To the Moon. Yeah, I already did this, but I just wanted to reiterate the immeasurable need you should have to purchase this game.
I need to respond to this - as I think To the Moon is way, way, way overhyped.
As a game, it's non-existent. The actual playing in this game is simple pixel hunting and puzzles, completely unrelated to the story. Which is fine, since it's a story-based game.
But I'm absolutely not okay with the story, nor the story-telling method.
The premise is this (extract from Steam's store page):
Dr. Rosalene and Dr. Watts have peculiar jobs: They give people another chance to live, all the way from the very beginning... but only in their patients' heads. Due to the severity of the operation, the new life becomes the last thing the patients remember before...
It sounds very interesting, and that's one of the reason I bought it.
However, all the interesting points ended up unexplored... the story touched on the surface and slipped away before doing anything serious.
In the end, the Drs. job come down to one word: masturbation.
The doctors have equipment to gain access the patient's memories and thoughts. They can also adjust things (that's how they help their patients to fulfill their last wish).
However they did so by brutally altering the patient's past, completely eliminating a person close to the patient, twisting his memories, such that in the end the patient can fulfill his last wish: "To go to the moon".
The patient, to begin with, doesn't even really understand why he wants to go to the moon.
The storytelling method is also pretty meh. If you want to create a touching story, you don't insert lame and unrelated cultural references left and right. Like one of the doctor shouting "Kamehameha". Or the same doctor being a jerk in each and every way possible, even mocking the patient's memories.
The treatment of River is really bad. Joey never really understand her, from the beginning to the end. River tried, in her own way, to remind Joey of their first meeting and the promise. But Joey never got the message - "if we get lost, we will regroup on the moon".
Joey in the end, even with the help of the doctors, never realize the truth. The doctors violated his memory, removing River before they met in school, and artificially introduced the idea for Joey to go to the moon (NASA activities in school).
It's only until Joey actually got into the moon mission did they reintroduce River - which is an entity running on the old memories of Joey, so she'll also strive to go to the moon. The female doctor said her bet paid off - she wasn't sure the simulated River could do that or not.
So here we have astronaut Joey, who don't even remember River, and a simulated River, on the space rocket to the moon. The end.
That's why I summarize it all in one word: masturbation. It's all fake, artificially created, and has nothing to do with Joey's and River's life. Poor River got violated in all those ways after her death, her real message never reaching Joey.