Stone Review: An Emotional Story Undercut By Boring Gameplay

Convict Games’ Stone tries to capture the spirit of stoner noir like Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski and transplant it to video game form. This is a neat idea on paper, but Stone hits several roadblocks along the way in terms of meaningful and engaging gameplay mechanics. Its narrative, while nowhere near the quality of the aforementioned films, does hit several emotional high points, especially toward its surprising conclusion. But the perfunctory nature of its gameplay drains Stone of any and all excitement. Even as a self-proclaimed interactive story, it lacks the player involvement factor that make the best examples of the genre shine.

Stone follows the eponymous down-on-his-luck koala private investigator as he searches for Alex, his missing lover. Like the rest of the characters in the game, Stone is quirky, highly flawed and interesting enough to immediately create interest. This is a major staple of noir fiction, especially the stoner subgenre, and its one that Stone embraces right out of the gate. Its Australian setting gives the game a unique twist that probably helps the game stay far more interesting than it should given how early its gameplay flaws become apparent.

Speaking of which, while Stone could have capitalized on its protagonist’s private investigator career by having players gather clues or complete at least semi-interesting mini puzzles, the game settles for something far lazier. Most of the game’s brief three hour run time consists of visiting (and revisiting) locations, talking to some random side character and then going somewhere else to do it all over again. There are some interesting and funny conversations to be had, there’s no doubt about it, but a failure to involve players more actively in the process of moving the plot forward is an infuriating mechanical decision.

Stone isn’t a complete waste of time. From the middle of the game on, the story becomes almost interesting and emotionally satisfying enough to look past its poor gameplay. While the beats of the story won’t be spoiled here, the entire final act and conclusion is intriguing and heart-wrenching in the most surprising way possible. The dialogue and voice acting is a little spotty at times, but the narrative consistency and plot twists are so fun, poignant and befitting of noir that it’s hard not to appreciate the care that went into it.

Stone also features a wonderful hip-hop infused soundtrack from underground artists and allows players to watch older movies like Night of the Living Dead in their entirety (either from home or by visiting the local theater). While it’s doubtful that most players will boot up Stone just to watch movies or listen to the soundtrack, it still gives the game a lived in feel and the black and white movies contrasted with its colorful, anthropomorphic talking animal characters especially add to its new-age noir feel. These are small qualities, but given its shortcomings in gameplay, it’s important to note everything the game does get right.

It’s admirable that Stone goes for a more casual gaming experience by not asking too much from its players, but visiting the same locations over and over and talking to the same characters again and again can only sustain a title like this for so long. Even at around three hours of gameplay, Stone feels downright monotonous most of the time, even when its narrative is firing on all cylinders. Some meaningful dialogue choices or a basic morality system probably could have offset this, but at the end of the day, Stone is too simplistic and boring to be worth it for most gamers.

Stone is available on Xbox One. It previously released for PC on September 21, 2018. An Xbox One code was provided for the purposes of this review.

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