The Shattering

I wanted to like this, and I do think it had potential, but it’s a thumbs down from me. I was intrigued about this one as reviews that I read were making comparisons to Layers of Fear, which I remembered enjoying back in the day. I was feeling pretty confident that this was going to be good giving the review score, but perhaps too high an expectation was part of why this fell so flat for me. The first thing I noticed was our narrator, assumingly a psychiatrist. By the early stereotypical imagery of a swinging pocket watch, it seems that our character is having hypnotherapy treatment. The narration kicks in and I just wasn’t really feeling it straight away. To me it sounded like someone putting on a voice, and I don’t think anyone will agree with this but it had tiny twinges of sounding like David Bowie in Labyrinth to me so I kind of had a hard time taking it seriously (which isn’t ideal in a narrative game). This wasn’t really helped by the “pretentious psychiatrist” trope it seemed to fall into at times. There were moments throughout the game he was talking and it just felt like someone waffling on trying to sound smart. It brokered a very “yeah, yeah, whatever” reaction from me, which again, just made it difficult to get engaged into the story. The visuals are pretty cool, stunning at times, as this definitely sits in the area of being quite an artsy walking simulator. The use of selective colour, and even the way that some of the characters thoughts were written on the environment was very creative and gave the game a level of polish that felt like it justified its high ranking. Then, I had moments where although the game was visually interesting, I was just kind of… bored? There was a point in the game where it just felt slow, and became quite dull. Something I found interesting was that in the discussions a dev claimed this was intentional. Their exact words were that it was “designed to grow a monotonous repetitive view”. Now, to bring the pacing down, sure, highs and lows are what keep games interesting overall, but for it to be boring, I think that just means the game is designed poorly. It didn’t feel intentional, and I think that is an important difference. I found the music in the game enjoyable, although inconsistent, as the music that plays (and even TV ads) very much have an old-timey feel to it. This gave me the assumption at first the game was set maybe in the 60s or something. Contradicting this though, you can find calendars around dated in the 2000s. This threw me off a bit as there seems to be no good reason why all the music would be dated when it is in fact closer to modern day. This is a small detail, but in walking simulators where most of the experience is just going around analysing the stuff around you, I think the details matter. In terms of the story, this is a big factor for my thumbs down. I’m very interested in games that explore psychological themes, and I think I've said before in reviews that I am often looking to find out if the game portrays any particular condition, if so, if they portray it accurately, as well if it is directly relatable to me, and if not, if I can learn anything. This game doesn’t explicitly point out any particular psychological trouble, it keeps it vague. I think in theory this can be fine generally, but in this game in particular it just reads as very shallow and cliché. There is no detail or depth here, which for me meant that it was not relatable in any sense. Unrelatability can also be fine, but in the absence of depth or relatability I would then at least want to learn something. After playing this game I found comments dotted about in reviews and in the discussions essentially saying that if you had a dissociative disorder, you’d “get it” more. This was interesting to me, and if anything lost the game more points in my mind. If you need to directly relate to something to “get” it, I just think this is a failure on the narratives part. Surely the aim of a narrative is to bring you context and allow you to empathise with the characters or its message? A specific way in which the narrative fails is that this story seems to be trying to use the “unreliable narrator” thing, but seems to just get it completely wrong. In my opinion, when done correctly, you have anchors in the story that you can figure out are undeniably true, you then may find it interesting or fun to consider the unproven details to contemplate what you think is really going on. This game has no such anchors, it essentially builds a story you think is going somewhere and then in the last 30 seconds pulls a weak “plot twist” that derails things entirely (and not in a good way). It feels too disjointed to feel like a satisfying story or for you to empathise with the character. I actually played a game just before this that also had a twist in the end, the difference being that in that game it was intriguing and I started to think back, recalling the game, to realise the signs were there the whole time. I re-configured the story in a different perspective and everything beforehand didn’t feel like a waste of time. This game, my reaction was pretty much “wait... what?” this game’s twist is no revelation, the signs were not there, it just seems like a cheap attempt at a twist that is barely connected to the story that was being built, with no intrigue to make you really want to think and figure things out. I love going down little mental rabbit holes, but it felt so fragmented it was just easier to conclude that it was a bad story. I feel a bit harsh saying all this, but in the free DLC (which adds a level select that really could have been helpful in the main game while completing achievements, why on earth they didn’t just add that to the base game is baffling) there is a dev log in which they basically admit they had no writer. They decided to make a narrative walking similar based on the likes of Shutter Island and The Machinist, but didn’t hire a writer. I mean, it explained a lot and if anything justified my opinion in my mind. The discussions has quite a few comments from a dev essentially explaining the game, and if you need to explain your game to people because literally no one seemed to understand it, I think you’d agree that’s not a great sign. Generally there are a lot of missable achievements. There is actually 2 endings to this game, and as far as I know you’re not really given any kind of hint as to how to manipulate the game to get them so you may need to do a few playthroughs to 100% this one if you wanted to figure it out yourself. [spoiler]In the rare times your character is asked a question, if you continuously “lie”, you’ll get one ending, if you don’t, you’ll get the other. What is fun is that again, you aren’t given any hints that this affects anything. If your character was a compulsive liar and the therapist said lying will make your treatment less successful, sure, that’d be a good enough hint. There is no such hint in the game as far as I know. It’s not even clear what you’re being treated for, so there’s no way for you to act accordingly to try and push your character in the right direction.[/spoiler] Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this game. It calls itself a psychological thriller which I think is a massive stretch and just left me unsatisfied. I think the game tries to be mysterious and arty but just comes across shallow and a bit dull. I’m glad I traded for this game as it is absolutely not worth £15 in my opinion. [quote]For more reviews of games with psychological, philosophical or thought-provoking themes, check out my curator page [url= https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38795895/] Psychology, Philosophy & Thought, [/url] where we review games that explore the mind, get you thinking or make you question. [/quote]

1. şahıs FP türünde mini gerilim bulmaca ani gelişen ortam detayları gizemli hikaye gideri var oynanır

The Shattering ist ein langsamer Walking Simulator, der als psychologischer Thriller super funktioniert. Die weiße Ästhetik und die Erzählweise, die sich um einen Autor, seine Vergangenheit und die Frage dreht, was davon echt ist und was er sich nur ausgedacht hat, war echt fesselnd. Hat mir mega gefallen! :D

[h3]インディーだと思って油断した[/h3] 一人称視点のサイコスリラー 主役は何らかの事情により記憶喪失となったジョン・エヴァンス ジョンの記憶の世界を追体験し、真実とパートナーの名前を明らかにする…というのが大まかなストーリーです メタスコアが69なので全く期待せずに始めたのですが、かなり自分好みで面白かったです 映像のクオリティ、センスがとにかく凄かった ストーリーは序盤はやや退屈でしたが、中盤以降にグッと引き込まれました 日本語未サポートなのが本当に惜しい 字幕はそれ程速く流れないのでGoogleレンズ翻訳は使いやすいです 気になる方はセールの時にでもぜひ ※セール時にはかなりお得に購入できます

Описали чью-то жизнь

I’m Thinking of Ending Things на минималочках. Сам сюжет, казалось бы, тривиален: [spoiler]вот героя забуллили в школе, вот он увидел женщину и упал в обморок, вот окончательно сошёл с ума и застрелился[/spoiler] — всё чинно и благородно, как и подобает человеку, который накидался всем подряд, от Мельеса до Гоголя, но забыл прокачать модуль социальной адаптации. Согласны, узнали. Складывается впечатление, что авторы показали несколько эпизодов, но не сложили чёткую историю. Но ведь это воспоминания, пропущенные через восприятие героя: фрагменты личности, осколки прошлого начинают отражаться один в другом, освещая наше психоаналитическое погружение, и по мере того, как картина проясняется, как её эпизоды всё плотнее сплетаются между собой, становится очевидно, что перед нами не рандомная шизофазия, а вполне устойчивая сюжетная конструкция. Дальнейшие шаги не всегда интуитивны, но тут это обретает смысл и становится частью концепта: блуждать по разуму в поисках ответа — тревожно, за ручку никто не проведёт. Да, история простая, в чём-то шаблонная, но подана и срежиссирована она так стильно, что раскусывать её одно удовольствие — прошёл два раза подряд без капли скуки, а это ли не индикатор удавшейся игры? Впрочем, не всё идеально: есть проблемки с оптимизацией, встречаются затянутые или вовсе ненужные сегменты, в одном месте обнажилось отсутствие пространственного звука — нужно было найти источник голоса, но непонятно, откуда он доносился. Думается, была возможность скомпоновать эпизоды поплотнее, закрутить эффектнее, наслоить реальности друг на друга, накидав мелочей, но это всё же не Чарли Кауфман, а Super Sexy Software, понимать надо. В DLC разработчики признаются, что у них в команде не было писателя/сценариста, который бы превращал их наработки в готовый сюжет, отсюда и новичковая черта, когда идей много, а смелости отсечь лишнее не хватает. Вот вроде вижу прорехи и понимаю, почему игра не сыскала популярности, но — голосую сердечком и считаю, что The Shattering заслуживает куда более видного места в жанре walking sim'ов. Их и без того мало хороших, так зачем разбрасываться? Вердикт: [b]7.5/10[/b].

XUnity.AutoTranslator-ReiPatcherで翻訳できる。2018のフォント指定が必要。 字幕は自動送りだけど翻訳はなんとか間に合う。グーグル指定でも割と自然な文章になっている。 背景色白で白い文字だったり文字サイズが小さい場合があったりして少し読みづらい。 画面が流れて3D 酔いする場合はオプションのモーションブラーをOFFにすれば良い。 11時間くらいで本編完了。よかった。 本編語の無料DLCで開発者インタビューなどがあります(自動翻訳だと少し厳しい)。こちらは本編よりややグラフィックが重い気がします。

At some points I got stuck inside a location for a long while and actually had to look up a guide to move on. Most items are really obviously placed and then for other items you have to hit this small pixel underneath a chair.

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/9686972/]Follow "[b]First Person Exploration and Puzzle Games[/b]" for more games like this![/url][/quote] A first-person walking simulator about travelling through the character's subconscious. The story in this game is fairly disjointed and nonsensical. There's not really any puzzles either (only one in the 90 minutes I played). Those are the two main reasons to play a walking simulator, so I'm not really sure what's left. The entire game consists of interacting with things, and then watching the result of that interaction. While I suppose that generally describes [i]all[/i] games, usually you feel like you're making progress towards some goal, or progressing some story. Here it just feels like you're interesting with toys to see what they do. Things like the programming, modeling, voice acting, music etc. are all not bad. I'm not sure how long the game takes to beat, because I gave up after 90 minutes. Overall, the game feels like it's lacking a purpose. I find it hard to recommend.

I wish there was an "Eh, Maybe" option instead of a simple yes or no. The game wasn't what I expected, which [b]can[/b] be a good thing, but it also wasn't what I [i]wanted[/i] which is less of a good thing. Was intrigued by the aesthetic design of the trailer and teaser pictures but in actuality it was a bit too blinding. I found myself wishing there was a way to lessen or outright turn off the instances of flashing lights, particularly combined with the brightness, as it was uncomfortable to watch and I ended up having to look away at some points. I wanted to be more sympathetic to the character - the trauma was impactful, sure - but I wasn't really given a reason to care about him other than simply being in his shoes. The voice acting was a bit too wooden to evoke a true emotional response too so I didn't really get invested via the other characters either. What really got me though was the story - or rather the distinct lack of a coherent one. [spoiler]I get that there's emotional and physical trauma going on over the years for our protag and that can do a lot to a person mentally, but there was too much left up to "mystery" to have a proper storyline to care about. It's fine to have to guess or philosophize about the "truth" of the story, but when everything is so disjointed at the end... it's rather unsatisfying. I was more frustrated than anything and felt even more separated from the story because John's narrative was proven so untrustworthy it made me wonder if the bullying and such even happened in the first place. Ending on a note of mildly annoyed "wait... what?" wasn't exactly what I was hoping for out of the game.[/spoiler] Additionally, the inability to replay the Acts/Chapters was a bit disappointing. If there had been more engagement in the story/characters, maybe I'd have [u]wanted[/u] to play again just for achievements or to look for the "easter eggs". As it was, getting my last few achievements felt like a bit of a chore. Overall it's... fine. I've certainly played worse. And I've definitely played better. The striking visual narrative just couldn't save the disappointing actual narrative. If asked to, I wouldn't play it again or be likely to recommend it unless it was on super sale and even then with reservations.