A beautiful 2D world and a good soundtrack. You play as a young woman making your way through linear levels, gaining new abilities and some unique skill not previously seen in 2D games.
The game is a bit unclear, what is happening and why should you care? The puzzles are easy, the game is linear and exploration is unrewarding. There are no enemies and no reasons for replaying.
Overall a decent game that will take around 4 hours to complete. It's ok, but definitely not a masterpiece like some other reviewers suggest.
It took me a little while to figure out what I didn't like about this game, because I normally have no issue with games with artsy ambitions. After all, playing through Abzu was one of my favorite gaming experiences ever. I don't always love puzzle platformers, but that didn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying Limbo and Inside. It took me about a week after the credits rolled to realize what it is about this game that doesn't work.
Gris is a by-the-numbers puzzle-platformer that does the bare minimum it takes to make a successful art game. Sure, the artwork is "good" in the sense that you can take a screenshot of just about any point in the game and get a pretty good wallpaper out of it, but none of the environments struck me as appealing. I like the watercolor aesthetic and the use of color is especially good, but I struggle to remember any single area of the game that stuck out to me. You've got your bland ruins, your bland desert, your bland forest, etc. I'm surprised to see people praising the music. This game opts for an ambient soundtrack, which isn't bad per se, but it doesn't make for any memorable tunes. They also used some low quality samples that I found distracting (I know a real cello when I hear it, and that ain't one). The gameplay is also very basic and doesn't feel good. This is to be expected from art games, but games like Abzu demonstrate that art games can still feel amazing while Gris makes no such effort.
And of course, the theme. Each of the games five areas is intended to be symbolic of - you guessed it! - the five stages of grief. That's about as standard of an art game theme as you can get. And that's not to say that grief shouldn't be explored in art games, but the five stages especially are so overdone and just serves to drive home the cookie-cutter nature of this game.
To be fair, there's nothing egregiously bad about Gris. But if you're looking for an artsy game that works as both a game and art, look elsewhere. Gris works as neither.
Its a neat little beautifully animated and extremely well put together game and i 100% reccomended it, just sit down and play it from start to finish and experience it for yourself
Long story short. Outstanding visuals and music. No dialogues to read, player has to use his own brain to interpret visuals, which should be easy for any human with at least a shadow of empathy. As someone commented below, it has similiar feeling to Hellblade and Ori and the Blind Forest. Sound system mechanics reminded me last Rayman series. Game is quite easy and not challenging, but maybe thanks to it, it gave me a lot of pleasure and improved my mood.
Underwater escape sequence is just magneficient. Stunning, Thrilling. Beautiful.
Ps. Looking at some reviews, I don't have a clue how someone could have a problem finding right paths to finish the game. What could you expect from the 2d game?
This ... let me say it's a piece of art packes in a game.
And this game is a masterpiece of Art.
It's simple, it's beautiful, it's heart-warming.
Beautiful Artdesign, beautiful Soundtrack and something to discover it's magic.
Just perfect!
