As far as presentation goes, this game gets full mark. The artwork is really really good, the usage of colors is some of the best I have seen ever. It's also got a magnificent soundtrack that is used quite well in the game, the music is well timed with your progression and also offers quite the atmospheric emotional experience. But that boils down to what the actual problem of the game is: it's more of an experience than a challenging game itself. I did give a few game some high marks that did not offer much challenge (Virginia, Kentucky Route Zero come to mind), but these games had strong narratives along with their experience, what GRIS has to offer is the most basic of passive platforming experience (there are no enemies) and some rather simple puzzles. It only takes a few hours to complete the game and there isn't much to it, what you get is some very nice visuals paired with good music to match... and then it's over.
I think it's a dangerous precedent that some big gaming websites are giving this top marks (Destructoid 10/10 and Gamespot 9/10), this is like saying to devs that it's ok to have no challenging aspects to a game and that gameplay can be put as the least important part of the game. Sure there are things that this game does that is mindblowing with the art and I do wish that some are inspired by it, but please don't forget to put a game into your game! I guess we do need games for every type of gamer and I can't speak for anyone, but for me this had some potential at first and it completely fell flat after that... and I certainly hope there isn't going to be a legion of following games that lack on the gameplay but look pretty.
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Is it trying to be a deep art game or just an art game?? I honestly only got the latter on my own playthrough,, it seemed at the time like it wanted to do little and managed each of those few things quite well
Confused with the sentiments of a lot of the comments here. Its a gorgeous game with a pretty simple message. Maybe its cuz i missed any marketing for it or theres some pretentious dev interview i missed but i never really got the impression this game was trying to be super "deep"
not sure why i played this game after finding similar games like journey or abzu to be insanely boring. The gameplay is definitely more engaging than the average narrative exploration game and on top of having beautiful art, it made me cry, although I was pretty emotionally vulnerable at the time. It presents its theme of grief in a pretty simple but abstract way. I'm not sure how this approach led people to believe that it was "trying too hard" to be "deep" or why everything artsy has to be seen as pretentious idk i dont get it