ABZU is all about great visuals above all else. It's not about underwater exploration as many would think as its experience is quite railroaded (to the point it even restricts your viewing angles at times). Fine, I can live with that. But the main problem is that the story can't really carry this game by itself which is a problem in such linear games. The puzzles are interesting at first but it gets old pretty soon and somehow, everything else just feels like it was made just for the sake of showing the graphics. Yes, it looks gorgeous. Gorgeous like engine demo if you will. The controls of this game... well, in one word it's horror (and I tried both keyboard and gamepad). The worst, you can't even configure it at all. To swim, you actually have to hold the trigger (or RMB) and that is very tiring for your fingers after a while. It took me a lot of time to get used to it and it still annoyed the hell out of me by the time I was finishing the game. While the game can by nice to look at, artistically, its story is actually very shallow and forgettable and its non-inventive gameplay doesn't help either. Everything was over before it really started (in some 2-3 hours or so). I came in expecting some greatness of Journey - as many people had suggested this game is similiar - but in the end I came out very disappointed. Abzu can't even compare to mysticism and overreaching motives or the message Journey had. Well, Austin Wintory did the soundtrack at least, and it isn't quite bad. But the visuals alone are not enough to make a fun game. I really wonder where all the praise to this game comes from. The lack of other similiar titles on PC, maybe? Well, I was certainly disappointed even though my expectations weren't that high in the first place.
