Oxenfree

Everyone has their own tastes, but for me, this is easily one of the worst games I've ever played. The pacing is incredibly slow, forcing you down tedious paths. The gameplay loop is also boring and nonsensical—for instance, whenever something strange happens, your only interaction is just opening a radio and scrolling. I cannot recommend avoiding this game enough.

Для сюжетно ориентированной игры слишком плохой и неинтересный сюжет. Да - она атмосферная и качественно сделана, да в ней есть прикольные вещи и хорошие моменты, прикольно сделана система диалогов, которая эмитирует поток живого разговора, да это такой жанр подростковый мистической триллер-драмма, да тут есть некий свой уникальный шарм, но всё это не спасает. На мой взгляд, игра слишком переоцена. При чём интересный момент - вот если рассматривать отдельно каждую часть игры, то вроде бы всё хорошо. Я пытался провести анализ где же у игры главная проблема, но каждый раз когда я пытался что-то сформулировать, то нормальных работающих аргументов найти не мог. Даже мои претензии к сюжету можно легко парировать, тем что это а) вкусовщина и б) это жанр про подростков, а они обычно все такие. Да и существуюи примеры произведений про подростков с сюжетом примерно на этом же уровне, которые мне в целом нравятся. Но вот по абсолютно неизвестной для меня причине именно эта игра как одно целое вообще не работает. Я не помню, когда ещё испытывал такое разочарование, возможно, очень давно от серила "Остаться в живых" (Lost), но там хотя бы начало было крутое и понятно, что не так, тут же я даже не смогу сказать, что был момент, когда мне прям нравилось. В общем, не рекомендую, но держу в уме, что многим людям игра зашла и она постоянно попадает в топ инди игр, так что может быть просто не моё.

I'm happy I played this game. It's a very slow-paced story game, with a lot of dialogue... which is the absolute opposite of the games I go for. The dialogue system was an interesting take with the timer, the story was darker than I expected, and the characters started out as bland but became more interesting with the voice acting. It was a bit too slow-paced/long for my taste, but aight as an experience. Overall I enjoyed the story. I'd recommend it if you're looking for a light novel book experience of a game. I did run into bugs though. The character tends to get stuck in stairs (which you then have to use arrow keys to break) and one time there was a visual bug of a door being open, which left me wander aimlessly... considering the low pace of the game, it felt like a long time to restart the game and walk back several times to try fix the bugs.

Premise sounded cool and the screenshots looked fun. Played for about an hour, and there was practically zero gameplay. It was poorly-written repetitive dialogue choices and some half-baked radio tuning minigame. A game's story can help carry it immensely, but is nowhere near enough to stand on its own.

Every interaction involving NPC dialogue is an audio-cluttered mess. For a story-driven atmospheric game, regularly having people talking over each other and a swathe of choices for various things at the same time all the time is not a pleasant experience. Even when I'm taking the game slow, there's never enough time to get through the dialogue without feeling like I have to hold every section up by many minutes just to listen to NPCs speak about nothing. It was only getting worse, and my breaking point was at the comms tower when Jonas tries picking the lock but when I went through the window and opened the door, he continued picking the lock on the wide open door. No reaction. I won't give this game any serious attention. Despite being mentioned by Josh Sawyer.

[h1]???[/h1] Мне подарили эту игру 10 лет назад, и я решила, что пора.. 🌚 [b]Из плюсов:[/b] [b]+[/b] Атмосфера игры, потрясающий, приятный визуальный стиль игры — на художественный вкус 👍 Мне ближе игры с уникальным арт-дирекшном, а не гонка за ресурсоемким реализмом, в котором куда меньше индивидуальности [b]+[/b] Идея с живой коммуникацией, где 90% твоих диалогов строится на том, что ты можешь в определенный момент выразить свои мысли, вставить что-то в диалогах с другими или прослоупокать. [i]Жизненно..[/i] [b]+[/b] Реализация временных петлей 🌀 [b]+[/b] Реиграбельность, вариантивность. Прохождение + — начинаешь тот же сюжет снова, но с новыми гранями. [b]+[/b] Потрясающая озвучка, все голоса четкие, приятные, запоминающиеся, отлично передающие эмоции. [b]+[/b] Смыслы, что игра показывает через отношения разных персонажей. Сбалансированные, живые персонажи, с выдержанным характером, которые в соответствие с выбором могут по-разному, но красиво раскрываться, — что для меня главный плюс игры. Подростки не клишейно-противные, у них есть этот азартный дух с упорством влезть в какую-то хрень, но им хочется сопереживать. Особенно лично мне понравился Джонас: его индивидуальная харизма в целом, надежность, отзывчивость. Баланс между его местами сдержанностью и неловкостью, порой неудачных шуток, страхах отчуждения, где-то болезненным опытом прошлого (что есть и у некоторых других персонажей), при этом контрастная прямота, умение мирно, искренне говорить о себе, о своих переживаниях, о неудобных вещах и т.д., что про его сильный внутренний стержень. Где при этом в отличие от других, которые между собой знакомы-дружат, давно неподалеку живут, он недавний и видит всех первый раз. [i]субъективный плюс:[/i] понравился ритуал настраивания магнитофонов при выходе из петлей: эти мрачные, тревожные мелодии в связке с происходящем и механикой — есть в этом свой мрачный, мистический шарм. Любимая игровая композиция в итоге 💀 [b]Из минусов:[/b] [b]-[/b] Персонажи долго перемещаются по карте. Не хватает перемотки или чтобы они двигались чуть быстрее? Из-за этого мне не хватает какой-то большей динамичности. [b]-[/b] При управления мышью, персонажи часто застревают при спусках/подъемах. [b]-[/b] Сам общий сюжет я не назвала бы сильным, он просто неплохой. У игры много сильных сторон в остальных аспектах, что я описала выше. Поэтому в целом советую игру, если цените подобные акценты с жанром мистики. Возможно мнение дополнится позже.

The game is essentially a walking simulator where you just wander around the island from one place to another....very....slowly. The interactions between the cast is weak and uninspiring. The conflicts feel petty and unrealistic. The personal relationships do not match up to games like Life Is Strange or Mixtape. The time travel mechanic is mostly just an event that happens at scripted times and you walk through it. There is no danger, no risks, nothing scary, and little to no mood or atmosphere. I spent almost all of the playthrough just wishing I could run or walk faster since that was most of the 4 hours playthrough.

Damn, what do I even say about this game? I guess I can start by saying this is less so a game and more so a 3rd person walking simulator with a Stranger Things-type mystery narrative. Even though I had my initial gripes with the dialogue coming on too forced or cringe, I think they laid off it by the second half of the story. In Oxenfree you have your staple high school archetypes: The quirky skater girl (Alex), The meathead (Jonas) the quiet one (Nona) the mean girl (Clarissa) and the dork (Ren). High key, I thought this game would do more with these characters because it felt as if they were trying to. For example, there is a reason why Clarissa is mean and we quickly understand why, but the game doesn't provide any opportunity to expand on her character, much less any other character because it feels like 90% of the time, we or these other characters are getting spirited away by the ghosts of dead marines. The game markets itself as a choices matter game--I'm not sure why it's so difficult for games to get this right. Clearly, we're meant to influence character relationships through the dialogue options we choose, but never at any time do you understand how characters truly feel about each other. There's just no way to gauge it. A picture will appear in a thought bubble after you select some dialogue options, but it's not always obvious what exactly that's indicating. Games like The Dark Pictures Anthology/The Quarry/Until Dawn do this right where you can pause the game and look at literal bars about how relationships are changing positively or negatively. By the end of the game, I learned that I made Clarissa hate me, but I don't think the game gave me enough of an opportunity to change that. [spoiler]In fact, I searched for her first instead of going after Ren--why was that not a big relationship buff? She was otherwise possessed and or being fake dead a majority of the time, so when was I supposed to influence this?[/spoiler] The choices matter element felt frustrating to me because so much of the dialogue options felt like they DIDN'T matter. The narrative was interesting. That Ren ask Alex to bring a radio to try and tap into spooky ghost stuff, that was neat. It was also neat that eventually, we got to understand who or what these ghosts were. [Spoiler]At least in my game, they turned out to be the big bad who wanted to possess me and my friends because they don't think it's very fair they died in war, so they want another lease at life.[/spoiler] I thought that was fine, but also I had the feeling that there were some big choices I was supposed to make at the end, like save myself instead of abandoning my friends, for instance, that didn't at all feel in line with the character I made her to be (having not picked any of the mean dialogue options). That meant there was only really one reasonable option for me, which ultimately didn't feel like a choice. I liked the little talks I had with Jonas, the guy who you spend the most time with. It's interesting that you should bring your step-brother to this trip almost immediately after your parents get married, that's definitely a choice, but I liked how they warmed up to each other at the end. Like I was saying, because you don't spend nearly enough time with the other characters, the same can't be said for the rest of them. [spoiler]At one point when Ren and Jonas were pointing fingers at each other for who knows what reason, the game asks you to spend time with either Jonas, Ren, or Nona for just one small trip. I chose Nona because I didn't think I'd otherwise spend ANY time with her in this game. I don't think the chats we had in our time together had any impact on the game whatsoever. I don't think my views of her or her of me were influenced in the slightest as we did our little fetch quest, and this was me CHOOSING to spend time with someone else other than Jonas.[/spoiler] As a result, these characters feel stagnant and remain, for the most part, their surface level archetypes. Some final things to rattle off--I did not enjoy playing marco polo with the radio. It was novel the first few times but quickly got old after having to slowly through every single channel until you hit the correct one for the 20th time. Excruciating work, made worse by the fact that this is really the only game part there was to this "game." I did not enjoy how slow you walk in this game, and how dialogue would often times run on longer than the duration of your walk from A to B, which would then force you to stand in place before moving on to the next area, since doing so would end the current dialogue. I also didn't appreciate the artful but messy layout of the map, where it often wasn't clear which direction you were supposed to go to reach your destination. I wanted to like this game much more than I actually did--maybe because it's dated. Maybe it's because I've played many other games, like the ones mentioned above, including any Tell Tale game and also Detroit: Become Human, that do what this game does but leagues better. I got the feeling that this game was attempting to go for the, "If you could go back in time and change the past, wouldja???" But I don't think that really panned out, and that's the worst. Herein lies my main frustration: By my definition of what a choices matter game should be, you are meant to feel you have some sort of agency and influence as to the outcomes in the game, whether those outcomes are as expected or not is beside the point. I simply do not think a choices matter game in which the player lacks the feeling of agency as a commentary of "one’s lack of control in the real world" is particularly fun--it might as well have been a normal, linear game. In fact, to me, it felt like one. This is an awful combination of ideas and mechanics, and therefore execution. I think games (or shows, or movies) that subvert expectations, while unique, don't always execute them well enough, despite the best of intentions. To sum up my feelings about this whole experience by quoting the game: "I guess that happened." 5/10