2003 was a weird time (it’s also where Perfect Tides: Station to Station lives). I turned seventeen, and the Internet obviously existed, but social media hadn’t really taken off. Sure, there was LiveJournal, and MySpace had just become a thing, but there was this weird hole between online eras. (And speaking of Eras, even our girl Tay was only 14 at the time.)
I’ll admit I jumped into the series blind with Station to Station. I didn’t play the original Perfect Tides from 2022, which is a wildly beloved point-and-click adventure title, I know, so this was my first introduction to Mara Whitefish.
Mara is an 18-year-old writer, exploring “The City” and studying at the State University of Creative Studies (SUCS, for short), commuting back and forth between school and her mother’s apartment, and sometimes crashing at the apartment where her friend Daniel lives with his roommates. Even with Mara in the big city, the world still feels small because scenes in the city, from the apartment to SUCS, the local dive bar, and a few other locations, are all on the same block.
It’s one part point-and-click adventure, one part visual novel, and all the MOXIE in the world. There’s a lot of reading, sure, but that’s where the game shines. Gloriously and unabashedly SHINES. I fell in love with Gran’s writing and ability to create characters I loved (or hated) in mere seconds of their introductions.
It really felt like when I went to college in 2005. I was from a small town and went to college, again in a small town, but I spent most of the time feeling simultaneously not enough for everything and too much at once. (I was the first member of my family to go to a four-year institution, so about the only thing I really knew about that climate was from shows like One Tree Hill, Veronica Mars, and scattered episodes of The O.C.)
Another aspect I came to really enjoy was the RPG-ish way you’d go about doing your daily life and doing school assignments. Throughout the game, you can read things and talk to people, putting stats into the topics you could write about as the game goes on. And unlike Persona games, I didn’t have anxiety over which activities to do or people to hang out with; I felt like there were no wrong options here.
(A small aside regarding the puzzles in the game. Were there times I wanted a ‘hint’ button? Sure, especially towards the final third. But it was easy enough to save and walk away for a little bit and come back with a fresh head about things.)
Mara herself was written in a way that felt so real and so honest that it took my breath away by the end of the game, especially with a few scenes in particular that I won’t be discussing because they’re such an intrinsic part of the experience. The way Meredith (Gran) wrote Mara had me going back and forth in the game, sometimes playing like I had when I was a college freshman and had a crush on a friend just like her, but at the same time, the nearly 40-year-old mom I am now just wanted to shield Mara from any heartache.
I laughed, I cried, I laughed until I cried. I rocked out and did a little headbanging, but you’ll have to see why when you play it yourself.
I could talk about how this game made me feel for ages, but it’s going to feel different for everyone. I felt SEEN AS FUCK. You might feel like you’re playing through the next evolution of a classic John Hughes movie. You might feel like calling up an old friend you haven’t talked to in a while. I don’t know. But I guarantee you you’ll feel something.
Did I immediately buy the first Perfect Tides after I rolled credits on this? You bet. My one hope? I hope Station to Station isn’t the last we see of Mara.