izigame.me

Choosing to not recommend an all-time Classic feels wrong, but writing about the games (many) shortcomings in spite of its overall great Reviev-Score will give potential new players the best chance to prepare for what theyre in for. Atleast thats what im hoping for. I Also think that i might be speaking for a lot of people who got frustrated playing this game mainly because it is handled as classic and thus have difficulty expressing valid criticism.
This Game is a great Story and a fantastic parallel to the original short story of Harlan Ellison. In fact, its such a great story that it almost overshadows being a mechanically bad, buggy and way to cryptic game.
While i wouldnt mind that a game like this would be hard, there is no excuse for it being so hard, that its almost impossible to complete without a guide.
Even this would be excusable, but a lot of problems simply stem from poorly thought-out mechanics.
There are a lot of simple examples:
The Game has 8 options to interact with your surroundings: "Walk to", "look at", "take", "use", "talk to", "swallow", "give" and "push". Its often unclear which of these options lead to the outcome you want: Do you have to "Walk to" the Door, or dou you have to "use" the door? Sometimes you can use both, sometimes not. Do you have to "look at", or "use" a monitor? Do you have to "push" or "use" a switch or lever? Nobody, probably not even the developers wouldnt know for sure.
A lot of the options will literally often do the same, with "give to" and "use", "use" and "swolllow" or the aforementioned "walk to" and "use" being prime examples.
There are interactions that are flat out absurd. You can play through the whole game without using "swollow" once. Sometimes things suddenly become interactable after doing something, despite the game telling you that you cant interact with this very thing minutes prior, without any indication why it would be possible now (Im looking at you Fork). Some things suddenly appear in places youve already been at and Good luck finding the invisible shovel...
While the Game gives you the option to combine Items in your inventory, you will have to do so exactly once. So why even implement it? Good luck playing this storyline last, never having to do so and suddenly having to do it without any indication that it is even possible.
While i like the idea of the game giving you hints in the form of riddles via the book, the hints given to you are so inconsistent and cryptic that the game might just aswell give you no hints at all. Variing between "eat the Child" or "Yellow scary", the hints given to you in the book will often not only not bring you any progress but actively lock you out of the good ending.
The "Health" System is completely redundant, some interaction hitboxes are hilariously bad, countless visual and audio bugs, you can easily softlock yourself without the game telling you way more than once and even if you overcome all those difficulties you still have to gamble which decisions wont lock you out of a good ending instantly, which would only be told to you at the very end of the game. - not what decision it was, not what you shold have done instead, just that you screwed up somewehere. Good luck playing trough the entire thing again!
To be honest, playing this game is very exhausting, especially for adventure game standarts. Solving puzzles wont even leave you with a good feeling afterwards most of the time. Atleast for me it was mostly just the thought "How would you even come up with this bs?".
At the End, the storytelling, the universe and the atmosphere really do their best to cover up that this is at its core a bad game not only by modern standards.
I highly recommend reading the original short story however, while contemplating moral implications and metaphors of both the book and the game will be a great although potentially depressing expirience.