One Tasty Empanada

There ain’t nothin’ that hits harder than life.  A 24 hour cycle of successive tasks without enough time to complete them and a all-encompassing void of emotions that wishes the day would end sooner.  It ebbs and flows in ways unexpected at present but melancholic when looking back from the future.  If hindsight is 20/20, then the world has a funny way of expecting safety, guidance, and direction at the high speed pursuit of Now.  Sometimes the road is too blurry to manage on your own, too dangerous to pursue, and too overwhelming to endure.  You need help.  And the world has funny ways of providing it.

Nam had just about crashed in that pursuit.  After a suicidally-minded act left him in the arms of newly-made friends and now lovers Astra and Dei, Nam has worked on repurposing himself through love and compassion, as previously shown in HITME and HITME2.  The trio patrol the streets of Santiago de Chile, selling empanadas through city street vendors and making do, with the three of them packed into a 1-bedroom apartment.  They create opportunities to screen movies that mean something to them.  They relish the time at the club with their friends, Belmo and Terco.  They do their best to avoid the homophobic remarks.   But on one bustling night, filled with drinks and camaraderie, Dei receives an epiphanized prophecy within himself, a naval skirmish dueling within their head: Dei must make his own movie.  About the three of them, who they are, what they mean, and how they got here.

HITM3 provides a slice-of-life bite-sized go-around of the days spent progressing Dei’s obsessive objective.  You will travel throughout the city as Nem, helping with tasks around town for your peeps like slapping posters on walls (in the public places, thank you officer) and buying cat food.  These varied objectives make up most of HITM3’s game length, spreading out the months of time in-game between the process of sourcing actors and helpers for the film, filming, and then producing it for their group and others to see.  I wish there was a little more variety; some objectives get overlapped on other days with narrative reason, but it still feels haphazard.

While the genre’s constituents don’t constitute riveting gameplay, and HITM3 is no exception to this, the meat and potatoes fill its players with beautifully crafted cinematography and a just-one-more-page script that latches on immediately.  Xiri has an impeccable way of not only making their characters interesting, captivating, and diverse at first glance, but also fully immersing you in the day-to-day struggles of living sale-to-sale while trying to provide solace as a group of queer folks.  You can feel the snide remarks and ill intents from all corners and it pains to know that this is not a game trope, but a real life indecency still occurring at a fever pitch in current day.

HITM3 clocks in around 2-3 hours, a little longer than the previous two titles, but delicately packs its suitcase to the brim with the baggage of several characters with pristine coordination and composition.  Combined with a killer soundtrack and an eye-catching color palette, HITM3 provides a tour de force of emotional bravery and tactful conversations that stands tall on its own, but will make you backtrack for the whole trilogy once the credits roll.

8/10