Day Zero

ZA/UM's espionage RPG doesn't quite sell its spy story.

One of the first things I learn about myself in Zero Parades is that I'm a fuck-up – an omnishambling bad omen with cropped hair and unfair cheekbones. Before I was put on ice, I was supposedly one hell of a spy. But that was then, and this is now. The veteran spy fallen from grace is not a new story, but in careful hands, it is almost always a great one. There are so many tiny little things that go right and wrong for an agent in the field: an indifferent tsunami of luck and skill and wildcard entropy that keeps going until the last plastic domino lands on the worst outcome. This is how

Disclosure Day is vintage Spielberg, and even if it stumbles a bit at the finish line, it's still an original, big-budget science fiction conversation-starter from one of cinema’s all-time greats.