I started Gris last night and it seems ok. It's definitely got a distinct art style and is very chilled. I have no idea what the story is but that kind of seems immaterial to enjoying the game. It could do with being a bit faster for traversal. Looks like a fairly easy 100% completion too.
@crippyd I feel that is true for achievements if you follow a guide as in my first playthrough I got like 5/6 achievements only and most of them look like they are hidden off the beaten path (I got a couple of those)
Sooo, I played through Gris today. I will write a brief trail-of-thought review of my time with it but I'll preface it with the context of me not feeling great anyway. I put my back out on Monday, I'm feeling pretty useless and that's in the middle of on going depression as it is anyway. So if it comes across as a bit mean, that's probably why. Unless my criticisms are justified, well I still feel bad being mean but hopefully it will make some people laugh.
I did think about not writing anything but I suppose it's not in the spirit of game club to just not write anything even if I had a dull time with a game. So without further ado...
Gris, the story of a girl who appears to lose her singing voice and thereby her perception of colour. She journeys until all of that comes back.
So the good, it's a very well animated game with a striking art style. It performs well. There are some throwbacks to popular platforming conventions. Some gravity wobbling VVVVVV style jumping toward the end and some Ori style chase sequences thrown in for good measure.
The bad, what's the fudging point? When I wasn't bored, I was depressed and and when I wasn't depressed, I was just bored.
I did look up what on earth I just played was all about and apparently it's about the 5 stages of grief. Not that that comes across at all during the game. Or maybe I wasn't paying enough attention. And what is the grief about? Losing her voice? She gets that back so the final stage of acceptance isn't really acceptance because she gets back what she lost.
Further reading suggests that she didn't lose her voice, she became too choked up to sing because she was grieving her late mother. Which is symbolised by a broken statue. Well I guess that makes more sense but I wouldn't have been able to explain that without looking it up on Wikipedia after.
In fact, did anybody realise that was what this game was about? Or did the developers have to add that detail to their own Wikipedia page. I very very much sympathise with the personal experiences that may have led to the creation of this game but sometimes an artistic expression of a personal experience just isn't very entertaining as a game. Maybe it's not supposed to be.
I haven't spoiler tagged all of that because it's not in the game and frankly, if you read it before you play the game, the added context might actually allow you to enjoy it and appreciate it better for what it actually is.
Unfortunately this game is just so abstract that the experience of playing it becomes dull and listless. Without context to anchor the on screen occurrences, your only role as a player is that of an art exhibit attendee trying to work out what the fudge you are looking at. Maybe that's the point though? Maybe you are supposed to feel as dull and listless as the protagonist. Maybe the creators of the game intended to make something open to interpretation like the boring yet somehow popular art that occupies galleries around the world. Though the achievement list that refers specifically to the 5 stages of grief would suggest otherwise.
Overall I would say I'm not very fond of this game. Just like I'm not very fond of visiting art galleries.
@ralphdibny Hi there mate! I know, depression sucks big time. At the start of the year I was feeling very bad, very depressed 'cause of some family and work-related issues (that's the reason I have been a little away from the club, actually). So, I get you and, well, here we are if we can help with anything.
On the issue at hand, about Gris...well, I pretty much agree with your comments. I played most of it (on Switch) but I didn't beat it. IIRC, I left it almost at the final couple of hours or so. Then, I sorta lost interest. I can't quite say it did bore me, I think it is a good platformer/puzzle kind of game with a top-notch art design (this one is the one feature of the game that really stands out). But I wasn't really interested enough to go through to the end. Gameplay wise didn't grab me as I think it would. Maybe some day I'll come back to it to beat it finally.
Maybe it isn't so similar to Gris, but I found The Artful Escape a much more appealing story-driven platformer, even if it is a little less challenging.
@ralphdibny well first let me say I hope things get better for you. Although I never had it personally I have dealt with it very close (my mother the worst case and the reason I am back home).
On the story I have mentioned something similar (although in a less mean way ). The only reason I knew the story was about grief is because I got an achievement for it because I found a secret.. but I genuinely liked the gameplay so it did not bother me as much.
I'm glad someone is at least a little bit on my wavelength 😂. I did go back and read other people's thoughts after I wrote that and they seemed moderately positive so I did wonder if it was "just me".
Honestly, if the game was any longer than just a few hours, I would have packed it in. But every minute I knew I was near the end so I stuck it out. I do think I might have been less harsh on it if I played it at a different time like during the pandemic. I was much happier during the pandemic when the world slowed down to a manageable speed for me 😂
@Balta666 cheers mate. I hope things get better for you and your mum
I think this review is a bit of a call back to the reviews I was doing on Push Square of PS Plus games during the pandemic. I decided I wanted to get my money's worth so I made a spreadsheet of all the PS Plus games and I played through as many of them as I could muster.
I found lots of actual gems in the Plus backlog to be fair, stuff like VVVVVV, Papers Please and others that I forget now. But the pace I was blasting through these games at meant that my write ups for the deluge of absolute tosh that was handed out with PS Plus were just really quick, snarky and hopefully quite humourous to readers!
I do feel kind of mean writing like that but I do find a blunt meanness to be quite amusing at times if I'm honest. I felt a bit more bad about Gris because it is obviously technically very good and it has a point to it. But I suppose I tend to go into games blind so there was no pretext that readied for me it. Whereas one might enjoy a film that is out of one's comfort zone because marketing will peg it as a thriller, a character profile, a rom com or whatever.
@ralphdibny I agree on your thoughts, I have no idea what I'm playing but it does look nice. again, like you, I would have never said that it was about greif and never in a million years would I have guessed that!
@crippyd cheers bud. Yeah it is a bit of a mental game. It's certainly a piece of art but it's just a bit too static/slow/easy for me to enjoy! I definitely think either a written preface that explains where the game is born from or just a bit of in game context to ground the abstract nature of it would make it better/easier to appreciate. As it stands, it's just a kind of mildly interactive slow walk through lots of art.
I thought the clockwork area was quite interesting. It didn't strike me as like a proper clock but much more dainty and delicate like the innards of a wrist watch instead.
I've just been having a think about a few games that have depicted mental health issues and I would say that I've definitely appreciated the more "grounded" takes on it rather than the abstract ones. The abstract ones always seem like a massive achievement to those involved but not neccesarily enjoyable or relatable ones to their audience.
I've made my feelings clear on Gris but there was another equally abstract game I played a couple years ago. I can't remember what it was called but it was short and designed solely by a teenager. That in of itself is incredibly commendable but while I found the game entertaining, it was hard to relate to how the creator expressed her mental health struggles.
To be fair, I can be quite verbose if I am describing how I perceive things to people. I appreciate a good metaphor or simile and I like to paint a picture with my words. But I do almost always contextualise it and my audience is very small and engaged. So I really do understand where Gris and the other game I mentioned are coming from, but just as a piece of art that's put out there for the masses and open to interpretation, I feel like they kind of fall short a bit. I think being open to interpretation is good but only in small doses. Like if a largely self-explanatory narrative had a few, "did they? Didn't they?" moments. It opens up discussion but discussion that is guided by context.
It may well be why I don't very much enjoy art galleries. I do like pictures, and I do actually have pictures I like looking at on my walls. But I could never go into an art exhibit and stand at a random painting just looking at it for ages. I've seen people do that and I do wonder exactly what they are seeing that I am not. I wonder sometimes if they just do that because that's what they think people should do in an art gallery.
So onto the two games (I can think of currently) that I think have depicted mental health issues well. The first is Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. I know it is supposed to depict a full blown psychosis but even for people less over the edge, I think it's very relatable in its depiction of constant cyclical thinking, self doubt and beating yourself up about things. That internal monologue that you just can't shut up even though it makes you feel less than human.
The second game is Bugsnax. I can't remember the characters name but in Bugsnax you can watch home videos of the missing character and her partner. Watching them back to back shows a character enjoying life and everything about it one day, shockingly juxtaposed against the next day where she can't get out of bed for no apparent physical reason. That extreme behavioural polarity of one day to the next is just so amazingly realistic and relatable.
I mean Bugsnax is full of a lot of characters that have various character quirks and it is all very relatable in general, stuff like addiction, insecurity, paranoia, etc. I think the example I mentioned in the previous paragraph was what really hit home with me though.
hello my good people, I hope all your adventures through the Stars are going well!
However the new month is on the horizon and at the moment we have a three way tie between Amnesia Collection, As dusk Falls and Signalis with 2 votes each (and a few one voters).
If you do not want me to choose a non-spooky game instead, it is your time to sway the balance either way 😜
Forums
Topic: Pure Xbox Game Club - Dead Space Remake (Dec)
Posts 2,901 to 2,920 of 3,089
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic