Recent reviews by † The Father †

This game has caught my eye for a long time, but I've always held off on it because I wasn't sure if it would really be my jam. I finally bought it, and I can confirm it is not really my jam. I can tell that it would definitely appeal to a lot of people, but I want to try to clarify what kind of game this is for people like me out there.

Most of the negative reviews call it boring or easy, which is absolutely true. But what they don't quite express is how overwhelmingly linear the game is. I can enjoy a contemplative game, a pretty game, or an easy game. The problem with this game is that everything is a forgone conclusion. Jump when you see red butterflies, smash when you see shaking rocks, story progresses. The solutions to the puzzles are generally braindead obvious. If you don't see the solution immediately, then you generally just have to walk a little further to reveal the entire puzzle.

This gets very frustrating with the collectibles because they're barely hidden. Most rooms have one entrance and one exit. Some rooms have one entrance and two exits. You know that one of them will be a collectible and the other will progress the story, and you know that if you progress the story then you're not going to be able to come back and get the collectible. So unless you want to look at a guide to see where all the collectibles are in advance, you have to waste a bunch of time barely poking your head down each pathway trying to make sure you can grab the collectibles without accidentally trapping yourself on the wrong side of a one-way door.

Looking back at the marketing material, I can see that I was wrong, but for some reason I thought there would be at least some degree of exploration and free rein in this game. I got through the first level and a half before I realized that I wasn't playing an overly long tutorial, I was playing the game. I like the fact that you return to the hub after each level and see how it's filled out with new colors, but I was surprised and disappointed that I couldn't go back to previous levels and see them change as well. It's absolutely, positively nothing but a linear experience.

And, in that way, I think it suffers from being a video game. I respect the art of storytelling through video games, but I think there should be a reason for the story to be a game. LIMBO has you solving puzzles that directly related to the story, like pulling off the spider's legs or pushing a mine cart down a track. Rainworld makes you hunt for food and avoid predators so you feel the pressure of being a wild animal, and it hides the story from you so you feel a huge thrill of accomplishment when you find it. In GRIS, the gameplay elements exclusively detract from the story that's being told. You're observing a touching story about a sad girl, and then it grinds to a halt until you break a floor or jump on some butterflies, and then it keeps going with no relation to the puzzle. It's like watching a movie that pauses every 20 seconds and makes you grab the remote and press play. It does nothing to engage your mind or further the story. The gameplay only breaks the flow and takes me out of the artistic experience.

I think the biggest mistake the GRIS team made was making this a puzzle platformer with the simulacrum of metroidvania elements. I don't care that I unlocked the ability to double jump in level 2 when I can't use it to re-explore level 1 and I know every future use of double jump will be 100% scripted and telegraphed.

Instead, I think the gameplay focus should have been entirely on satisfying movement. The brief segments where you jump and glide from butterflies to butterflies honestly felt pretty satisfying, and my favorite part of the game was definitely the puzzle where you dive in and out of a vertical tower of water while gaining altitude with butterfly jumps. The game is pretty and elegant, and the girl is graceful and flowing. The visual style all gave me the impression of a game about movement. It doesn't have to be Celeste or anything. If they had just added a dash and a wall jump, left in the ramps, butterflies, and swimming, and then built the levels to encourage fluid movement, then I think they could have kept the same degree of universal accessibility while having gameplay that accentuates the story rather than detracting from it.

Honestly, I think I bought this game on the speculation that it might have satisfying movement to go with the pretty sights and sounds, and I was disappointed. If that sounds like it could be you, then this game probably isn't for you.

One of my favorite games ever. As I play the game, there are only two problems that consistently bother me. 1) The screen transitions can occasionally be very poorly placed and result in you jumping into an unknown dangerous situation 2) There are a few sections where the gameplay consists solely of holding left or right for several screens, and at least one of them is placed in a very important location. That said, I think there are a few things to take into consideration that could make or break this game for you:

First, there is a very difficult area that's placed right next to the beginning of the game. I only encountered it on my second run, but it seems that a lot of negative reviewers encountered it on their first. Without spoiling too much, if you find yourself in "The Drainage System" before you feel like you really have a handle on the game, you would do well to simply turn back and go somewhere else.

Second, the plot is very elusive and requires more patience than any other game I've seen. It requires you to literally traverse the entire map and retread the same ground frequently. Unlike many other artsy indie titles, though, this game does unquestionably have a plot and it is quite deep. If you're very eager to get to the plot, then I would strongly recommend following the yellow guide on your first run. It takes him a few in-game days, but he does point you in the right direction.

Third, your character is very frail and sometimes the game will kill you remorselessly and punish you for it without giving you much say in the matter. Depending on your personality, this can either make the game feel frustrating and spiteful or it can make it feel more real and natural.

This is a game about learning. Very little is told to you in plain language. You simply need to observe and learn through a combination of trial-and-error and pattern recognition. Everything in the game can be exploited if you simply have a mind to figure out how. From a gameplay perspective, it also has several innovative and clever mechanics. The procedural animation not only looks beautiful and complements the art style, but also helps the combat to feel very real and tense. The developers have made full use of this by adding an arena mode which, while not being tight or competitive in any way, is still satisfyingly fast paced and strategic. All in all, while I can fully understand why you may not have the patience for this game, I still think it has a lot to offer for those who enjoy visual arts, experimentation, plot, and novel gameplay.

I think we all know why it's rated high. If you're looking for a serious RTS with plenty of depth and strategy, go play Supreme Commander. If you enjoy listening to fun voice lines and controlling squads of aesthetically pleasing units, go play Dawn of War. If you want a mix of the two, go play Age of Mythology. If you just like Halo, then maybe you should play this. I don't know. The closest I've ever come to playing Halo is reading Ringworld by Larry Niven.

I'm sure you get the picture by now. An absolutely amazing game that would be better with online multiplayer. Going into a bit more detail though, I get enough joy out of this game simply by contemplating the intricately designed mechanics. Everything in the game is simple to comprehend, yet expertly arranged in order to complement everything else. For example, just look at the ectoplasm system. Every time the human breaks scenery, it creates ectoplasm for the ghosts. Therefore the human wouldn't want to break scenery, except that ghosts can pick up unbroken scenery and throw it at him. To keep the ghosts in check, scenery doesn't yield ectoplasm when broken by a ghost. Each part is simple in itself, but combines to create a complex yet fast paced series of checks and balances which combine to leave each aspect of the game feeling neither overpowered nor irrelevant.

Frankly, I would feel bad paying so little for such an amazing game, except for the fact that I bought extra copies for seven of my friends.

Occasionally crashes when I hit the quit button.

Unfortunately it's not worth it. I must say, there are definitely features in this game that were improvements on the original. The slave driver and seargant-at-arms, for example add a very interesting dynamic, but what really kills it for me is the slowed down economy and the removal of ladderers, tunnelers, siege towers, engineers, and moats. The strategy in SHC 1 was always about figuring out how you were going to get into the enemy's castle, but now that your choice is limited to "tear it down with battering rams" vs. "tear it down with catapults" its strategy seems to lie entirely in unit balance, which is exactly what happens in every other sub-par RTS.

Great game to play with friends. Don't buy it unless you have someone to play with already, though.

A truly masterful game design. Never before have I been so disappointed. Whittling down the Predator to 4 weapons and kill animations, auto-wallrun for Aliens, the removed grenades for the marine, everything about this game is a dumbed down simplified version of the highly technical masterpiece that was AVP 2.