ABZÛ

Journey II: Aquatic Boogaloo

ABZÛ falls into the category of "walking simulator" where gameplay is sacrificed for the emphasis on the experience; which in this case, is the art-style and sound.

You play as a diver, swimming through the sea alongside many species of marine life. It is often very colourful, and the shoals of fish or individual creatures swim believably; the developers have obviously put a lot of effort into this. The aesthetics and sound design are incredible and the positive reviews are for this fact. However, it is definitely the case of all style, no substance.

There's no written or spoken dialogue, and the story is pretty much non-existent, or at least it is so abstract that it's hard to understand your purpose in the world. There is a hint to who your character is, and you find some underwater temples with wall paintings, but without studying this in more detail; you aren't going to understand the relevance.

I expected this game to be more like Endless Ocean, where you discover different species while you are amazed at the beauty of the ocean. You can grab hold of the larger creatures and the game will tell you what the species is, but there's no bestiary to fill in; so no sense of completion or feeling of achievement. I expected a much larger sense of exploration too, but you are guided down linear tunnels, or small caverns; so it almost plays itself.

There is no failure in the game since you cannot be killed. There is a section where you can be zapped by these pyramid objects if you get too close, but they are just a hindrance rather than posing real danger. It's not a terrible thing, but when the game showed a shark attacking my mechanical companion, I really thought that was the game introducing me to a stealth section; but it was irrelevant.

The game felt really repetitive too. You will move down a linear tunnel, led to an open area, activate something in order to move on, then pushed through a current to the next area; then this basically just repeats. I felt like I'd seen everything after 20 mins.

The game is extremely short too; I think it was around 1.5 hours. I was a bit dumbfounded when the credits began to roll since the previous section only seemed important due to the change in intensity of the music. I didn't feel like there was any progress with the story/any satisfying revelation at that point.

If you like these type of experiences where you can marvel at the atmosphere, then ABZÛ will be of interest. For those wanting a great story or any form of gameplay, then I can't recommend this.

INTENSE

+ Incredible atmosphere.
+ Beautifully crafted areas, with a focus on motion and a lot of fish, other sea animals and vegetation.
+ Great soundtrack by A. Wintory
- Somewhat forgettable story.

Completed.

It is my lowest rated game at the moment, so I think it deserves a review for that achievment. I rarely do not find enjoyment in playing games I decide to try out - and Abzu is at the moment the only recent example of such game (specifically since i made account and rate stuff here) - it was only 2 hours of my time, but it felt like forever and also like a total waste of time.

I am not a hater of walking sim genre, generally I enjoy more known games in that category. But this is too much for me - meaningless 2 hour linear swimming simulator with environmental "storytelling". Its not worth the time, not even mentioning paying for this. I would recommend playing subnautica instead - you can also swim and admire beatiful ocean ambience there.

They could at least do this in VR, that would (maybe) make it more immersive experience. For what it is, a dont understand the appeal - its just lacking anything engaging for me - watching pretty graphics and clicking on stuff to proceed is not enough.

Very beautiful and the music is amazing, but the game elements are sometimes a little tedious. Its like they were worried that people would think it wasnt really enough of a game so they shoehorned some basic puzzle solving in there which doesnt really add anything. I had a good time with it though.