XBOX REVIEW | Despelote

I don’t have much with soccer, but Despelote‘s story about a nation rallying behind the national team reminded me of my own childhood, where my own communion celebration took 2nd seat to the Belgian team playing against the Dutch. For about 100 minutes, the only thing that existed in the world was that soccer match on the big screen.

In Despelote, Julian Cordero retells the story of Ecuador having a shot at playing in the World Championship and how everyone in the country felt national pride and rooted for the team with each match. He was still 4 at the time and his memory is vague, so in the game he’s telling it as if he was 8 instead, but it’s still an interesting take on how our memory fades when we grow older and letting us experience that in game form is something I just had to check out for myself.

Things I liked!

• The Art style | The pointillist recreation of real environments is an interesting approach, as you can even tell some people and objects are remembered in great detail, whereas other locations have faded more because the protagonist of the story has forgotten them. To make characters and interactive items stand out, they are drawn in an outlined art style, giving the game a very distinct aesthetic that I can really appreciate.

• A Documentary | As a documentary of a certain period, in interactive format, this is very much a success story. It’ll help document that specific point in time for the ages, and allow other people to experience it firsthand for themselves. You can choose to engage with the world as much as you want: stand in front of a TV and watch the match, or run around and engage with the world. Each chapter takes you to a new match of Ecuador against another country, and you feel the ups and downs of the ride as people’s emotions sway with the results.

• Interesting design choices | There were a few moments where the game dared to do something else, like a 3D Google Maps rendered version of the city and park, in colour. The shapes were laughably incorrect, but they went through the effort to record the real ambience of the park, and it offered some nice variety. At the very end of the game, they also put the camera on the ball, and it gets kicked to some of the most important set pieces in the game, which was an artistically styled end I could appreciate.

• To feel like a kid again | One thing where Despelote succeeds is in making me feel like I’m a kid again. It’s an accurate representation of what it’s like to be young: the world is an adventure waiting to happen, and everything is possible. I’m also from a generation where my parents would frequently leave me alone in the house at a young age, or let me roam the streets with my friends and only the “be home before dark” instructions and not much else. If only for a very few brief moments, I felt like I was back on the streets again when playing this.

Mixed & disliked!

• Length vs cost | I’m the first person to say games should be shorter, and I don’t think Despelote is too short. In fact, I think it might have begun to bore me if it had doubled its runtime. But 14€ for a 1-hour game might lead some people to be a bit disappointed with how fast they’ve seen everything in the game.

• Voices | Most of the voice-overs don’t bring across any emotion. It’s a documentary and sounds like one, even when it’s not the narrator telling the story, but your mom calling you to be home in time for dinner. It felt a little too clean. I do appreciate it’s all in Spanish though, which made me feel like I was on holiday.

• Soccer minigame and parental obstructions | The game starts with a playable soccer game that runs on the home console, but about 20 minutes in (in the soccer game, maybe 3 minutes in real time), your parents stand in front of the TV and turn it off. Super frustrating, and it definitely evoked memories of that very thing happening when I was 10 years old. Later in the game, you’ll get to play a full 90 minutes (again, sped up, so maybe 9 minutes in real time), but here it starts with your mom obscuring the TV. Really frustrating because all achievements are tied to this (more on this below). The game is also very hard to control and not really all that fun. I also wish there were an option from the title screen after beating the game to just start the minigame and let me try again.

• Take the test | For a whole minute, it made me relive the stress of taking an exam. This is a joke bullet point by the way, I won’t hold it against the game, and there is not even a result at the end. But by God, do I have nightmares of school-related stress and taking tests that all flared back up during this scene.

• Achievements | All of the game’s achievements are earned in the in-game FIFA-like game at the very start or very end of the game. The main reason I list this as a negative is that I felt like there was no reward to explore in the rest of the game. There could have easily been achievements for petting the dog, kicking over all the traffic cones, chasing the cat, bringing the puppies to the dog, and hitting all the bottles with the ball. There were a lot of things in the game you could interact with, but not a single reward for doing so.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 2 hours
How long to beat the story? 1 hour
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 11/11 or 1000G
How long to achieve 1000G | 2 hours (takes about 2 playthroughs)
You’ll love this game if you like these | Wednesdays, And Roger, Gone Home

CONCLUSION

Score: 77/100

Despelote is a unique documentary around Ecuador and the country’s newfound obsession with soccer in the early 2000s, but it sometimes misses the goal of being an entertaining game. Definitely worth playing, but more so as education than entertainment.