I don't often feel in the mood to write about any single movie, book, or video game - my only other 'review' being more of an exercise in what not to do to food (see: McDonalds Seared Chicken Burger) - but for the only video game to have ever made me so very close to crying, I think I can make an exception.

I discovered To the Moon when I was going through RPG Fan's list of top RPGs of 2011. It won the indie category with a lot of praise going towards its story. I never heard of the game before, but to have what RPG Fan were calling the best story of any video game this year, it intrigued me enough to read their full reviews on it, as well as find out what other people were saying about it.

For those who don't know (and to stop my dad from making some terrible joke about how RPG is a programming language), RPGs in the video game world are short for 'role-playing game' - a genre of video game where you assume the role of someone whose progression through the game is typically determined by classes/specializations (what kind of traits you want your character to have), statistics (assigned numbers to each of those traits), and story.

Now that I've told you that bit about RPGs, you can forget it all because To the Moon has neither classes nor statistics - it's basically an interactive story that just happens to be made with a tool called RPG Maker, so I don't know whether the RPG classification is really all that justified.

With that out of the way, To the Moon's premise goes something like this: in the future, people can be granted their dying wish thanks to a technology that allows doctors to create artificial memories in the patient, thus granting them the memories of having done something that they never actually happened.

In this game you take the role of 2 doctors, Dr Eva Rosaline and Dr Neil Watts, as they grant their latest patient, a dying man named Johnny, his wish to go to the moon. Johnny isn't entirely sure why he wants to go to the moon, so with only a day or 2 to live the doctors dive into Johnny's mind and retrace his memories back to his childhood to plant in his childhood self the ambition and drive to become an astronaut, and ultimately to go to the moon.

Telling a story in reverse isn't easy, and the last time I came across a reverse-story in the movie Memento, it messed with my head for the first couple of minutes. But like Memento, To the Moon, manages to pull-off this reverse narrative, teasing your own assumptions and experiences to fill-in the blanks and treating you to a different form of suspense - instead of the usual "what happens next?", you're instead left wondering "why/how did this all happen?"

It's in unravelling Johnny's life that a heart-felt human story takes place, and just to re-iterate so many other reviews of the game out there, it truly is one of the better written stories I have had the pleasure to play through. There's nothing 'grand scale' or 'sweeping epic' about it; it's just a story of a man and a life filled with friends, places, struggles, love, and loss, and it's in uncovering each of these memories through the doctors' (and your) eyes, reliving each emotion as it takes place, and piecing together the life of the man that is Johnny that the game really shines.

I'm trying to think of an example in the story, but mentioning anything beyond the initial few minutes feels almost like a spoiler since so much of what the game makes you feel is in discovering who Johnny is for yourself. Every little discovery isn't spelled-out for you, leaving you to come to your own conclusions and encouraging you to read between the lines, making each and every discovery your own.

Because it's a story about a life, many of Johnny's memories can hit quite close to home, so I found myself pretty emotionally involved. I would sympathize with Johnny quite a lot - laughing with him over a dinner with friends, mentally putting a hand on his shoulder when the situation got bad, and urging him forward when he struggled with nerves in the moments before talking to a girl. I've been there, I'd find myself thinking, I know how you feel...

As for other aspects of the game, the music is probably the next strongest part about To the Moon, helping only to add to the emotion that you're probably already experiencing. None of the pieces are too busy, and most are written around a simple piano motif that was stuck in my head (in a good way) for days afterwards.

There is no voice acting, but in this game that's hardly a negative. The characters of Dr Rosaline and Dr Watts are so well-written it's like listening to the witty banter between long-time friends. The things they say tend more towards the light-hearted side of things which, in a sombre tale such as this, is a welcome relief.

As I've mentioned, the game was put together using RPG Maker, so the game looks a lot like a top-down 2D adventure from the Super Nintendo era of the early 90s. Heck, even my widescreen monitor would complain whenever I'd load the game, telling me I shouldn't be running it at such low resolutions. Regardless, the 2D graphics still manage to set the scene, and To the Moon makes use of the 2D to paint some pretty good-looking scenes, even those that you visit over and over again in Johnny's memories, without feeling repetitive or copy-and-paste.

As a game though, it's very lacking in the ever-important gameplay department. Controlling the doctors is done primarily through the mouse (click on a spot on the ground to walk there, click on some object to investigate/interact with it), and some basic puzzle solving that feels incongruous at first is the only thing that stands between you and the next of Johnny's memories. The mouse controls didn't seem all that responsive, so I found myself reaching for the keyboard whenever I could (left hand on the arrow keys, right hand on the mouse to scan the environment). This left me in a bit of an awkward position though with both of my hands nearer the right side of my desk.

The strength of To the Moon lies entirely in its story, and wow is it a story to be experienced. Supported by the beautiful music tracks (some of which I learned is composed by Laura Shigihara of Plants vs Zombies fame) this game will tug at the heart strings and, not so much refuse to let go, but rather you'll find yourself giving them up to the game to see where it will take you. More of an 'interactive novel' than RPG, this game took me just over 4 hours to complete, but the impression it's left on me has stuck and, in the several days since, still refuses to leave.

And yes, at one point it did almost make me cry. I remember when it happened, my cheeks and eyes started to feel funny and I brought a hand up to them thinking, What the hell, what is this feeling? before rubbing at my face and shaking the feeling away. Was I about to cry?

I've never had a video game do that to me before.

9 out of 10.

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To the Moon
PC video game, $11.95 USD, developed and published by Freebird Games
http://freebirdgames.com/to_the_moon/

I was walking home with my dad one day, and he told me about how he tried the new McDonalds Seared Chicken Burger for lunch. Although with his 99%-complete English, the word 'seared' came out as 'shared'.

"What? Shared burger?"
"No, sheared."
"Huh? Like sheep shearing?"
"No, sheaared."

So it went like that for about 2 minutes before I finally resolved the dispute with my mind-reading powers.

Anyway, one of his claims was that the burger had a strong odour, not a bad one, but one similar to perfume. He said that the smell was strong enough that it actually distracted him as he ate it. That's a pretty strong claim. I mean, McDonalds smells like McDonalds, right? So at work the next week, I freed-up my lunch time, dialed my nose up to 11, and went over to McDonalds to see/smell for myself.

Service and ambiance

McDonalds doesn't really change over the years - it's a constant of city living; a rock against the tides of metropolitan change. So if you've been to McDonalds within the last decade, then you'll know what McDonalds looks like now. And it'll look like that in other countries too; even though it's all managed locally, regional management does a good job of following most of the same steps and guidelines as their foreign overlords. The only thing that really differs between here and the US is that the ads make subtle jokes about Australians, and the posters spell colour with a 'u'.

On this particular day, the staff were pulling out all the tricks to ensure that those waiting in line didn't have to wait too long, eg: someone was taking orders in advance, most of the tills were manned, and several other subtle things.

This initiative during the peak lunch hours would normally be applauded, but with all of the staff concentrating on this duty, they neglected to maintain the cleanliness of the eating area. Bins were piling-up with so much rubbish that patrons would just leave their trays around them, and my photographer had to exchange her seat for one that didn't have the previous occupant's drink spilled all over it. Even after doing so she had to put-up with what remained in the form of a sticky floor beneath her feet.

Anything else worth mentioning were factors purely beyond their control: crying babies, other patrons giving me evil looks because my kind took their jobs and brought disease, and a passing delivery truck whose sound system is trying to convert those nearby to the world of hip-hop and crunk music by repeatedly preaching the words "get out the way ho".

The product

The seared chicken burger is just 1 of 4 new chicken burgers from McDonalds; the other 3 being a version with bacon (add $1), and then crispy chicken variants of these 2. I opted for the non-bacon seared chicken burger under the advice that the bacon smell might mask or destroy the original fabled perfume smell of the burger.

The box it comes in, a tad larger than the quarter pounder box, looks quite inviting, and falls in-line with McDonalds' latest effort to improve their image as a fresh/quality ingredient user. Opening the box however reveals a hastily assembled burger with as many ingredients outside the buns as there are between them.

So what is supposed to be between its 2 wheat-germ-topped buns are a marinated seared chicken breast fillet, a slice of cheese, lettuce both green and purple, tomatoes, carrots, and a sauce that I'm just going to call mayonnaise to keep things simple. In comparison to the beef burgers, it's a much healthier choice in terms of standard and saturated fats. You can read the official nutritional data here, although any health benefits are somewhat displaced by the fact that the combo still comes standard with deep-fried salted potato and sweet brown carbonated water.

Well, I didn't come here just to stare at the burger, so I started to test the myths about its smell. A basic wafting test didn't reveal anything major, nor did putting my nose within nanometres of the burger. There was maybe the faint smell of the marinade used, and my photographer detected possible mayonnaise, but neither or us were hit with the life-altering olfactory epiphany that my dad had experienced whilst eating the burger. Maybe that was the problem; maybe I had to eat the burger. So eat I did.

In line with the smells that were detected, the marinade is definitely the most noticeable ingredient when you take a bite into the it, followed closely by the chicken and the mayonnaise. This combination formed some sort of strange yet pleasant taste that wanted to invade my sense of smell. Perhaps this was what my dad was talking about? It did strike me as odd that a large portion of taste from the burger was being picked-up by my nose trying to break through the roof of my mouth.

And then it occured to me: maybe I was doing the smell test all wrong. Maybe something that supposedly smells like perfume requires a perfume test? (See what I did there? Logic.)

The perfume test

So what does a perfume test entail? Being a total perfume-testing n00b, all I have to go on is what I've been taught in movies, television, and whatever top-10 results Google will send my way. And from what I have gathered, it involves skin contact, noses, and some well-placed rubbing... oh yeah, and perfume (a list that's only a midget and video camera away from an R-rating).

I believe the following order is also how it's done:

1. expose your upturned wrist
2. apply a sample to the wrist area
3. sniff the application
4. ponder thoughtfully

And so that's what I did, although exchange 'apply a sample' with 'rub arduously'.

The result? Nothing. No Chanel No. 5, no Calvin Klein, but just the vinegar of the marinade and whatever composed that mayonnaise to create something you'd more likely find in a fridge-freezer than the perfume stands at Farmers. I wasn't even able to test that last metaphor because the smell was so faint that I didn't think it would survive a trip to said Farmers store.

I'd been had.

The Verdict

Overall, good enough for the working-class crowd, and a nice addition to the McDonalds menu. A tad expensive considering what you get, but the extra cents go towards putting you on the slower path to a coronary. Don't believe the hype, don't expect perfumed food, and you might be pleasantly surprised.

6.5 out of 10.

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Seared Chicken Burger
Fast food burger, $8.70 NZD ($6.50 NZD for the burger only), available from participating McDonalds restaurants
http://www.mcdonalds.co.nz/

Photos by Melissa.