To Play or Not to Play

PSN recently put up ten free games on their store as part of their "Play at Home" initiative.  Never one to turn down such offers, I downloaded three titles that I had never gotten around to playing previously.  Here's are some of my thoughts:   

Abzû is what you get when you take Flower and Journey, mash them together, and move the location underwater.  Is it a highly derivative experience?  Yes.  Is it a bad game?  No, not at all.  In particular, the visual presentation is excellent.  There is a lot of attention paid to details such as the splashes fish make when they jump out of the water or turbidity caused by swimming close to the ocean floor.  I was especially impressed by the shear number of aquatic animals the game can render onscreen at any given time.  There's also some neat foreshadowing that occurs if the player is willing to explore off the mainline path.  One other touch I really liked was not only the inclusion of all manner of iconic sea life, but also some creatures that have gone extinct.  Fans of ancient history will enjoy the references to Sumerian culture.  The music is also quite good and adheres to the mood of game like a wetsuit.  It's short, but sweet...and yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I've seen all this before.

The Witness was Jonathan Blow's last game before he disappeared down the black hole of developing an entirely new programming language called "Jai."  Set on a beautiful island, this puzzle game has a lot of similarities to Myst.  The big difference being all the puzzles utilize a draw-lines-to-connect-the-dots mechanic.  At first I found it interesting, but a lot of the environmental-based clues felt a bit arbitrary.  At times, I also got the impression that the challenge came more from guessing what the developer was thinking rather than some arbitrary logic.  Normally I wouldn't mind having to guess a bit, but certain locals have a sequence of puzzles that reset the previous one if the next isn't done correctly.  It's really tedious to have to go back and re-solve a puzzle that was already completed.  Additionally, my preference for exploration over puzzle solving left me wanting to wander and sightsee the island more than engage with any of the game's actual mechanics.  

Subnautica is the third, last and most substantial of the three games I played.  At first glance it might seem like an extrasolar take on Abzû.  In fact though it's an eclectic mix of survival, exploration, horror, story-driven adventure, and - of course - crafting.  Some aspects are silly (glowing red underwater lava lakes how?) while others are perhaps a bit too realistic (an infectious diseases ruined my aquarium!?!).  The single most enjoyable aspect of the game for me was cruising around in a huge "cyclops" submersible.  It even had a foghorn built in!  Sadly, I couldn't use it to communicate with "reefback leviathans" (huge whale-like sea creatures).  The PC version might be more stable, but on the PS4 I found the game had a number of issues: save file corruption, clipping, objects popping into existence causing things to get trapped or stuck...still, base building was cool and I had some rather intense encounters with the larger more aggressive underwater fauna that I won't soon forget. 

Overall, I have to commend PSN for their choice of games.  It's a great selection for people looking for escapism while being stuck indoors.  The fact that it was all entirely free also means I don't have much cause for complaint.  I also wouldn't mind giving the sequel to Subnautica a looksee once it's out of early access...anyway...that will be a story for another time.