Front crawl, back stroke, ego stroke.
We’d be lying if we pretended we hadn’t experienced impressive games published by Annapurna Interactive in the past; What Remains of Edith Finch, Outer Wilds, and Sayonara Wild Hearts are just scratching the surface of the critically acclaimed titles that have passed through their avowed art-game doors. The hit factory though, such as it is, seems to be on a bit of a stumble lately. The hotly-anticipated Twelve Minutes was the dampest of damp squibs, your mileage will absolutely vary with The Artful Escape and now we’ve got A Memoir Blue, a “interactive poem” (red flag emoji) about a competitive swimmer’s relationship with her mother.
Is that too cynical? Perhaps. We fear that these introspective games — while certainly having their place in this enormous, diverse, joyous hobby — need to offer a little more meat on the bone to be truly worthwhile. And we don’t mean in their core gameplay, necessarily; storywise, this is a flaccid experience, on top of being mechanically uninteresting. We can forgive one, but not both.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
