This is the Zodiac Speaking

You know what I hate even more than terrible games? Average games. “Why?”, you may ask, “Surely average is better than bad any day, right?” When it comes to playing them, that may be true, but from a reviewer’s perspective (hi there), they’re damned difficult to write about. You see, good games and bad games have one thing in common: no shortage of writing material. Whether the graphics are gorgeous or god-awful, whether the voice acting is Oscar-worthy or cringe-worthy, whether the story is beautifully written or bullshit at best, whether the gameplay is programming perfection or practically unplayable, at the very least I have something to write about. I can gush or gripe as the case may be to my heart’s content about the good and the bad, and the why and the how. But with average games? There’s only so much time I can spend and so many words I can use to describe something as “...eh, it’s alright, I guess” before I feel like I’m repeating myself. In fact, you may have already guessed that the reason this opening paragraph is so long is a cheap attempt by me to try to stretch things out as long as possible. Oh, well...enough padding. Here’s the game.

DEVELOPER: Punch Punk Games

PUBLISHER: Klabater

RELEASED: October 15, 2020

RATING: n/a

AVAILABLE: Steam

PRICE: $12.99

Full disclosure, I got my copy of the game free via a giveaway held during the premiere viewing of an indie animated series called The West Patch (if you haven’t seen it, rectify that immediately!)

This Is The Zodiac Speaking is a sort of mystery puzzle game based on the real life case of a serial killer known as the “Zodiac Killer”. It also has stealth elements involving avoiding detection by “Zodiac” as you make your way to key areas, but the stealth sections can be avoided depending on which game mode you play.

You play a journalist named Robert Hartnell who, as far as I can tell has no relation to William of Doctor Who fame or, more importantly, the Zodiac case; he’s a fictional character, though things do get somewhat confusing as one of the cases in the game involves a Brian Hartnell, who actually was one of “Zodiac”’s victims (for the sake of avoiding confusion, when I use the name “Hartnell” from here on, I’m referring to Robert, the main character).

As an investigative journalist, Hartnell has been covering the Zodiac killings for some time, trying to crack “Zodiac”’s infamous cipher and find out who the killer really is, much to the detriment of his own personal life. A package sent to his house via a co-worker draws Hartnell out to a park in the middle of the night where he has a run-in with “Zodiac” who, for some reason, spares Hartnell.

If only I were better at the Daily Times Jr. Cryptograms!

The game jumps to six months later, and Hartnell has been seeing a therapist due to having recurring dreams involving “Zodiac” and some of his victims. Each case essentially consists of three phases. In the first, Hartnell explores his house to find items which somehow connect to one of the Zodiac killings. In the second phase, Hartnell goes to the therapist’s office and, through a process the doctor refers to as “live dreaming” (I’m not familiar enough with psychology and/or psychiatry to know if that’s an actual thing), he visits the crime scene and tries to piece together the events of the case using the clues he noted from his house. Finally, as part of some ritual again prescribed by the therapist, Hartnell puts together a mannequin representing that case’s murdered victim and “puts them to rest” with one of a number of items pertaining to the case. Multiple endings are present, depending on how successful you are in mentally closing each case, so thorough exploration is a must.

Sleep tight, fair wooden dummy, we hardly knew ye.

Several things about the game either annoy me, or just plain make no sense to me, my confusion about the concept of “live dreaming” notwithstanding. For one thing, when exactly is this game supposed to take place? Ostensibly it’s during the early ‘70s, but there are newspaper articles you can collect which appear to be from the ‘90s - I think one even makes reference to as late as 2019.

Entries in your journal are handwritten, but with toggleable voice reading as well, which would be good considering the small, light-gray-on-beige text is very hard to read...but the reading differs so much from what’s actually written, with the actor sometimes saying whole phrases that aren’t anywhere in the text. Such was the disparity between the two that I gave up keeping track of the journal entries very early into my playthrough.

Why exactly is Hartnell haunted by these particular cases? I’m pretty sure no explanation was given in game, though, as stated above, the journal’s wonkiness turned me off of reading it, so it’s possible I missed something.

Sadly, Hartnell would later learn that "My therapist made me dream about it" was not, in fact, admissible evidence.

Zodiac Speaking has stealth sections (mainly set during the “live dreams”) where you must avoid letting “Zodiac” see you and (presumably) kill you. These can be avoided if you play on Story Mode as I did, allowing you to concentrate solely on figuring out each case, but no matter which mode you play, you have a stamina meter to deal with and, as is typical for games of this type, running makes your stamina drain quicker than you can say “Hang on a sec, I’m out of breath”.

At certain points the game will present you with a choice to make, be it a photo during some of the therapy sessions which supposedly determines your next dream, a dialogue choice (annoyingly with Mass Effect style options, i.e.: briefly worded and potentially misleading), or an action to take. None of these choices matter one bit, as evidenced by a monologue making reference to Hartnell doing something I, in fact, did not do, as well as a playthrough video on YouTube which, when compared with my own run, shows that the photos in the therapy session have no bearing on what dream you have.

Now, Mr. Hartnell, I want you to relax, choose one of these photos which may as well be blank for all the difference they make to the gameplay, and count backwards from 10.

I honestly don’t know what to think of This Is The Zodiac Speaking. It wasn’t bad - if I had to give it credit for something, having a mode specifically devoted to going through the story without worrying about stealth is absolutely a good idea - but it wasn’t all that great either, marred primarily by confusion in multiple aspects. And as I stated at the top of this blog, if I try to qualify those statements, I’ll only end up repeating myself, so instead I’ll close with this…

...eh, it’s alright, I guess.

P.S.: Further proving my point about the overall “meh”-ness, it just occurred to me I haven’t even said anything about the graphics. Uh......they exist...and they are graphical. There, all done. So, uh...how’s your day?