Disco Elysium review – video game as first-person novel

Disco Elysium establishes the character you play – a washed-up detective living out of a hotel room – with enviable efficiency. The game opens as you emerge from unconsciousness into a shuffling, amnesiac hangover following a three-day bender. Your work tie ribbons from the ceiling fan, your room is a wreck, and your immediate purpose is lost to the week's substance abuse. You spend the next few minutes clothing yourself (an exertion that, for an unlucky player, can lead to a terminal heart attack). Then you begin to piece together your identity, and discover why you have wound up in this rundown port town, "a puddle at the end of some drainpipe", as one character puts it, not unfairly.