the game can ever be.
Let us simply admit this fact: LSD is an extremely difficult game to properly review, assuming that task in and of itself is even an achievable one. It is definitely not a game which should be looked at the way that most others are, as the point of it is then completely missed. Instead, LSD is a game which is bound to have a meaning which only the players themselves can define and therein lies the inherent brilliance which underwrites it all. It is not something which meshes well at all with everything else that has ever been released in the gaming universe, but those who can get over that fact will find that LSD is the only game ever conceived which can forever epitomize the word “unique.” Nothing before it ever came close to providing gameplay like LSD’s at all and chances are extremely slim that another game will come along and replicate any semblance of it. To say that it challenges the idea of what a game ought to be is to understate what LSD does by an extreme magnitude.
