Never Alone Arctic Collection

The game has a couple of decent selling points: unusual cultural heritage, intended educational value and pretty visuals. Much to my surprise, it also supports Windows XP despite being a fairly recent release (late 2014) intended for current gen consoles; this is something I personally appreciate, since I'm desperately holding onto this ancient OS for the sake of older games. Just as the title of my review states, my opinion changed drastically as the game went on. I was initially charmed by the game's unique cultural heritage and attractive visuals. I liked the idea of unlocking little snippets of unfamiliar culture in the form of documentary-style interview videos (referred in-game as insights). The resentment came after a number of deaths resulting from the actions (or inaction) of the companion. For instance, the character you're not controlling at that moment might not "think" to get out of the way of spirits that fly around in a loop and instantly kill you if they snatch you. Or your fox companion, who controls spirits by proximity, might suddenly take off while you're holding on to a spirit platform or a handhold, causing it to disappear and send you to your death. On the other hand, if you play the game in co-op, you won't have that problem. At times, the controls didn't help the situation much, either. My other major gripe is with the educational side of the game. Those insights are too few and don't give you quite enough, despite being one of the selling points of the game and most likely the reason the game found support from various Innuit-centric institutions. Gameplay-wise, you could do much better in this sub-genre (highly scripted puzzle platformers, I guess), e.g. Another World, Limbo or Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Finally, the price-to-length ration is acceptable: about 5 hours for the main campaign and the Foxtales DLC, and you might enjoy the game more than I did if you play it co-op.

Having grown with the Sami lore - another arctic First Nation, in an environment where this lore was widespread and celebrated, I can't recommend buying this game. I love the narration and the videos, my wife loves the narration and the videos, but this all comes on top of a very poorly developed game, with a questionable degree of control, which doesn't let you skip combat or platforming scenes no matter how many times you have failed them. I've counted at least 3 instances where we were forced to repeat a segment 30+ times, due to buggy wall scaling/clipping. In addition to that most intersticial historical text is aliased and thus is completely unreadable. This does a disservice to an otherwise interesting story.

Never Alone presents many things I enjoy and would like to see more in the video game industry : - An original story, based on a legend, from cultural sources you never see usually. - The story is simple but manages to take you through, with appealing main characters. - A really nice soundtrack that fits with the game. With the landscapes, it helps put you in this legend. - "Cultural notions" presented as short documentaries you can unlock all along, adding sense and making the cultural background not being just an excuse. But... This being said, it is still a game. And this one presents two major flaws. - The AI is just awful sometimes, and could make you cringe several times. Fortunately there are many checkpoints, but this is not supposed to be the kind of game you "rage" in. - The controls can be very bad too, especially in terms of reactivity. Since it's a platformer, including sequences where you have to be fast, this can be a problem. So why 4 stars ? Well, I would still recommend it for its rare originality, its stunning beauty and its immersive story if you're able to manage these flaws.

Very nice, stylish and unusual. That's true that It's quite short - about 3.5 hours only. But for that short period of playing you just don't get bored of game mechanics, puzzles and action. Seeing forward to have more games like this one.

Great co-op game but trying to play the second part on my own was completely different. Didn't even bother. It's a game that should be played together with someone. Except for that, I recommend reading the stories recorded by Knud Rasmussen as he traveled around Greenland back in the early 1900's. It's a world of it's own, different from any other mythology I've encountered.