Laughs at every so-called serious game.
The story is a murder mystery set in a US small town of Greenvale, the game is a mixture of open world quests and survival horror. The town is full of oddballs all introduced by a freeze frame with their name and brief description of their job/relationship shown - my fav is Harry Stewart (Mysterious Capitalist). The main character F.B.I agent York is a headcase - he often speaks to you indirectly via a imaginary friend gimmick.
All of the gameplay mechanics are pretty poor - the cars handle like bars of soap and the shooting is bog standard. At one point I drove a car down a secret short-cut whilst on route to a main quest and found myself laughing pretty hard at what turned out to be a terribly designed path that had my car bouncing off the narrow walls.
The thing is the game world is interesting and there is more soul in this game than most "big" games. The atmosphere and conversations are bizarrely brilliant, I wouldn't even say the dialogue was that cheesy - more just weird, clumsy and quirky. It's funny. The whole thing is funny, I should have been disgusted at some parts but I actually felt great adulation for the makers of this game, they had a vision and with no real budget aimed high. You end up in love with the game....It's like your mates have made it and somehow it got a release.
Many have said of the game "it's so bad it's good" and it's somewhat true but for me that would not have been enough to carry the game alone, so I would sum it up by saying this - Dare to believe that some small lost-in-translation backward game has shown us the way forward. So many big games pass themselves off as original but they end up as lifeless and bland....take a trip to Greenvale where nothing is certain and predictable and where the absurd takes center stage. Whether or not the intentions of the gamemakers are fulfilled or just fumbled the result is almost genius. You actually have fun and forget about the negatives, it's just so damn interesting - If you are reading this then you already have some vested interest...so my advice would be buy it and play something unique