Lake

Most games will send our heroes on epic adventures to far-off lands filled with strange people and unknown mysteries. The new game Lake, on the other hand, goes in the complete opposite direction. It's about a middle-aged woman who returns to the small Oregon town she grew up in to catch up with familiar faces and deliver a few packages. This is a small, sweet and surprisingly sentimental look at what it's like to come home and not be certain of your future. Who knew that delivering mail would be this emotional?

Meredith Weiss is at a crossroads in her life. She has a good job at an up-and-coming software company, but feels overworked and disconnected from those around her. She's decided to take a much-needed two-week vacation to Providence Oaks, the quiet Oregen town she grew up in that is located right next to a peaceful lake with a killer view of the snow-covered mountain. It's the kind of sleepy community with little more than a small general store, a nearby diner and one lone gas station. There isn't even a stoplight. It's the kind of dot on the map that you can easily drive past because you're too busy taking in the gorgeous scenery.

Predictably, the quaint charm of small-town living was too slow for an ambitious teenage Meredith, who escaped to the allure of the big city the first chance she got. Now she's back for the first time in twenty-two years, and while Providence Oaks is largely the same, Meredith has grown and changed. The leisurely pace and friendly community is attractive to a woman who is burned out by the hustle and bustle of corporate America.

But before you get the wrong impression, this is not a game about sitting around and doing nothing for two weeks. In fact, Meredith already has a job lined up in Providence Oaks. She's agreed to fill in on her retired father's old mail route, while he and Mrs. Weiss go on a vacation of their own in Florida. She figures that it will be a low-stress job that will give her the freedom to drive around and interact with the community she left behind two decades ago.

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From a gameplay perspective, I think it's fair to call Lake a mail carrier simulator. It's the first thing you'll think about every morning and what you'll be doing throughout most of this game. Meredith takes control of a mail van and does the lake loop six days a week. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will stop her from filling those mailboxes and delivering the right packages to the correct address.

With an open world to explore, street names to memorize and various quests to complete, Lake is what I would imagine a small-town version of Grand Theft Auto would be like. This is a peaceful community where everybody knows your name and the cops aren't patrolling the streets. What little crime there is in Providence Oakes is quickly dealt with and never involves law enforcement. Hell, I didn't see a single cop until my last day in the sleepy community. Needless to say, you won't be getting into any high-speed chases here.

What you will be getting into are a lot of conversations. When she's not delivering the mail, Meredith will be reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. A lot of these encounters will result in you running errands for people, such as helping the local cat lady rush one of her adorable balls of fur to the nearby vet/fisherman. Providence Oaks is full of quirky characters, including the know-it-all famer who also doubles as a radio DJ, a pair of hippie lovebirds who are trying to flee the country and the snobby film buff who owns a rental store right on Main Street. Some of these connections lead to exciting new possibilities (and even romances), while others are small diversions that help to paint in the colorful community.

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Lake has one of those premises that sounds like it could be the set-up for a long-running show on Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel. You could easily dismiss this as the typical story about a big city girl finding love in a small town. Cast or Melissa Joan Hart and it will run for six seasons. But Lake doesn't have to be like that. You have control over where this story goes, which means that you can make it generic and sappy, or maybe take a different approach. I was thoroughly satisfied with how things ended up for Meredith in my story, but I also couldn't wait to see some of the other outcomes.

Unfortunately, that brings me to one of the problems I had with the game. While I certainly enjoyed my time in Providence Oaks, I kept wanting my interactions with the townspeople to go deeper. We're bouncing between so many different characters that it can sometimes feel like most of the stories are half-baked. A good example of this is the ornery writer who lives in the middle of nowhere. I like the way they set up his character, but hate how they never do anything with this story.

It's one thing when you're dealing with a supporting character, but this also happens with some of the main cast. Without spoiling anything, there are two potential romantic suitors for Meredith, and neither get enough screen time. And even when the big-city girl goes out on a date, we barely get to be a part of it. The game speeds through a lot of the important moments, almost as if it's in a hurry to get back to the mail delivery. The fun of this game is being part of this community, and it's a shame we don't get more of that.

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My other complaint is the radio station, which simply doesn't have enough songs for this type of game. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect there to be hundreds of top 40 hits. I know that this doesn't have the budget of a Grand Theft Auto sequel. But if we're going to spend most of the time slowly driving around in a mail van, then we definitely need more than ten songs. There were times when I heard the entire soundtrack in a single delivery, and sometimes you'll hear the songs more than once. Meredith even complains to the radio DJ about this very issue, so the developers are certainly aware of the problem. That's good, I guess, but it doesn't make up for the song repetition.

I also question the song choices. It's worth mentioning that Lake takes place over Labor Day weekend in 1986, yet none of the songs sound like they came from that decade. What we get is a collection of mellow country songs that remind me of the type of sound Faith Hill, Shania Twain and Taylor Swift would mine a decade or two later. The characters talk about Journey, New Order, Cyndi Lauper and Van Halen, but none of that sound is represented in the game. These much newer songs kept making me forget that this is supposed to be set in the '80s.

While I might be disappointed by the paltry selection of songs, I have nothing to complain about when it comes to the voice acting. No matter how big or small the part is, everybody does a great job. It would have been so easy to turn Meredith into an unlikable big-city stereotype, but the actress playing her really does a good job grounding the character. The same is true with the supporting cast, even the ones meant to be comic relief. All of this perfectly compliments the welcoming presentation and the stunning scenery found in Providence Oaks. Lake is the kind of game where you'll come for the mail delivery job, but want to stay for the great conversations and Mo's delicious blueberry pie.