Posted on: October 31, 2017

BadFeungShui

Gry: 103 Opinie: 1

Great Atmosphere, Average Climax

Stories Untold has a killer setup and manages to pull off the "deliberately vague" angle surprisingly well. It's also painfully hard to review, because it's probably best experienced with as little advance information as possible. Overall it seems to ape a retro, late 80's TV-show aesthetic very similar to "Amazing Stories," with the dated computer hardware and synthesized musical score. The game play is split across 4 chapters and mostly consists of solving an array of puzzles before proceeding to the next. Most are simple exercises in following directions, but some of them can be mind-numbingly complicated requiring the decryption of Morse code or identifying rapidly-flashing pictographs. The game has no time limit or failure conditions, however, meaning that with patience and tenacity anyone can eventually see the game's conclusion. It's also almost completely devoid of cheap jump scares, earning Stories Untold two immediate gold stars for dodging common puzzle game pitfalls. I was having a great time until I reached the conclusion of the game's third chapter, when the overarching story connecting the vignettes started to come into focus. Without any spoilers, the ending really seems too predictable and overused to cap off what was shaping up to otherwise be one of the best suspense-adventures I've played in the last five or more years. If you do enjoy the odd experimental type game, or any atmospheric horror games, if you're a fan of the retro aesthetic, or you're just looking for a way to kill a couple hours, you could certainly do a lot worse than Stories Untold. Aside from a few lapses into predictable patterns, it's a wholly unique experience.

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Posted on: December 28, 2017

xeniac

Zweryfikowany użytkownik

Gry: 714 Opinie: 21

A short story with little gameplay

Stories Untold telles great Stories an builds a great atmosphere and is full of this charming 80ies mood. It's a great peace of entertainment on a cold winter evening. The puzzles and riddles in this game are trivial. The most challenging part is messing with this stupid textparser from Ep. 1. IMHO the actions in Ep 2 & 3 where very repetitive, but they add a meaning to the plotline. IMHO its the most cinematic game i've ever played.

Czy to było pomocne?

Posted on: May 27, 2017

kdgog

Zweryfikowany użytkownik

Gry: Opinie: 67

Creepy quality

Until a certain point this reminded me less of a game and more of a collection of creepy short stories. I liked the range of ideas and settings - creepy houses, scientific experiments, arctic research stations. All begin with almost normality, then have a gradual increase in tension and mystery. In SU there is no need for reflexes, just some thought and experimentation, taking your time to acclimatise to what it expects of you, what you can do. Yet the game still managed to surprise and impress me on a few occasions. It's never quite what you think. The sound design deserves special praise - exemplary effects and voice work, much more than just boo jumps. Subtly appropriate effects and music really pull you in. The stories felt really immersive, especially in the ones where you switch between screens in different parts of the room. US is a great contrast to a game I was playing last night. FEAR 2 is supposed to be scary but actually it is more of an action game, and very predictable - I was just playing FEAR 2 on autopilot, and never felt like I was there. I would much rather have a short, surprising, immersive experience like Stories Untold any day. I may not return to SU but each of the stories has stuck in my mind. My only quibble, that stopped me giving full marks, was the text parser for two of the episodes. It frequently rejected words that were the correct response, but which weren't the words the game expected (e.g. "get out" versus "exit" versus "leave" etc.). It seems an oversight that could have been easily fixed by building in more variety to the synonyms accepted, or just add a "help" command that listed acceptable verbs.. My favourite story was the third. It really captured some kind of cross between films like The Thing and Pontypool, and I could easily have played an extended version of this as a full game, expanded along the lines of the Penumbra games. The third episode was worth the price of admission alone to me. The rest was just a bonus.

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Posted on: February 26, 2019

chistery

Zweryfikowany użytkownik

Gry: 190 Opinie: 1

Excellent design, terrible pay-off.

From a technical perspective I enjoyed the blend of text-only input and occasional walking sections. Background noise, spooky escalations of the scenario as the player progresses, and maybe the most effective "what about the scientists?" scenario I've seen in the third episode. Unfortunately the framing device and final "plot twist" is terrible. If you've seen "that one episode of TNG" or "that one episode of DS9," you probably suspect it from the word 'go', and you're right. If you want a compelling mystery, you aren't really getting it here. If you want three spooky, spooky tales, you get two and a half. The framing device starts getting beaten into your head in the third. I can't justify giving it four stars, but on a technical level it deserves at least three. The "numbers station" section in the third could be expanded into a full game. If anything I'm sorry it wasn't.

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Posted on: July 19, 2024

retro_gabe

Zweryfikowany użytkownik

Gry: 129 Opinie: 24

BONE CHILLING EXPERIENCE!!!!

DO NOT GET ANY SPOILERS FROM THIS GAME JUST PLAY IT IF YOU'RE A HORROR FAN, YOU'RE GONNA LIKE IT could be longer though...

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