Ratings by charmer
Disco Elysium
Talos Principle, The
Philosofical sci-fi puzzler with a surprisingly complex story
The Talos Principle (TTP) stands on the shoulders of giants. Among those being Portal, Myst, and Antichamber. That’s not to say TTP does not bring its own stock of new ideas to the table. Discovery in TTP plays a major role so the less details you know in advance, the better. Enter the world of impeccable visuals, music, and voice acting; the world full of ingenious 2D and 3D puzzles; the world with a mysterious story only revealed to you in glimpses if you care to follow them; the world of thought-provoking philosophical undertones so rare in video games; the world with tons of secrets, extra content, and Easter eggs; and finally, the world when you don’t need guns and weapons to make progress. Even if you are not a completionist, TTP will provide you with around 20 hours of gameplay. The game is extremely polished, well-tested, and rewarding and satisfying to play. I would not expect such a gem coming from the creators of Serious Frikkin’ Sam :-) This is a complete paradigm shift and I’m very glad Croteam took this turn to expand their horizons - and everyone else’s.
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Time Played: Over 20 hours
Difficulty: Just Right
Gray Matter
Mixed bag of awesome
Let’s just run down the good and the bad; the writing is excellent and the plot is intriguing and very well put. You can’t easily guess what will happen next. The soundtrack sets the atmosphere very well, voice acting is of high quality for most characters, rendered backgrounds and ambient animation are very well executed. That seems to cover almost everything…
But there’s bad too: some strict plot dependencies might get you stuck at the end of some chapters. Character and facial animations are stiff and unrealistic, and harm the overall feel of the game dialogues and other portrayed situations. This was probably the reason the developers opted for animated comics for cutscenes. I also experienced some technical issues with frame rate, dithered cursors and overlayed music tracks. Finally, voice acting for some NPCs is below average and some lines in dialogues are just plain awkward.
All in all, I recommend Gray Matter to anyone who can appreciate substance over style.
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Time Played: 10-20 hours
Vanishing of Ethan Carter, The
The game has been patched a couple of times
The game itself might not have been perfect at release, especially the save system, but the patches released shortly afterwards took care of that and several other glitches.
The game experience is unique and rewarding for those who pay attention. There is a handful of key locations and scenes in the open world that give away tidbids of the story. Some are associated with a puzzle, some are not. The game is quite minimalistic in game mechanics but the gorgeous environment and music make up for that aplenty.
On the other hand, you might get stuck a couple of times as it is not always apparent what to do next. I take that as a positive though. I knew in advance the game is of the short variety so I didn’t take the speedrun approach and explored the heck out of the beautiful photogrammetrized world. When I finally got stuck towards the end, I had already spent over 5 hours in the game.
The originality of the authors to take the FP engine, normally associated with mindless action, and merge it with adventure elements and a genuine mystery plot, must be commended. I agree with the authors that this is the future of gaming, or at least one of them.
Bottomline, with the patches available now, I recommend The Vanishing of Ethan Carter to any player willing to try something new.
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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Just Right
