Jusant

Fairly big let down for me. Much criticism has been made of climbing sequences in AAA gaming, and it's a noble pursuit to attempt making climbing a more challenging and engaging experience (as it is in real life). Jusant takes a more tactile approach, where each hand's grip is controlled with one bumper, and the left stick controls the actual hand's position if you let go of its grip. This lets you have quite a bit more precision when climbing.

You would think that this mechanic would be enough to make for an interesting game when combined with good level design, but unfortunately in practice (due to the forgiveness of your accuracy and relatively simple routes) if you just just shut off your brain and alternate spamming the right and left bumpers while pointing in the general direction of where you're supposed to go you'll make it through about 50% of the game's climbing. The rest was either only marginally more challenging, or slightly frustrating when not knowing where to go or what part of the terrain is climbable. I actually disagree with the comments about the bugs being the game's weakest mechanic - if anything, it's probably the most interesting one to me (which isn't giving it too much praise to be fair) if only because it forces you to think a bit differently about your climbing.

The collectables in this game are pretty aggravating. They're either notes (which is where 95% of the game's story is told through) that are walls of text so boring my eyes would glaze over - I couldn't make it through more than a handful. Or they're a "reward" for taking detours as you play the game, which is one of 1. placing a rock on a cairn 2. picking up a seashell, briefly changing the camera to show your surroundings while playing some ambience 3. abstract cave paintings that light up and make a sound. These rewards are neither satisfying nor interesting, and just felt like something tacked on to the game to justify adding some achievements and to extend the gameplay.

Beyond that, there really is nothing else substantive about either its story or its gameplay. There are precisely two short set-pieces that are mildly interesting, but really if you've played the first half hour of the game you've gotten the gist of the rest.

The one strong compliment I can give to the game is that it is quite gorgeous and has impressive and detailed scenery/environment design.

While I might be harsh about Jusant, I don't mean to imply that this game isn't for anyone and has no value. If you want some relaxing rock climbing gameplay that you can sit back to and either listen to its inoffensive soundtrack or a podcast of your choice, this might be for you. It just didn't click with me personally.

During the start of my masters, I went rock climbing a fair bit with two friends of mine. While I don't think I'm particularly good at it, there's a real satisfaction at working to understand how to tackle a given wall. How you can use your body to bring yourself somewhere, where on the wall you might be able to regain strength, and those moments where you need to use all your dexterity to jump and grab something. There was a great satisfaction in working at a wall all week and finally getting it (and it'd be replaced just in time once you've mastered it). Ultimately, what made climbing satisfying was the combination of physical strength with smarts. So when I saw a game that was described as a puzzle climbing game I was sold instantly.

Thankfully, Jusant's climbing is both satisfying and does make you think. Each mechanic is perfectly added to the game so it never gets boring, and the tension of your climbing meter lessening as you climb higher replicates the feeling of your grip starting to slip and your muscles starting to tense pretty well. I do wish the climbing was a bit more challenging but there were a few walls that gave me a rush similar to Portal. As enjoyable as this is (and if you want to play a climbing game it's worth it for this reason alone), this game suffers from two major problems.

The first problem is there is a real lack of challenge to these puzzles. Since there's no deaths (the worst thing that happens is you fall to your last part of the climb), you'd expect the game gets you thinking. Sadly this only happens in short spurts as you figure out a clever way to swing over somewhere. Part of this problem stems from how linear most of the climbing is. Most of the time, there is a singular way to go up, and even worse is the fact that there is only a handful of times in the game that the climbing is connected to collectibles. I would have loved if there was an obvious path, but I was rewarded for taking a trickier and risky path to find a note or collectible. This also would have replicated the feeling of knowing your limits in climbing and allow the dev to create challenge for those who want it.

The second problem is the stories. I say stories because both the written narrative found in notes and story told through the ludo-narrative may be one the least interesting stories I've ever experienced in a game. The written notes are long and drawn out. I think the idea of learning the story through a bunch of people living their life as the world falls apart is a cool idea, but the problem is the notes are too mundane. At the same time, nothing happens as you play the game. Not even going to put a spoiler warning on this because all that really happens is you blow a few horns. You're not given any reason to care about what's happening and what's happening around you is rarely fantastical enough to care (barring maybe chapter 5). The game tries to replicate what Journey does without understanding that there needs to be a story and a payoff.

Despite my critiques here, this game still is short and sweet. It represents that a great climbing game can exist, but for now this will do. The climbing feels solid, the OST is cozy, and it's made me want to start climbing again.