Review: Curse of The Dead Gods

Playing enough games, and understanding certain aspects of how they are built, is a double edged sword. On one hand, it allows you to get into the mindset of the developers and see what they were aiming for, on the other it allows you to see the mistakes and call bullshit on some aspects of fundamental game design. 

Curse of the Dead Gods, from developers PassTech Games is probably the optimony of this philosophy and it both elevates and pulls it down. This, coupled with the fact that it came after a game that radically altered how the rogue-like genre is perceived, means the critique of the game became just as fun, if not more so, than the act of playing it. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean COTDG (as it shall henceforth be known) is a particularly bad game, and comparing to the aforementioned other game (Hades) is something that is more than little unfair because on a fundamental level they may be the same genre, but are doing different things. Where Hades focuses on story, COTDG has little to none. Hades gives you a gentle difficulty curve, COTDG is hard as sin from the off. Still, it was hard while playing not to compare, which is, as I say, unfair. 

COTDG puts you in the shoes of an unnamed explorer tasked with finding a way out of the three temples of the titualar dead gods, There is the temple of the Jaguar, the temple of the Eagle and the Temple of the Serpent. Each one has its own unique enemies, traps and bosses along with a central theme. So the Jaguar temple is based around fire, while the Eagle temple is lightning and the Serpent temple poison. Coincidentally, these are also the three elemental damage types you can wield. 

The game is a rogue-like, so the main loop is the same as all these types of games: run the same level over and over again until you beat it and can move on. This involves picking a set of weapons from an altar at the start, picking which temple you want to run and then playing until you either die or beat the final boss. Each room will give a specific reward, either a new weapon, weapon upgrade, gold or improved attributes. More types are added as you get further in, but these are the main four. 

Unfortunately, design problems start to crop up almost from the start of the game. It’s tutorial sections throw so much at you straight away that it's very difficult to take everything in and I got to the point where I just buttoned through with the reasoning that I will figure it out on my own. All this needed was a little spacing, not ‘here are eight things you need to know right this second’ even though you won’t actually use at least three of them for a few minutes into the first level. It was a terrible intro, and didn’t set the best first impression. 

Some strange wording choices in the help tip texts didn’t help and proved confusing, though I will admit that it was my own issue with them calling everything an ‘action’ when it didn’t make any sense. These little things do however set up the game's major flaws, of which there are a few.

A lot of games give you the power fantasy, where you become this all powerful badass over their run. COTDG is not that, you are no bad ass, and the enemies are no joke. It's less Devil May Cry and more Demon Souls. The game is actively out to hurt you and make your life harder and harder, and it’s systems lean into this. Unfortunately it doesn’t go all the way, and it ends up having a combat system that doesn’t marry up with this idea. What it wants you to do is wait for your opportunity, dive in and deal a bit of damage, then back out and regain stamina a la Demon Souls. The problem is that mashing the attack button is a fast and fluid affair, with an off hand combo attack that swaps to your secondary weapon for extra damage. This means that most enemies are destroyed without having to worry about parrying or dodging, and if you do parry, the weakened effect lasts long enough that your remaining stamina is more than enough to take out a couple of enemies at least before having to back off. 

This is compounded by the fact that one of the best weapon types in the game, the claws, just straight slices and and dices enemies, meaning your character swaps back to Devil May Cry. It’s a weird combination and the game would have been better had the developers picked one side of the coin and stuck to it, rather than trying to walk the line between the two. This leads into the game's most major issue: All the systems have one too many things on them. 

What I mean by this is that, for example, the stamina bar has your attack, your dodge and your parry on it. Meaning if you are concentrating too much on attacking, which is extremely easy to do, you cannot then dodge or parry, leading to an annoying series of hits from enemies you should be able to easily deal with. Then there is the corruption system, which has attacks from enemies, passing through a door, curses, traps and upgrades all associated with it. Once you get corrupted enough (five rooms) you gain a curse, some of which are incredibly annoying and some give you a boon with slight downside - Dodging now makes you intangible but a perfect dodge won’t regain stamina for example. 

It’s a lot to deal with, and it doesn’t help the game. Just taking the attack off the stamina bar would make for a more fluid combat experience, while making the choice for upgrades between gold or health gives it a more risk reward vibe that would fit into the game better in my opinion. To be fair on that last one, there is a curse that makes it so you can pay for upgrades and attributes with health rather than adding to your corruption meter, but it's not something you can rely on because of that. 

All that said, COTDG is still a good game, it just takes a long time to get used to how the systems work, what weapons are best, the parry timing (especially the parry timing!) and everything else it throws at you. I enjoyed my time playing the game once I got used to it, but getting used to it took me a good ten hours, and even then I had to turn on the assist mode to be able to beat it. 

The assist mode is really good to be fair, with lots of different settings that allows you to just make things a tiny bit easier or make it very easy to play. Honestly if I had turned this on at the start, it would have made the game much better, as it forces the game to lean into one side of the aforementioned coin on its combat and stopping it walking a line it just isn’t doing. 

Overall, COTDG is a great game and a great rogue-like. It’s just trying to straddle a line with it’s combat that doesn’t work and has no story to counter that and propel you through. Put the effort in to learn how everything works and you will be rewarded, but, to be frank, turning on the assist mode even a little will remove that line and make your time with the game that much better. You just won’t get achievements, but honestly, who cares about them in 2021?

Review: Call of Duty Warzone

Let me be clear from the off: The act of playing Warzone (as it will henceforth be referred to) is fantastic. The game feels amazing to control, taking down enemies is satisfying and the production values are second to none. In that regard it really is a great game, which makes it that much more unfortunately that everything around the act of playing varies from confusing to outright terrible. 

Apart from the obvious non-comic or sci-fi setting, Warzone differentiates itself from other Battle Royale games by having 150 players on the massive map at once, be that in the quads, trios, duos or Solo modes. Some of these modes are cycled in and out, but to be fair that makes little difference unless you can only scrounge up one friend to play. I mainly played Solo’s because I have few friends to play with and it was a good time up to a point. 

The big innovation, and it is one of the coolest things Warzone does, is The Gulag. When you are killed for the first time in a given match, it isn't a game over straight away. Rather, you are sent to The Gulag, which is basically the shower room scene from The Rock in game form. There you wait your turn until you are put into the centre against one other opponent You get a gun and some other kit and in true battle royale style, the last person standing wins. If you win, you’re immediately dumped back into the map to continue playing, sans weapons and equipment. 

You get one round of Gulag, then when you die you’re gone for good. At least, that's in Solo’s, in the other modes if your team have enough cash they can buy you back into the game ala the reboot system from other games. The Gulag is a very cool addition and distills the game down to that final battle and that first win in that is such a great feeling that dying can make you pumped to continue the match. 

Another difference is the sheer amount of weapons available to you. Whereas Apex Legends or Fortnite give you a relatively small loot pool with a set of clearly defined more powerful weapons - the gold level gear in both, Warzone gives out lots of different guns and equipment. These are organised into assault rifles, smgs, shotguns, LMGS, marksman rifles and sniper rifles for the primary weapons. There is a melee category too but that consists of the Riot Shield and seems a bit pointless as a primary weapon. 

You can also carry a secondary weapon which consists of either pistols, launchers or another Melee category, this time just holding the combat knife. On top of these, you have three equipable perks that grant things like more sprinting time or the ability to use two primary weapons. That last one is probably the most useful in the game, or at least it was for me, as it meant I could carry an assault rifle and a sniper rifle at the same time. 

The last set of weapons are the Lethal and Tactical equipment. Lethal are basically various forms of grenades, while Tactical are things like smoke grenades or the heartbeat sensor for detecting close by enemies. There is a lot of kit in Warzone, and that's before you even get to all the attachments for the weapons which improve accuracy or reload times or a number of other stats, and these are individual to each gun and unlocked by using said gun while playing. 

I have written three paragraphs about what kit is available to you in Warzone, and needless to say it can be overwhelming. That is before you add in ‘blueprints’ which are developer designed weapon combos with different names. So for example, there is the ‘Black Asp’ assault rife, which is a weapon I have found from chests but had no idea what the difference was from any other gun apart from a name change and fact it was blue coloured. Turns out this is a standard Oden rifle with a bunch of attachments and renamed, though I had to figure that out by picking one up and swapping the between it and a normal oden to look at the pictures in the bottom right of the hud. 

I have had to google multiple times to work out the best load out to take into the game, but then the load out options all feel a bit dumb in the context of Warzone. Most BR games have you get loot from chests, in game drops or just the ground, and while all of these are present here, you can only get the loadout you created outside of a match by either buying a loadout marker from a buy station or hoping beyond hope that no one is camping one of the randomly spawned free loadout drops. 

It replaces, in a manner of speaking, the luck of the draw aspect of the chests as by opening enough chests and grabbing enough ground loot you can buy the best guns in the game after a few minutes. It’s an interesting take on the concept, but it simply isn’t as good, as it removes the  feeling of besting a better equipped opponent. Plus it adds in an extra thing for annoying players to camp near for free, cheap kills and this being COD, of course they do that. 

To be fair to Warzone, it is trying to do BR a different way so all these weapon options fit in with that as do the loadout drops, and it does some genuinely interesting things to stand out, for example if someone is aiming a sniper rifle at you, you can see the light reflecting in the scope so you know its a sniper shot coming  your way. It might not seem like much but it's a cool little addition. 

Another is the cash drops that pop out of chests and are strewn over the ground. Grabbing these means that when you find one of the buy stations scattered around the map you are purchasing kill streaks, armour plates (warzones shield equivalent), loadout drops and in the team based versions a killed squad member. Again though, the buy stations are just another thing for players to camp on and get free kills, so it's not exactly worked. 

It's not this stuff that brings Warzone down though, it's everything around the act of playing it. The download is 100GB for just Warzone. 100GB. The problem here is it isn’t just Warzone you get, you actually get the whole of Modern Warfare as part of the install, it's just the main game is hidden behind a £50 pay wall to unlock it. Which would be fine, if you weren’t limited to just two operators (character skins) if you don’t make that purchase. 

It's a shady thing to do in what is supposed to be a ‘free’ product. This is compounded by the fact that all of the options and settings available to players of the full game are available here, which again, would be fine if it doesn’t cause stupid issues. For example, there is the option to turn off crossplay, so you only play with players on the same platform as you (in my case PC), except Warzone requires that it be turned on, so you can’t play with it off. If that was the case, what is the point in the option even being in the client? 

Then  you have the killstreak screen that lets you pick which killstreaks you will receive depending on how many kills you get. Except this is pointless because you don’t earn killstreaks like that in Warzone, just the main games multiplayer, so again, why is this in the game client if you can’t use it?

The UX in Warzone is also terrible. There are so many menus for different things, and icons denoting you have something to look at, that it can be hard to figure out where to go. But then those little icons don’t show up in logical places, adding to the confusion. For example, using a particular gun and getting kills with it will increase your level with that weapon and unlock attachments and gun skins or charms. When this happens and you are dumped back to the main menu, the weapons tab will have a little green icon to say you have unlocked something for a gun. However, clicking on the tab means that icon disappears, it won’t show up on a particular weapon type. 

Clicking on a weapon type and scrolling down the list will also not show you which weapon has something unlocked. Only by clicking on a specific weapon will you get the ‘gunsmith’ option to customize it, and at that point, two menus down, do you see the icon to say something has been unlocked. Would it really be that hard to put the same icon on the weapon type tab and the actual weapon icon? 

Now I do appreciate that this might be something that only annoys me, but this is Call of Duty, the budget would suggest that some of the best developers in the industry are working on it and yet no one seems to have figured out this relatively easy fix? It’s a dumb thing that just annoys and brings the game down. 

This is all assuming that the icons even work properly because I have had a  couple of instances where I have looked at everything and the icon remains for no reason. Another little bug is that when the match is starting and your character is walking to the back of the plane ready to drop, your character skin will change for no reason whatsoever. I normally play as an asian woman operator but several times I have swapped genders and outfits just at this screen for no reason at all. 

In Solos, it will randomly add a teammate into screen while the game loads, confusing you as to whether you clicked Duo’s or not. All these are little things but they add up and take away from what should be a seamless experience. 

Actually dropping in and playing the game, though, is fun to a point. When you are killed you can get the same feeling you would get playing standard COD multiplayer, like you have been decimated before you could react, or even see the person firing on you. This isn’t helped by the real world setting and clothing on the character skins - they don’t exactly jump out at times so it can be easy for players to hide and get the jump on you. I suppose that is just part of the game, but it can be frustrating when you can’t see them cause they are hiding in the corner of a building, covered in shadow while in all black clothing. 

Getting a few kills in a row is a great feeling, especially since characters are very squishy and can be ripped apart in stand off if one is a slightly better aim than you. I played on PC and it was slightly weird to have this happen so much because I was mainly playing against Xbox and Playstation players due to cross play, so in theory I should have the advantage but I really didn’t and I could never figure out why. I suspect it was my own skill more than anything, but there was this sense that they always seemed more powerful. 

Of course, they could have had better guns so that’s why, and I do freely admit my skill at COD is lacking after years away due to frustrations with how the standard multiplayer always pans out, so this might just be a case of getting used to how the game plays, as it is very different to other BR games. 

I want to be clear on one point though: Warzone exists as a way to get you to buy Modern Warfare. It is NOT the benevolent freebie the marketing would have you believe, and everything is geared to getting you to spend money on either the main game or the battle pass and skins. I wouldn’t have an issue with the battle pass if this was a proper stand alone game, and might even invest in it because the moment to moment gameplay is good enough. It’s just unfortunate that the shady practices that surround this put me off rewarding the developers, despite knowing that it was a business decision above their heads. 

It’s also rubbish that Warzone’s lifespan is probably exactly one year, and a new version of Call of Duty Battle Royale will most likely appear with this year's game. That is cynical, I admit, but perfectly justified given the annualised history of the series. It will be, however, very successful, because there is a very large subset of people who don’t want sci-fi - making Apex Legends a dead end, who want an antithesis to the ‘kids game’ that is Fornite and who want a free Call of Duty. 

Cynically it is very shrewd to release Warzone given these parameters, but it is clear business has trumped giving the users a decent experience, and that is very sad, because as a small, stand alone experience that sells a battle pass and some skins Warzone is a very good Battle Royale game for the most part. 

Review: Blair Witch

Games are very different to movies. It’s an obvious statement, but it’s worth mentioning again, because it is this difference that is at the heart of the issues with Blair Witch, the new game from Bloober Team. It is a competently made game, but the deft touch required to transfer the themes of The Blair Witch movies to a video game setting simply isn’t there and it lets the overall game down. 

As I said though, it is a competently made game. You play as Ellis Lynch, former cop and army veteran, as he travels to the Black Hills Forest to search for a missing boy some two years after the events of the very first Blair Witch movie. Ellis brings with him his pet dog Bullet, and off the two go to attempt to find this small boy. What happens next ranges from the genuinely creepy to the downright obvious, but tries to play on the idea of the titular witch in the woods. 

To be fair, the writing isn’t half bad with Ellis feeling like a fully fleshed out character who is desperately trying to get his life back on track. The characters around him and certain events that transpire add to this feeling, with flashbacks to his time in the army showing a man suffering from deep emotional distress. The good news is that this isn’t done in a ham fisted way, as you can never be quite sure if its the evil presence in the woods or Ellis’ issues that cause the incidents. 

This is all helped along by the best thing that the game has: Bullet. The dog follows you around, pointing out dangers or foraging for clues as well as helping direct you into the seemingly directionless forest. Petting Bullet or giving him a treat helps ground Ellis back in reality, again showing the character as something more than just a blank slate FPS protagonist. 

Despite all of this, the game is let down by its name and the cinematic history that comes with it. Should you compare a game and the movie it's based on? That particular debate is still open and yes, as I said at the start of this review they are very different mediums, however games can convey the themes and core tenants of their license while still being their own thing. Blair Witch doesn’t do this. 

The movies are all famous for being ‘found footage’, i.e. the movie you see is actually camcorder footage shot by the protagonists and found at a later date. The game doesn’t do this. It does have a camcorder that allows you to watch tapes you found throughout the world. If you find one with a blue sticker it's just footage you can watch, find one with a red sticker though and you can pause it when something changes and that change is reflected back out in the real world. Its neat, but found footage it is not, and it's also about the closest thing, apart from setting and the strange stick figures you come across, to the Blair Witch license you are going to get. 

Therein lies the problem. The Blair Witch Project and it’s sequels are more about what you don’t see rather than what you do. There isn’t any combat to speak of, and it's more about sinister goings on around the protagonists that mess with their perception of reality rather than anything you overtly see. The game puts the viewpoint in first person and shows enemies you have to fight off with the aid of Bullet and a flashlight, others you have to avoid, making it just not creepy enough to work with the license for me. 

I remember going to the cinema to watch the original film when I was younger and coming out with a distinctive ‘meh’ attitude towards it. I then attempted to go to sleep and that was when the films brilliance dawned on me and I had trouble sleeping for a few nights after. You don’t get that with the game, there are some messed up moments and sequences where images and sound coalesce into something that bamboozles the senses but as soon as you come out of it you are back to a standard FPS thriller, one that could have its own unique and original IP and still be just as effective, the developers wouldn’t even need to change that much about the story and in game assets. 

To be fair, I came around on the game by the time I got to the end, with the story and overall writing enough to provide a satisfying conclusion and the atmosphere doing just enough to make it work. I did not believe, and still do not, that it requires the Blair Witch license and honestly I think it would be better without it as it would have room to just be its own thing without the added pressure of living up to the source material. 

Given that the game is on Game pass, there are certainly worse ways to kill a few hours, but put the notion of this being a licensed game out of your mind, it is a unique horror experience that for some reason was given a name unfitting of its nature. 

Review: Tacoma

The walking simulator is a relatively modern genre for video games, one where story takes precedence over shooting stuff in the face, and with a great story these games can be powerful, showcasing just what the medium can do and lending credence to the growing art form of games.

My first experience with this was The Fullbright Company’s first game, Gone Home. It topped my game of the year list upon release and it’s themes have stuck with me ever since. When the developer announced its next game I was excited to say the least, and while Tacoma won’t stay with me the way Gone Home did, it is a great game in its own right.

Set aboard Lunar Transfer Station Tacoma, the game places you in the shoes of Amy, the person sent to investigate what happened on board and where exactly the crew have disappeared to. On paper, this makes it sound like a horror game, where some unknown alien menace has infested the station, but that is far from the truth. Tacoma connects you to the on board A.I via an augmented reality interface and from there the meat of the gameplay plays out.

‘Plays out’ is the right term here, as walking into certain rooms will net you a A.R. scene, recorded at some point before your character boarded the station. This could be as simple as one of the crew sat on their bunk playing guitar or as complex as a party where everyone is present. Watching these scenes delivers the story as to what happened to these people, but it also presents something games can struggle with: real lives.

The crew of the Tacoma are real people, they each have families, friends and pasts. They are struggling with something unique to them, which could be something to do with their family or their quest to do better in the gym. It’s brilliant because it makes you feel like the whole situation could be something that actually happens in real life, I got to the end and thought about the news reports that would show each crew member, and the people speculating on what is going on up there.

Unfortunately, while all this makes for a compelling and well paced game, it simply didn’t grab me in the way Gone Home did. That game's tale of a girl returning to her family home to find things aren’t as peachy as they might appear spoke to me on a fundamental level, and even four years on from it’s release I recommend it to people. I am fairly certain I won’t be doing the same with Tacoma.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a great game, and I suspect if this is your first attempt at a walking simulator then you might have a similar reaction to what I had with the developer's previous effort, I just wasn’t pulled into the world in the same way, though I will admit I was very happy and satisfied with the game's conclusion.

The good news is that the main set of characters are so diverse you are bound to find someone who speaks to you. For me it was the medic, Serah, a compelling character with a great back story, who is also dealing with a medical issue a little too familiar. Each character, each little vignette, pushes, compels you to seek out the next, not to complete the game but to find out what happened to these characters.

I just wish I got into it more, and as strange as this might sound stupid from someone whose top ten movie list has eight sci-fi films on, but the sci-fi setting actually harms Tacoma. It puts it just a step out of reach, where other games in the genre I have played were all set in the modern day, it makes for the relatively mundane but compelling story to shine through.

The space station setting here means I spend more time looking out of windows and marveling at the artistic style that getting in touch with the story, and more time wanting to learn about the universe it resides in rather than getting to know all the characters.

Tacoma is a great game, it is well paced, has a great story and a great cast of characters. My issues with it stem from the setting, which doesn’t gel with the tale being told, however cleverly it might play out. If you are looking to try a game of this style, there are far worse options out there, and as previously stated it might well give you the same reaction I had with its predecessor.

It is a worthy follow up to a stunning game, only takes a couple of hours to complete, the perfect way to spend an evening.

Review: Doom (2016)

Ah DOOM. It is the game that changed so much. ID software’s seminal shooter, while not the first FPS on the market, was responsible for many’s first foray into modding, online multiplayer, hyper violence and the first person viewpoint. I remember playing it as a kid, and it remains one of my favourite games of all time, and the series has earned its place in gaming’s hall of fame.

The first two games are classics in the truest sense, games that at the time were revolutionary, gaining a following that endures to this day. The third game, DOOM 3, which came out ten years after the original, doesn’t hold quite as much reverence, with many citing it as the end times for the series.

So when ID announced a new game in the venerable series, at the time called Doom 4, then later retitled to just DOOM, people were a little worried. Added to this was the fact that a multiplayer beta received much criticism and no review copies were sent out to reviewers before hand, generally a dark sign for the quality of a game.

Those worries, thankfully, were completely unfounded. The rebooted DOOM is the classic games through and through, but with updated mechanics, graphics and design that does everything required to bring what you remember about the original hurtling into the 21st century. In short, DOOM 2016 has no right to be this good.

The game's campaign opens with you awakening inside an ancient crypt, brutally killing a demon and escaping to find the ‘Praetor Suit’, the armour that will provide you protection from the forces of hell. Brilliantly, ID software have continued the tradition of not really naming the protagonist, instead the logs etc that you find simply refer to you as ‘The Doom Marine’.

From there, it's all about the killing. Like the first games, this new take focuses on brutal, bloody death with unabashed glee. It is everything that made you smile when you were younger, except now you can actually legally play it (being over 18 that is). As you travel about Mars and then Hell itself, you are given the tools to take down whatever is thrown at you.

These tools range from classic DOOM weapons like the super shotgun, plasma rifle and chain gun, to new brutal melee kills that aren’t there just for show, but one of the best ways to regain health. As you shoot enemies, they eventually stagger and glow blue. Get closer and that glow turns orange and you can hit a button to perform a ‘glory kill’ which rewards you with important health and after some upgrades, Armour.

This brutality extends to another classic weapon, the chainsaw. The iconic device makes a triumphant return, and it is just as satisfying as ever to rip through demons. However, changes have been made. It now requires fuel, which is in short supply. On the plus side, taking down enemies with it rewards you with a spray of ammo pick ups for your other weapons.

The result is a glorious ballet of shooting, melee and ammo replenishment via the chainsaw, with everything covered in so much blood that you could refloat the Titanic twice over. It is a game that will offend anyone still concerned with the violence in the medium, but to those who remember, those who know, this is what DOOM has and always will be.

Levels are massive, with lots of area’s to explore, and explore you should. Dotted around the environment are various upgrades and secrets and help with all the destruction, and the game doesn’t make finding these a chore. The DOOM marine can mantle up to surfaces, jump and eventually double jump, and even gain an upgrade that shows all the collectible locations on the map.

It makes it a pleasure to go through the levels, though some of these upgrades are a bit pointless and it can be difficult, even with the upgrades, to truly find everything. Some power ups though, are awesome. Take for example, the machine guns micro missile upgrade. This allows you to alt fire using small explosive missiles, couple that with an late game upgrade that allows you to have infinite ammo while your Armour is above 100, and you can’t help to laugh maniacally as you rain explosions on a room full of bad guys.

The story is there mainly to give some context to your actions, and as can probably be seen from how late it is in this review, isn’t the reason to play the campaign. Gameplay rules supreme here, and while the universe is fleshed out with cut scenes and the logs found strewn throughout the levels, ultimately I just wanted to get back to the killing of hell-spawn.

By the end of the game, which will take a good chunk of time, the destructive itch will have been scratched several times over. The ripping apart of classic DOOM enemies - Imps, Cacodemons, Revenants, Pinky demons and Hell Knights to name but a few - never gets old, and combat remains fun throughout.

ID Software have included a multiplayer component, and level design section ala Halo’s Forge mode, and these are fine inclusions for the most part, but once I was finished with the campaign, I had more than my share of DOOM.

I feel like the campaign of DOOM 2016 is something I could go back to time and again. The combination of updated mechanics and classic feel make it something special, and as I said before, it never gets old.

This new take on the classic franchise is everything anyone wanted out of the latest in the series and then some, as I said at the start of this review, it has no right to be this good, and it is more than worth your time.

Review: Firewatch

*this was originally posted on thisismyjoystick

What is Firewatch? That question became a bit of a joke since its announcement, but now Firewatch is with us and I can categorically inform you it is indeed a game; a game about two people, and no destruction, no shooting and no aliens.

Set in the Wyoming wilderness, Firewatch presents an intriguing tale set against gorgeous scenery. Not everything fully works in its gameplay, but if you are in the mood for a sedate and well written story, this could well be for you.

You play as Henry, the newest inhabitant of a watchtower in a forest prone to fires during summer. It would be a lonely summer save for a handheld radio that connects him to the next tower over from his and the lone woman that lives there, Delilah.

I don’t want to spoil too much, suffice to say that a mystery starts to unfold that Henry and Delilah have to solve. Obviously, this is mainly Henry doing the figuring out, since you play as him. I will say this of the story: At no point does it turn to the fantastical to weave its tale. The story happens to Henry and Delilah, and is a good, old fashioned mystery.

Firewatch is more thriller than anything else, though it rarely builds up any real tension, but then again, that’s not really its point. Intersecting the main story is the developing relationship between the slightly broken Henry and the just as broken Delilah. They never actually meet during the entire experience, but the writing is so good that it feels like more than just a friendship develops between the two.

The meat of the story is that relationship, and how it builds up and is shaken by the mystery that unfolds around them. Henry is trying to escape his life, but you can feel the guilt in him, and I honestly felt for the guy. I sat there wondering if I wouldn’t do the same thing as him in his situation, which is a testament to the great writing permeating throughout the entirety of Firewatch.

Then there’s the feel of Firewatch. It took Henry a two day hike to get to his watch tower, and you can really feel that walk as you move around the game world. Its actually amazing what the developers have managed to do with the visuals. Yes, there are certain barriers to just wandering through the entire forest, but none are invisible walls or feel out of place, and some even come with a bit of banter between Henry and Delilah, which is a fun way to relay info to the player.

The developers at Camp Santo have done so much with so little, and at all times I felt like I was hiking through the woods looking out for any trouble makers. The view is just gorgeous from the top of the tower, and you can see some beautiful sites as you move around the wilderness. Is it on bar with actually being in the Wyoming wilderness? Even without ever being there I can say no, because there is a slightly cartoony vibe to everything.

However, this doesn’t detract from the visuals in anyway, and if anything, it adds to them. Yes, the uncanny valley this isn’t, but the world you play in is alive and real. The sound design has just enough of the ambient noises you would hear in the woods, and makes the world - and this might sound weird – feel ‘just right’.

The voice acting is absolutely fantastic, and the two actors really do make the main characters come alive. There is a ‘choose your answer’ angle to the dialogue, which doesn’t seem to affect anything other than your personal arc with the characters, and that is kinda cool. Firewatch is one of those games that you play, and what happens therein is your version of that game. It probably won’t be the same as mine or anyone else’s, and what you take away from the story is yours too.

My only issues are that it can be easy to miss dialogue trees and, secondly, the map.

The dialogue trees pop-up while talking to Delilah, and generally have a few responses to what she is saying. The system works well, but if you are moving about the world and start to interact with something, that action takes precedence over the progress in conversation, leading to a few occasions where I couldn’t respond because I was stuck in an animation and the timer ran out.

It’s a small thing, but such was the quality of the writing that I wanted to hear everything that was said, so this was massively disappointing. The other issue, the map, just isn’t stunning from a gameplay perspective. It is functional, and offers the feel of Henry hiking his way through the woods and having to orientate himself, but it got kinda of annoying to get lost because I hadn’t checked the map in the last thirty seconds. Getting lost is a joy, but objectively, the map isn’t quite fit for purpose.

 SO… WHAT IS FIREWATCH?

Firewatch is a great game. The story that unfolds is brilliantly told and set against the stunning background of a lush forest. There is no shooting, no aliens, nothing supernatural, just a great story told well. If you want the latter, this is not your game.

For everyone else, however, Firewatch is part of a new generation of games that break the mould and do something that little bit different. With such craft and beauty it really isn’t hard to call it art.