From the moment you descend into the kitchen, the day begins to spiral into madness. Upstairs in Phil’s old childhood room, for example, you can sift through his old comics, strum his guitar or draw a comedy dick on his sketch pad, while downstairs you can cook a breakfast of bacon and eggs, toast, or a “zen smoothie” as your charming niece demands. Movement around the various enclosed areas is achieved by teleportation to pre-determined points, where there’re usually several different things to interact with, some which help solve the immediate problem and some which are just for fun. From Phil’s niece driving her car through the garage wall and into the living, to the festival being cancelled and the entire event ground burning down, there are obstacles galore – not to mention Phil’s rocky relationship with this family, his distant girlfriend, and the editor of news vlog he reports for. The universe, of course, will try to stop you at every turn. Waking up on Groundhog Day 2019 on the day of an event to honour his father’s history with the town, it’s your job to guide Phil through a day that absolutely must go according to plan. So in it you play Phil Connors Jnr, who succeeds his late father by also developing the same innate time-looping ability. Twenty-six years later, a sequel has emerged almost completely out of nowhere, and to compound the head-scratching weirdness of it all, it’s not a movie, but a VR game. It’s a bizarre mix of dark comedy and heartwarming drama, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who’s seen it and doesn’t harbour at least a guilty soft spot for it. During his time loop he ruminates on the idea that he is a God, that he’s technically immortal despite dying multiple times, and punches his irritating school friend on numerous occasions. 1993’s Groundhog Day is a dyed-in-the-wool classic: the story of Bill Murray’s cynical, down-in-the-mouth weatherman forced to relive the same day over and over again in the sleepy town of Puxatawney, Pennsylvania, for reasons never made entirely clear.
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