Firewatch

You know the main difference between Firewatch (FW) and The Stanley Parable (TSP)? Even with the lower budget, TSP creates way more solid storyline than 'open-world-officially / linear in fact' FW. First. Almost literally every step in TSP is narrated, some of these with few further lines itself. Take a step away from main line in FW aaaaand... right - you're welcome in 'Silently Nowhere'. There's no live even anywhere nearby the main line. And because of that, with all declarated open world stuff, in fact - this game is linear as straight line from point A to point B. Second. And it was mentioned many times before me. Intro choices changes nothing. They try to create some emotional bond with main character. But in my case it was a failure. I had more feelings with my hopes that somewhere in cliff hopping main character will broke his leg or something similar.. just anything to change this boring animation, seriously. Finale. I cannot and will not blame level designers, art creators, sound designers and all other dev who creates 'the meat of the game', the problem is in the 'glue' (narrative) which must create solid game in the end. So: - lack of narrative coverage, which one leads to - - lack of empathy to literally everything in the game - lack of some 'breath of live' around ruins the game experience. Once you've understood that - you will just run towards the end without any distraction for this open empty world.

Played Firewatch a few months ago and i can tell you that every hour you put into this game is worth it, the story gets more interesting the more you play it, the game isn't perfect but it is truly breathtaking, the beautiful graphics with it's textures just looks amazing. If you're looking for a short game that's fun and has a good story, I would highly recommend trying this game out, you will enjoy every moment of it.

=-= To Begin With =-= Having not heard of the Developer of Firewatch previously, but enjoying the trailer and noting that (despite obvious prettiness) the GOG.com description notes it as having a creepy wibe: I thought I would try it. Normally I don't care about sales hype or what the latest thing is; plus my purchasing decisions are governed by a budget; so as usual I bought this on sale, at a significant discount. I was looking forward to having a tour of an admittedly imaginary section of the Wyoming wilderness, and perhaps dodging getting attacked by a Bear along the way. =-= Is It Broken? =-= To address the technical issues that lie with this product: a glance in the Forum for Firewatch will (currently) show a number of people who had issues getting it to work; and yet more who got stuck or even felt *burned* (pun intended) during the course of play. In my opinion related issues have been ironed out; but your mileage without a small collection of "Visual C++ Redistributables" installed may vary with this product. I experienced *none* of the above issues, and please note my hardware *necessitated* me running Firewatch with all of the "bells and whistles" in the "Graphics settings" turned off, with the top two of that list at "Medium". The fact that this product has been patched more than once, and fairly recently (at the time of writing) shows that the Developer does seem to give a "monkeys'" about its customers. "Nuff said". A longer version of this review is in the "Forum discussion" for this game.

This is not a very long game, maybe 5 hours unless you really explore off the beaten path. What you do get is an great story that keeps you wanting to come back for more. This game can be hard to put down, which you may not need to do with the shorter story. I did deduct a star because there are some annoying movement bugs that can break immersion. I did have to quicksave then quickload once because one of the action prompts did not work correctly. There was nothing that prevented me from finishing this game. Performance on Linux was alright. I was able to maintain a good framerate but I have high end hardware that was pushed more than it should have been for a 6 year old game. I definitely recommend picking this up, even if it's waiting for a sale.

The world is vivid and interesting-looking, but interactivity is very limited, and you spend most of your time just walking from one place to another--hence, I guess, walking simulator. So the game is short, the story is pretty linear, and you spend most of your time walking to the next narrative event. It's like watching a mediocre movie except you have to walk from one part of the set to another to see the next scene. I get that it's kind of an experiment in "what can we do with a video game," but I think everything that this game tries to do is done better through traditional media like books and movies.