Mini Review: Date Everything (PS5)

Including the kitchen sink

Version Reviewed: PS5 (Standard) / European

review by Jenny Jones Yesterday, 6pm

After finally gaining a degree in Customer Service, you begin your exciting new career as a customer service rep! Unfortunately, it only takes a single day before you find out that your job is being outsourced to AI.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, as a mysterious hacker sends you some new technology – a pair of dateviators – a unique pair of glasses that allows you to talk to household objects.

What follows is an utterly bizarre but totally charming visual novel with a ridiculous number of characters to date, befriend, or become enemies with. The gameplay loop is simple enough. You’ll spend each day walking around your house and decide who you want to chat to. Your responses to conversations will then influence how your relationships evolve.

It’s ridiculously fun to track down every object and see what kind of weird and whacky personalities they have. They’ve all got very different storylines, so you’ll end up jumping between lighthearted themes, like gossiping with Wyndolyn the window about what the neighbours are up to, to more serious themes where you’re helping someone deal with their anxiety or even death.

There’s also a surprising amount of adult-themed content. We never thought we’d be acting out fantasies with the personification of our sex toys, but it’s surprisingly funny and sexy all at the same time.

Every character is fully voice acted and there’s an impressive cast on hand, including Ali Hillis, Ben Starr, Ashley Johnson, and Laura Bailey. You can absolutely tell that all the VA’s had a blast recording their lines.

With 100 different objects to get to know and reach either a love, hate, or friendship ending with, there’s a heck of a lot of content to play through — which makes it slightly bizarre that there isn’t an option to skip through previously read text. In a game with so many different conversational routes and endings, it’s a bit of a strange omission.

Apart from that misstep, though, Date Everything is a delightful and highly polished game; it’s a refreshingly grown-up visual novel that doesn’t shy away from fully embracing its weird quirkiness.

With so many varied characters to get to know there’s sure to be at least one that you fall in love with. But even if you do end up friendzoned or worse, this is an experience that’ll leave you with a huge grin on your face.

Jenny has single-handedly been responsible for the downfall of many heinous villains and stops the destruction of the world on an almost weekly basis. Some may call her just another geek but others recognise her as the hero they deserve.

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