Hard Boiled Text Adventure

Considering it's a completely-free visual novel, a lot of things about Red Spider: Vengeance didn't surprise me -- like the typos, the simple art, the unpolished UI, and the laughably bad sound effects. But there were two big things that really did surprise me.

The first was that it told a pretty good story! Granted, some of the dialog (and inner-monologue) lines could use some cleaning up, but the plot and the characterization are all in line with real, commercial-quality crime drama. Its Hong Kong setting and crime-syndicate themes feel just as evocative as Sleeping Dogs did, even though this game is text-based. And at around 80 minutes of reading, the length feels on par with a full-length film.

The second thing that surprised me was that I made one choice in my entire playthrough. It was fairly early on (maybe around the 10 minute mark), and the rest of the game simply played out as I clicked through the text. Despite there being plenty of obvious opportunities for the main character to make a decision - as well as a handful of scenes that could have been quick-time events, in the style of a Telltale game - almost all of this story is non-interactive.

(According to the in-game "route map," there was a second choice that happened even before my first. But either by bug or by design, there was only one option for me to click on. I suspect that the second option doesn't become available until playing through the first option's storyline.)

As much as I admire this story, I'm really not interested in replaying the whole thing to experience five more variations of it.

... That said, I am slightly curious about the prequel.

Better than: Hate Plus
Not as good as: Analogue: A Hate Story
Debatably better than: The Walking Dead, in terms of narrative quality.