Recent reviews by Logan

As a huge fan of Giant Squid, playing Sword of the Sea felt like a necessity. I absolutely loved Abzû and The Pathless, so my expectations were high. Unfortunately, I can't recommend playing this one.

Visuals & Performance: The game is undeniably pretty. The technical implementation of the water and sand effects is impressive, as are the fish and particle systems. There is a specific late-game area that offers truly beautiful vistas. However, this game is demanding! It kept crashing on my PC, forcing me to lower my graphics settings quite a bit. I have a 3080 Ti and was only able to run this game at 1080p.

Gameplay & Feel: The core "skating" mechanic feels unrefined. The camera behavior and speed often felt clunky and at odds with pipe tricks. The progression of unlocked abilities feels satisfying, but there are not many tricks to do and no indication of score. There are a few challenge areas that do display the player score, but they are quickly left behind in favor of story. Collectibles litter the gameplay area, which I personally did not care for—it made the experience feel more like a mobile game. There are also two specific sections where you control something other than your main character; these segments dragged on way too long and were honestly unenjoyable.

It feels like the game is suffering from an identity crisis. It’s not focused enough to be a great narrative experience, but it lacks the depth and challenge to be a great skating game. It seems like trying to do both in the three-hour playtime stretched resources too thin, resulting in a game that feels very light on content given the price tag.

Story & Animation: If you have played Journey (or Abzû), you have played this story. The main beats are exactly the same. There are moments directly ripped from those previous titles. While I appreciated the lore callbacks to Giant Squid's previous works—confirming they take place in the same universe—it often felt too familiar. While I'd love to see some lore reveals and get to know this world, the story is only alluded to through stone tablets with dull text and the implied circumstances of the characters.

The biggest letdown, for me personally, was the animation quality. In a story- and art-focused game, it's crucial that cutscenes feel premium, well-animated, and emotional. What I saw seemed rushed and clunky. More than once, shots were framed to avoid showing the main action of the scene. The moments where hand-drawn animation frames were used felt particularly incomplete. Compared to the polish of The Pathless, this feels like a step backward. Maybe there was some trouble with completing the cutscene animations on time for release, since many animations during gameplay are actually very nice.

Verdict: I wanted to love this, but it feels uneven for a 3-hour story. Giant Squid has a talented team of art and technical graphics programmers, but this game suffers from reusing too much from previous works, and either not cutting some of the bloat or limiting the scope too much. If the game were cheaper and focused purely on story, or longer and focused more on gameplay, it might have felt better when credits rolled.

This game tries to take its place in the ever-growing "games as art" category. Unfortunately, it seems to fail at this every step of the way.

First, the most crucial element of a "game as art" is the visuals, motion, and experience. The visuals feel unpolished and extreme--with terrain largely untextured and pulled in unnatural ways. The game uses a somewhat unpleasant color palette, but it does try to keep things managed and pleasant at times. Motion is very limited and your fox character feels stiff and uncooperative.

There is voice acting in this game, telling the story of a man who is coping with his past. The acting is as good as it can be, but the script is a little cringy and hard to take seriously. The developers use voice cuts as a reward for passing each section. With how poorly written the melodrama is, you may actually wish you could just go through the game in silence.

Overall, I would not recommend this game to anyone. If you are interested in the plot, you would probably have a better experience watching someone else play the game on YouTube.

I have no idea how far along I am in this game, but I've spent a week's worth of conglomerate hours on it. Most gamers I know have either played or know about this game.

GAMEPLAY:

Gameplay is centered around a quest structure which involves talking to different characters and gaining some type of objective. As a Witcher, you accept contracts to defeat beasts in exchange for in-game money and experience points to level up. Your primary abilities include combat, magic, and enhanced senses. These abilities are used in a similar fashion for almost every mission--Find a scent or trail using your Senses, use magic abilities to clear the path, and combat mechanics to defeat the enemy.

Combat is cohesive and is the main attraction for the game. You'll do just fine if you mash the Attack button on Easy mode, but there is a cohort of techniques you can execute. Dodging, in-battle healing and potions, different sword techniques, bombs, and magic abilities litter the assortment of possible moves, which provides a cerebral and exciting challenge. There are a few enemies in the game which require certain magical abilities to be used, and the game relies on you to read up on entries in the Bestiary (or Google search them) in order to gain a leg up on the enemy. This design choice aligns with the book series, but it's unfair for players who simply don't want to read.

Beyond the core gameplay, there are a few distractions. You'll find an in-game card game called Gwent (and I have no interest in playing a card game within my actual game), the ability to take your horse for a scenic and endless ride, and Zelda: Breath of the Wild - style exploration for secrets scattered around the map.

Finally, your character, Geralt, progressively levels up. When this happens due to gaining enough Experience Points, you are given the option to level up one of Geralt's many abilities. Leveling isn't as crucial to the game, but it does control which weapons you are allowed to use and which quests you should undertake. There are also some events that can only take place with certain abilities enabled.
----

GRAPHICS:

During your gameplay, you'll notice that the world is expertly crafted. You'll also notice that most people in the game are really ugly. Beyond some sexualized female characters, your average NPC will look concerningly unattractive. The game world itself is beautifully detailed and holds up for being several years old. With impressive light shafts, environment effects, weather, and detail, it is clear that the developers were passionate about making the world feel like a real place.
---

STORY:

The game series is based on the book/short story series by Andrzej Sapkowski, so there is a clear depth to the characters most involved in the plot, along with plenty of references to the events of the series. The game's plot revolves around Geralt's search for his daughter Cirilla. It drives you through the different areas of the game world, completing side missions to gain information about her whereabouts.

Story is primarily driven by one-on-one encounters with characters who exchange dialouge with Geralt. This part of the game is excruciating for me. Characters talk slowly and their talking animations and camera angles are reused for nearly every character. Often, I read ahead using subtitles and skipped through dialouge sequences simply because of how lengthy some of the encounters were. I commend the effort given to this part of the game, but it didn't have an immersive effect.
--

Overall, this game is a masterpiece that any gamer should consider adding to their library of games. I'm typically a casual gamer with only a few hours devoted to games, so this is an exception for me.

Also, Geralt is hot. That is all.

The Good:
*The game has many modes, including local and online multiplayer, a level editor, and a single player campaign.
*The graphics are stunning and are sometimes shockingly so.
*The game is always throwing something exciting at you, so it's hard to get bored
*It's not too difficult, but that's what makes a game like this fun.
*The music is great
*Atmospheric. Kind of like Tron and Portal had a car baby
*Excellent controls on an XBOX controller for me.
*I didn't expect a car game to have a fun and interesting story.

The Cons:
*There is an ability in the game that allows you to thrust your car downwards. I wish that the introduction of this ability happened in tandem with learning about the other thrusters, as it would help with a few of the trickier moves in the game
*The recorded messages that play throughout the game feel a little hollow and generic.

And that's it! Definitely would recommend this game to anyone who likes Tron, Portal, cars, space, gravity, and EDM music.