Best Month Ever! Review: Far From The Best

screenrant.com:

[Content Warning: Descriptions of Racism, Violence, and Hate Groups]

Best Month Ever! is the first full-length game developed by the Warsaw Film School's Video Game Directing program. Students, graduates, and industry professionals collaborated to make this narrative and choice driven experience that places players in a mixed-race family in 1960's America. While the game plays well and is visually beautiful, its story tries to tackle too much and the result is a loss of cohesion, nuance, and emotional impact. Due to the story being the primary feature of Best Month Ever!, this review will be heavily focused on it and will thus contain spoilers for some segments of the game.

The opening moments of Best Month Ever! establish that this is the story of Mitch, a young black man who is recounting the month that preceded his mother, Louise's, death. Louise was diagnosed with some kind of terminal illness, and knowing that her days are severely numbered, she takes Mitch, who is 8 years-old at this time, on a road trip across America to find someone who will be able to take care of him after she passes.

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Best Month Ever! makes a valiant attempt to tackle racism, misogyny, and conservatism as it existed in 1960s America, but it falls short on many occasions and unfortunately perpetuates some of the stereotypes seemingly trying to be critiqued. There are cultural and racial biases that are perpetuated in a story from the perspectives of a single mom and a young black man in 1960's America, which makes telling a nuanced, sensitive story overwhelmingly difficult.

The main antagonist of Best Month Ever! seems to be the horrors of rural America and the American south, as violence