Oxenfree

I've done Oxenfree 4 times in a row. Just end and start again.

Pros: Amazing story with a jaw-dropping ending. Very well-done glitches/corrupted graphical look when certain events happen. Every line of dialogue (from your character) has 3 options, and you can choose which one to say. Depending of your choices (mostly conversation choices), the story changes. You can see how did your choices compare with other players' choices. Incredible music, really sets the atmosphere. Not only thanks to the music, but also thanks to the graphics, the atmosphere is really immersive and sometimes even creepy. The game is FULLY voice acted, and it has hundreds of voice lines. There is always a conversation going on. Cons: No ability to sprint or go slower, speed is fixed (I did play with a keyboard). Very little time to think about the conversation options. Dialogue options disappear, your character says nothing and you can't return to it (and you annoy the other characters by being silent). I got some bugs, but I have been told by everyone that they didn't get those at all. I personally was very overwhelmed at the start because they would just NEVER shut up, but I was livestreaming. Playing offline does not cause that issue at all. I really enjoyed the voice acting overall anyways, I think at the beginning it's intentional due to character progression. I had a problem with the really quick disappearance of conversation options, I understand it was done to mimic a real conversation, but I feel IRL you can always answer a little bit later. I enjoyed the playstyle a lot, I do like walking simulators, and I didn't feel like this game needed any puzzles. My Twitch channel, where you can see games such as this one played live: https://twitch.tv/beroun My Steam Curator page, where you can see all my other game reviews: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39632216-Beroun%2527s-Streaming-Group/ My Youtube channel, where you can see many playthroughs of different games: https://youtube.com/channel/UCe0DUzUUnmHetD5DnxdCYiQ

Firstly, as a game its terrible. It has a single puzzle mechanic which you'll repeat a dozen times with no variation and beyond that the only real input is walking painfully slowly from point a to point b and making very minor dialog choices. So with that out of the way we can talk about the story. Which carries some annoying stock characters (the wacky stoner) but tells a satisfying ghost story nonetheless. Unfortunately like every other "Interactive Narrative Experience" such as Kentucky Route Zero or Firewatch the gameplay and story undermine each other. Enjoying the story? Well now you have to back track for 10 minutes to get the next piece of it. Enjoy exploring a beautiful new area? Well tough your companion is going to trap you in place and yammer at you for five minutes (bafflingly dialog is not skippable). There are one or two decent moments but the bad out weighs the good. In the end as a story its passable. Undeniably the strongest aspect is the visuals and sound design. Which is hard to fault though the voice work is mediocre and delivered painfully slowly in some places

My god the dialogue was putting me to sleep then I realized this was the game, hearing teenagers complain and moan about nothing for a solid 20 minutes is not a good way to start my exploration into this world and that's where I put an end to it. With a plethora of visual novels and interactive story's, like Firewatch that I played a few hours before this, this game would be at the very bottom of recommendation pile... if I would even recommend it. Bottom line is if your game's mechanic to progress is the writing of the characters then it has to grip me and take me on a journey. It has to be something that makes me want to spend time with them and care about them. And if the one and only thing that gets presented to you is something that makes me want to turn off the game then you failed, hard.

Even the good voice acting, fine visual and decent writing don't make up for the horrendous dialog. It's the infamy timed dialog and, this game is poor and clumsy even at that. They spit out whatever they have in mind like a flying bullet and can't seem to resist doing so before others are done doing so. And you, have to be like them and must say a word before even perceive what you want to say, because your three dialog options are already fading out by the time the other one is almost finished his curent line. Some people say this is for the realism and this is "great", but I think quite some of them are mistaking the concept of 'novelness' for 'greatness'. And what do you get by going through this unskippable dialog horror for eternity... Not much, because 80 percent of dialogs are pointless banter in this dialog-heavy game. If there's a 'game' in it other than tinkering with the radio, that is. I guess this makes about 70 percent of your time spent on listening to the endless chitchat for precisely no purpose. Ignoring these dialog problems, and the sub-optimal unremappable controls, and perhaps the resolution-related or AI bugs, yeah! Why not? This is an ok game.