Year Walk - Review (iOS and PC/Mac game)

'Year Walk' is a game set to divide opinion due to its slow pace and quiet, ambient atmosphere. The game revolves around an ancient Swedish ritual called Årsgång that required its partakers, called yearwalkers, to undergo a series of challenges that would allegedly result in visions of the future. These visions however may come at a grave cost as there is no guarantee the year walker will survive this ancient practice. As a lover of folklore the premise of the game was far too good to pass up and now, with the winter month fully descended upon us, I felt now was the best time to try it out. I wasn’t to be disappointed.

Developer: Simogo 
Genre: Puzzle, interactive fiction 
Release date: 21st February 2013 (iOS) 6th March 2014 (PC), 3rd April 2014 (Mac)
Platforms: iOS, PC and Mac
ESRB: Unrated (Horror imagery)

‘Year Walk’ is very much one of those ‘interactive fiction’ type games where it feels as though you’re playing through some kind of novella rather than an actual game and its strongest features are by far its chilling atmosphere, obscure storyline and sublime aptitude at weaving together horror, fantasy and folklore. You play as a mysterious person who has chosen to partake in the ‘year walking’ ritual in an attempt to predict your future and this starts out with saying alone in the dark, whilst fasting, during New Year’s Eve. When the clock strikes into the New Year you leave your solitary confinement and walk around the forest that surrounds the cabin, meeting strange and frightening creatures that offer up challenges in the way of puzzles for you to solve. 

 
What I particularly liked about the game was how it drew you in with just enough mystery to peak your interest but then made it quite difficult for me to find out what was going on. Initially the game is quite frustrating as it feels as though you’re just walking around in circles and getting nowhere. Everywhere I turned I found myself locked out of somewhere with no obvious way of getting in and it took a while for me to realize that I really needed to pay attention to the smallest of details in order to navigate not only the twisting and turning woodland but the game itself. A pen and some paper turns out to be absolutely essential for this game as jotting down everything from landmarks, patterns, symbols and even your path through the forest as its very easy to get turned around and find yourself lost, despite the presence of certain key landmarks. What really struck me however was the actual appearance of the game as there’s just something about its very simplistic artistic style that reminded me of a hand crafted Christmas card where everything is rather whimsical and ethereal. Spindly, silver skinned trees stand boldly against a velvety backdrop, the snow crunches beneath your feet as you are inexplicably drawn deeper and deeper into the dark, mysterious world. ‘Year Walk’ has such a fantasy feel about it that it feels as though you are exploring a gentle winters scene in some pure and innocent fairytale but the creepy imagery and frightening jump scares drop you back into reality with a bump. The constant clashing of splendor and viciousness keeps you on your toes and is very effective at maintaining the emotion that comes with an ever changing, ever evolving reality where nothing is as it seems. 

This is one of those games that sticks in your mind long after you’ve finished playing it, haunting you as though there’s something else in the snow blanketed world that needs to be revisited. Its haunting storyline, horrific scares and utterly immersive atmosphere all amount to an extremely unique experience that, for the modest price tag, is worth diving into. I should mention at this point that you may sink rather than swim in this grim tale as it’s a puzzle game with a whole new level of difficulty. In fact, I found some moments of the game utterly unbearable not because of its poor quality but of how frustrating and obscure I found the puzzles to be and there was plenty of time spent struggling on through things I found could have been made a little clearer. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a challenge and I admit that games have become significantly easier in recent years but when you spend a good ten minutes on one puzzle a little resentment does start to build. It’s not until I was fully absorbed in the ‘puzzle game’ mind frame where I started to take note of every tiny detail and utilizing my ‘companion app’ guide to learn more about the folklore that I really started to make headway. 
 

The companion app is an unusual addition but, after initially dismissing it as an added extra for those who enjoy reading in games, I realised it had a noticeable effect on the game itself. At first it appears as though the companion app is simply detailing the ritual of year walking in full detail, providing additional information on the symbols and characters you come across, but towards the end you find that you may enter a passcode into the journal. It’s not until you have ‘completed’ the game and come back to that journal that you find the game is far from over as the full story is revealed to you through additional gameplay and scenes. 

Something I found slightly problematic about Year Walk was the controls as it was originally made for touchscreens. Several puzzles require you to move your mouse in the same way you would a finger which, for me, felt really strange and I was glad there were no reaction based puzzles as this would have been pretty hard to re-enact with a mouse. Whilst the controls are nicely interactive for touchscreens, for instance using your thumb print to activate certain stones, there were times when the game was unclear about what kind of user input was required, leaving me to paw helplessly at the screen until something worked. Translated onto a PC what this tended to result in were plenty of puzzles that you didn’t know how to even begin tackling them due to the zero amount of guidance from the game.

‘Year Walk’ is sadly a very short game that, provided you knew all the answers to the puzzles already, would take a pretty meager 30 minutes to complete. The only thing that really extends the length of the game is the difficulty of the puzzles and I would have loved additional gameplay and more storyline as the game is such a unique experience it seems a pity not to extend it with additional content. That said, the pacing of the game is fantastic and nothing is rushed and, whilst the slow nature of the game may annoy some, I enjoyed the softly softly approach to exposing the mysteries that this game held. The emphasis on audio appealed to me, from the audio based puzzles to the enchanting music but this may necessarily prove to be problematic for those with hearing difficulties. The game has no spoken dialogue, everything is text based, but the requirement to hear for the audio based puzzle may stop many people from progressing in the game and it’s a shame there’s no alternative. Minor niggles aside, ‘Year Walk’ is all in all a pleasantly surprising game that is very sleek and very intelligent in its design and the way in which everything plays out and slots together. I adored this means of learning about Swedish folklore and I enjoyed the complexity of the story that, when you get around to completing it the first time, only gets better and better. I can imagine this game is not for everybody due to its slow pace, emphasis on atmosphere and frequently frustrating moments but for me it was a delight to play and I highly recommend it.

The Good:

• Very stylish game
• A constant uneasy atmosphere that something's wrong
• Beautifully artistic
• Genuinely creepy with plenty of scares
• Inclusion of the companion app is a nice touch
• A unique way of learning about folklore
• Intelligent, well pieced together, good pacing
• A story that keeps you guessing, even after it ends
• The kind of game that stays with you after you've finished it

The Bad:

• Audio puzzles
• Zero guidance when solving puzzles results in a lot of guesswork 
• The controls for solving puzzles are frustrating 
• Rather short in length 
• Slow pace may annoy some

The Score: 9/10

Final thoughts: “I’m so glad I finally got around to playing this in time for Christmas, it’s an absolutely stunning game with so much creativity and thought poured into it. It was such a twist to find out its horror elements but the creepy imagery worked really well with the dreamy nature of the game.”

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Beyond: Two Souls - Full Review (PlayStation 3 game)

If you’re looking for something that’s intense, cinematic and extremely immersive then 'Beyond: Two Souls' may be exactly what you are looking for. More like an interactive film than a game, 'Beyond: Two Souls' follows the life, jumping through random points in time, of a young woman called Jodie Holmes who has been connected to an invisible, mysterious entity since birth. This unknown entity is called Aiden and, in single player you control both characters whilst, in co-op one player plays Aiden and one plays Jodie. 

Developer: Quantic Dream 
Genre: Interactive drama, action adventure 
Release date: 8th October 2013 (EU: 11th October 2013, JP: 17th October 2013) 
Platforms: PlayStation 3 
ESRB: M - Mature

This beautifully unique game strongly emphasises player interaction and, in this sense, is considered to be an interactive drama game with some action elements. Whilst I usually hate quick time events in this game it works perfectly and, in a style similar to Heavy Rain, you’ll find yourself performing actions for everything you come across. Through the use of motion capture actress Ellen Page and actor Willem Dafoe star as Jodie Holmes and Nathan Dawkins respectively and, alongside their flawless voice acting, you’ll be hard pressed to find a game that’s more realistic than Beyond: Two Souls is. This is a beautifully crafted, extremely emotional and fantastically animated game that changes the face of gaming. 

Gameplay and story

The game revolves around a woman called Jodie who is somehow physically connected to an invisible entity dubbed Aiden. The story flicks about between different times in Jodie’s life ranging from when she was a child to the shocking events we see in the prologue with the premise being that Jodie’s forgotten how she’s come to where she is. Whilst the story is primarily focused on Jodie there will be times when you control Aiden and see things through his ghostly perspective. The ending of the game varies on your decisions and throughout the ‘chapters’ that you play through there will be some room for manoeuvre and make your own decisions but, generally, the overall storyline is a fixed series of events.

The game is primarily designed to be some kind of interactive film and it is, in this sense, extremely cinematic. There’s basically no HUD aside from a white dot showing what can be interacted with and no map to guide you places. The camera moves very organically and tends to focus on what Jodie is looking at whether that’s somewhere she’s been ordered to go or something that’s just caught her attention. It won’t take you long to adjust to the mannerisms and personality of this game and you’ll almost immediately be sucked into the episodic telling of Jodie’s life. The great thing about dipping and diving between different times in Jodie’s life is the great variation in gameplay that this provides. Protagonists are usually presented ‘as is’ with the occasional reference to earlier events that helped shape them but with Jodie you live so much of her life from the simple times of playing in her bedroom as a young child, through troubled teenage years, to the moment she learned she was to leave everything she knew and join the C.I.A. You follow her through her initial training and, when real life interrupts this and Jodie’s forced to apply these newly acquired skills in desperate, life changing situations, you truly appreciate the depth and breadth of her character. If Jodie was constantly on the run and beating people up it would quickly become a boring, 2D interpretation of life as this is not how people live. Instead, by living through the very normal, domestic aspects of her life you see everything put into perspective. It’s not just watching a troubling childhood it’s living through that and then, when Jodie unleashes her revenge, it’s more than just petty violence but bitterness, hurt and frustration all balled together into an intense and dangerous explosion of emotion. 

But it’s not just Jodie who tugs you headlong into the immersive nature of the game; Aiden, too, is a fascinating subject though I found his connection with Jodie to be initially a little disturbing. After all, you know nothing about him and for all you know he’s utterly malevolent. However, as you view the tentative interactions between a little girl and this mysterious spirit as he pushes her on the swing, defends her when she’s wronged and protects her from harm you understand just how much they need each other. What’s great about Aiden is even though you never see him and only occasionally see the world through his eyes he still has a very distinctive personality. From the beginning its made clear how quickly things can go wrong due to the sheer power Aiden has but, unusually so, when you yourself are in control of Aiden you feel the exact same way. Aiden’s power and tendency to take things too far is quickly reflected in your own gameplay and sometimes you find yourself doing things that, usually, you’d never do. It’s very much a case of you can break windows, scare people half to death, set a building on fire, tear the world apart so you end up doing so because, God dammit, why shouldn’t you? 

I think what surprised me about this game was how absolutely terrifying it could make itself as initially the game came across as creepy, a little eerie but otherwise nothing particularly noteworthy, I was wrong about that. The intensity of encounters is very quickly elevated later on and there are some moments of absolute, genuine terror that I was simply not expecting. In particular, the reliance on the player to survive encounters by performing quick time events means that it’s your responsibility to get Jodie to safety and, when required to jump, duck or smash through something there’s almost zero on-screen help and instead you must accurately read what she intends to do by following the movement of her body with your controller. When you’re faced with an extremely pressured situation this can quickly deteriorate into a frenzied attempt to survive but, as you can imagine, shoving your controller every which way is one sure fire way of getting yourself killed. It’s not all fast paced action though as I alluded to earlier but that doesn’t mean you’re not involved in things. Almost everything Jodie does is guided by you from cutting up her dinner during meals, tidying her apartment before a date, training with the CIA to hitchhiking on the side of a road. When Jodie’s working hard, you’re working hard and the ties that this creates between protagonist and player is not just an added layer of immersion but an invaluable approach to ensuring you’re emotionally invested in the storyline and characters. 

As games go I tend to prefer ones which are open world and, despite this game not being this way it still manages to convince you that you could go anywhere at a moment’s notice. There’s almost always a set path or a few paths that you have to follow but these take place in large, sprawling environments that should not be explored anyway such as a desert landscape or a laboratory. Doors would be, quite naturally, locked in a laboratory where conditions are strictly monitored so it’s unlikely that a little girl would be allowed to go off wandering around as she pleased when she’s being escorted somewhere. So she can only go through one door, so what? That’s where she’s going anyway. What’s interesting is that it’s simply not in Jodie’s personality to run off in any random direction anyway because she’s a very straight down the middle, straight to the point sort of character. When she’s got a job to do by God, she’ll go and do that job and follow it through until the end. In this sense, even though the game’s path is constantly linear that doesn’t ruin the story in any way as even through you’re following this track there’s a fair bit of wiggle room where you can mooch off a little, change the story here and there and choose how you ultimately reach the end goal. Whilst the game didn’t have as much ‘change the story’ elements as I would have liked there’s options and different paths you can take; you can escape from certain scenarios in different ways, take things to far with Aiden or maybe leash him in a bit more, things like that. Either way all of the choices you make will be within the boundaries of what Jodie may or may not do and there are no outlandish choices that would break her character. For a game like this it’s important to remember that you’re not your own character such as in the Dragon Age series or Skyrim and you’re more like… Corvo from Dishonoured, there’s some breathing room in how you do stuff, but you still have to do things his way.

Graphics, animations and audio 
 
Nothing negative could be said about the graphics and animation of this game, they are utterly flawless and astoundingly realistic. 'Beyond: Two Souls' is more film-like than any other game I’ve ever played and this makes for a totally original experience. A complete lack of HUD adds to the immersion value and the only time you’ll encounter game like elements are when you’re prompted to make a decision in conversation or perform a quick time event. Everything looks stunningly realistic whether that’s water captured on skin or rust etched onto metal, there’s not one aspect of the game that’s not polished to perfection. The landscapes are vast and detailed as you explore a beautiful assortment of locations that range from the super modern such as shiny laboratories or 21st century offices to the totally rustic, somewhat dilapidated Native American farmlands and homeless squatting grounds. This is a game where you will genuinely struggle to find something that’s not flawlessly detailed and utterly realistic. 

The interesting application of CGI and motion capture for the faces and movements of characters is very effective. Each individual wrinkle, mole, hair, scar and pore is clearly visible adding to a huge range of emotions to be portrayed on a wide variety of individuals. No two people are the same, each NPC is their own person and rather than coming face to face with hundreds of similar looking people this game has opted for a few dozen of totally unique individuals. 

The animations are something to truly behold and you can instantly tell that this is something the developers should be extremely satisfied with. All of the animations are very organic and natural feeling, for example when carrying a bale of hay Jodie occasionally adjusted it but not in your usual sense; each adjustment was different, realistic, evolving. Tiny, subtle movements ripple throughout every interaction and you are constantly barraged with her conflicting emotions, her moments of feeling self-conscious, her pain or anger and by the time you’ve sunk into the game you realize that this is truly the most human of all game protagonists. It really is incredible to experience. This massive variety of animations whether that’s walking or idle ones and, having experienced a lot of impressive animations in my gaming time, I was taken aback by the sheer detail to the point where I literally made a new category to talk about this in this review. 

There’s not much that can be said about the audio of this game as, quite simply, it is flawless. The voice acting is perfect, emotional and extremely high quality. Everything, whether it’s gentle breathing or full on screaming is etched with emotion allowing you to truly understand the thoughts, feeling and experiences of the characters. The music isn’t particularly noticeable as its very subtle and only tends to come into its own when there’s a great deal of action on scream, at which point it rises in tempo and intensity to reflect the direction of events. All in all, there’s not a single fault with the aesthetical aspects of Beyond: Two Souls.

Overall

Quantic Dream have been in and out of my consoles for some time; I first played their game ‘Fahrenheit’ and for some unknown reason could never get into it, despite appreciating how original it was. I’d toyed with the idea of ‘Heavy Rain’ but again it passed me by and I still haven’t got very far into it. ‘Beyond: Two Souls’ changed my opinion of this genre of games entirely and I found it to be deeply emotional yet incredibly intense experience that merged full throttle action sequences with slower, more tentative gameplay. There are quite a few endings to this game depending on choices made in later sequences which is a fantastic way of rounding off a game that boasts how much the player affects the storyline. Nothing bad can be said about the way it looks, sounds and generally portrays itself as everything is a flawless representation of life however, there’s room for improvement. Critically I would say that there is not a huge number of alternatives when faced with encounters and that sometimes, ok, once, the game didn’t take into account how I’d responded to a scene. Despite this you will find yourself playing a slightly altered version of the game compared to your friends and, taking into account how fantastic the game otherwise is, I think that’s a pretty reasonable expectation.

The Good: 

• Looks flawless, very detailed, beautiful lighting
• Sounds fantastic, voice acting is superb
• Alternate endings for replayability
• Controlling Aiden is super fun
• Great variation in gameplay
• Something for everybody 
• Interesting storyline keeps you on your toes
• Immersive, passionate, emotional

The Bad: 

• More impact on storyline by doing things in different ways would be good
• The fact it's more like an interactive film than a game may put some off
• Bit of a slow starter

The Score: 9/10 

Final thoughts: "I hope there's a second one released for the PlayStation 4 but, how the hell would they intergrate all the possible endings? Maybe they'd do it in the same world but not following Jodie... Hmm..."

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