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| Return of the Obra Dinn by Rafiki 07/08/2023, 3:21pm PDT | ||||
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| A puzzle game in the form of a detective sim. Unlike LA Noire, this one is actually pretty good. 60 people disappeared on a boat in the 1800s and you have to figure out what happened to them. You're given a list of names, a couple of pictures of everyone on board, and a magical compass (because video game) that transports you to a snapshot of the exact moment of death of any corpses you find so you can walk around the 'crime scene' so to speak, and using all of that information you have to match names to faces and fates.
Why it worked so well for me is that it actually made me feel clever. Rather than just linearly breadcrumbing obvious hints leading to braindead conclusions, you find clues ranging from obvious (the first bodies) to incredibly subtle and you solve each case with what feels like actual intelligent deductions. Most identities and fates aren't solvable the first time they're introduced, so you have to pick up new clues in later snapshots and backtrack through old snapshots to search for additional details you may have missed. I did kind of feel like I was conducting detective work. It was fun. There were a couple of times I admittedly guessed on some detail, and when I got it right I still had a lightbulb moment of, "OH YEAH, that makes sense because [insert deduction I didn't think of first]." There's only about 3 clues that I feel were TOO subtle to the point of feeling kind of cheap. It's hard to explain without any detail on what the clues are like to sell it more, because I feel like even generic descriptions would spoil things. The only thing I'll say is that if you're the kind of person that takes pride in not seeing race, you're going to have a much, much harder time with this game than normal people. I'll also say that for a short time I incorrectly swapped two identities, and I'm not sure if it's because I'm racist or the game isn't racist enough for the time period it's set in. There's a story that's doled out as you use your magical compass and uncover snapshots . I was invested up until it took a turn into fantasy folklore. I mean, it's fine. I don't know why I think it would be better if it were strictly grounded in reality, but I was kinda disappointed in the direction it took. I was surprised how well-acted the dialogue was and at the quality of the sound production. The music is pretty good, but the first thing you'll want to do is go into the options menu and turn it the fuck down before you start bleeding out of your ears. The graphics.....are ok. It's going for some old monochrome style of graphics that looks like this: 
It's made by one guy so it's fine that it's not 4K HDR Crysis realism. I don't mind the black and white style and it could have worked beautifully if it made it look like old timey sketches, but the dithering made my eyes feel like dying half the time and made it hard to work out some details in some scenes. This is another case study of how mimicking low resolution at HD resolutions kind of sucks. There's only two really obnoxious things I found about the gameplay. One, whenever you enter a snapshot for the first time all you can really do is a walk around and observe. You can't open your book and take notes. You have to wait for the music to finish and the screen to tunnel into black, then for the book to open and animate the story notes before you can do anything. There's no reason for this. It doesn't serve as a time limit for investigating, you can just immediately close the book and go back to looking around if you didn't see everything. In fact, that's often what you'll want to do, so it's annoying that it forces you away. It also makes no sense that you can't just immediately open the book and start making notes, instead of having to stand around and wait for pseudo-cutscene to finish. The second obnoxious thing is whenever you encounter corpseception and uncover snapshots within snapshots within snapshots. You have to follow a white trail of smoke around to the next body location, and sometimes it takes an excruciatingly long path for no other reason than to force you to stand around and listen to the little musical flourish. Both of these things are unnecessary time sinks, and I don't know if it's designed this way because the game is too impressed with its own music or because the developer couldn't figure out how to cancel a sound file. Overall: POSITIVE. I got it on sale for $12 right now. It's a slower paced game, so you have to be in the mood to sit down and invest yourself in something for a little while. It's also a game I found that I could spend a surprising amount of time playing without realizing it. It'll take about 8-10 hours to finish. |
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Return of the Obra Dinn by 07/08/2023, 3:21pm PDT  Someone bought this for me, and I tried my hardest. by 07/08/2023, 3:55pm PDT |
