Arctic Awakening

Interesting concept, original story, excellent voice acting. This game has it all, except good writing. For about three episodes this game held my interest, it has an interesting setting. But good concepts and good settings always get undone by terrible writing. And this game is chock full of that.

It has been a while since I played Firewatch. I remember I liked that game a lot. It was different, it had a cool story and it didn't take that long to play through. Looking at this game made me think it would be similar. Lot's of people comparing it to Firewatch helped too. Well, not so much. In Arctic Awakening the main character isn't very likeable. The writing is dull. The interactive parts aren't that exciting, or interactive. The puzzles are super basic and mainly require you to walk around and find a few things or switches. And the walking, the endless walking... This game took me almost 13 hours to complete. It probably could have been done in about 3 and would have been more enjoyable. This may be the first game I've ever left a review for (I'm old, I may have left a review and can't remember) and it is because it is so disappointing. I spent $25 on this and I feel like $10 would be asking a lot. I really wanted to like this game. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever bought a game I didn't want to like. That would be pretty dumb if I did. Bottom line. If you like walking a lot and backtracking sometimes thinking you missed something, only to find that you did miss something but it was where you were to begin with and you didn't need to backtrack, then this game is for you. If you really liked Firewatch and you want a new experience that is similar, this ain't it.

What a waste of time this game is. So many instances where there is no guidance and you can't tell if there is a bug in the game or you are just going in the wrong direction.

SUPER!!

I bought this game to support the developer, and I don't regret doing so, but I would be hard-pressed to actually recommend this game to someone else. To be fair, I was not the biggest fan of Firewatch, which is the point of comparison most of the reviews reach for, so those who fully enjoyed the earlier game might have a better chance of enjoying this one. Still, I feel there are too many problem points here for me to feel satisfied. I don't have an inherent dislike for walking simulator games, but despite the genre name the act of walking itself is not the point. The game has to pace the player experience like a museum, clearly guiding me along the path it wants me to walk while providing points of interest at regular intervals for me to look at, whether interesting scenery or dialogue or story developments or modest interactions or atmosphere or something to keep me engaged. In Arctic Awakening, this experience design felt lacking on a fundamental level. Too often I was confused on where I was supposed to go next and ended up wandering in circles. Even when I was on the correct path, there were several large gaps between events with nothing to maintain my interest as I was pushing the analog stick forward. Without a tighter control of the player experience, the game ends up feeling unbalanced. Some of the design decisions were simply baffling. I suppose the survival elements of hunger and stamina were put in to provide more things the player has to pay attention to and thus make this feel more game-like, but they felt very pointless. Finding food or cairns to refill your meters was mere tedium that further bogged down the pacing of the game. I also question the decision to break this game into episodes like a TV show, complete with multiple credit rolls. Perhaps this was originally intended to have an episodic release? Or maybe they felt having "cliffhanger" episode endings would enhance the feeling of a puzzle-box TV show and increase engagement with the story? As is, it didn't really add anything to my experience. The moment-to-moment writing is fine - the therapy bot is a cute idea to have a constant dialogue partner while not needing to worry about animating a human character model - and the voice acting is quite good. The story as a whole doesn't really come together though. The mysteries of the puzzle box are only vaguely elaborated on - not the worst I've seen on that front, but nevertheless they don't live up to how much they're teased - and the arc of the main character doesn't work. The protagonist feels like he's stick in the same place for the majority of the game until suddenly towards the end he has a moment of character growth artificially forced on him to give a story a sense of purpose. I didn't buy it. If you look at this game as the efforts of inexperienced but growing developers, I think it shows some promise. While there's lack of polish throughout - I ran into several bugs during my playthrough, a couple of which required me to restart from an earlier save - the developers have been putting out regular updates to fix things, so they're paying attention to feedback. I don't think the fundamental design issues here can be fixed with updates, but if the developers build on what they've learned here with a fresh project I think there's the potential of making a game that succeeds where Arctic Awakening falls short.

Firewatch sequel this is not. It tries, but there is a lot of so-what and random time doing nothing like finding cables to string up a musical instrument so you can sing to a robot. Some folks might enjoy that type of gameplay, but I very much prefer Firewatch. The story doesn't feel as connect as Firewatch. Honestly, I think this game would have been better if a bit shorter with a tighter story. It somehow feels more on rails and also more lost in direction as compared to Firewatch. Visuals and voice acting is pretty good. I just didn't find it engaging, and got frustrated wandering what to do sometimes. I spent the better part of chapter three just following a guide. That's when I knew I was done with the game, and it wasn't for me.

This game is a masterpiece. I felt invested from the beginning in the story. This game is more then just trying to reach your co-pilot and get rescued, it is an emotional journey. As the story progressed and I learnt more about Kai the more I was invested into finding Donovan. [spoiler] Learning more about Will and what Kai failed to do to save him made me more invested into finding Donovan, refusing to make the same mistakes again. When I was faced with hard choices I always prioritised moving forward and getting to him sooner. The story gave us clues and info about what was really going on with Holly's recording allowing us to doubt and question reality leaving us to question what was going on. When we heard back from Donovan after he disappeared I felt something about him was off, how did he know about certain info or to know where to send us. I started to speculate about what had happened to him, believing him to already be dead. When I found him I was left shocked that he was still alive and didn't expect the hardest choice ever at the end. I was left emotional at my choice I had to make. [/spoiler] This game has been an amazing journey from start to finish. I recommend you play this how you feel you need to. Make your choices and make your mistakes. These choices and mistakes matter and will make you feel more invest and help you to connect with the characters. Do not be afraid of the mistakes you've made on your journey, embrace it. 10/10 IGN

Really quite enjoyable especially on the first playthrough. It's one of those games where I couldn't wait to get home from work so I could play more. Definitely recommend to anyone that wants to scratch that Firewatch itch too.