What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) by Giant Sparrow

I haven't particularly liked most games lambasted as "walking simulators", such as Gone Home or Firewatch, but I've always been quick to note that that dislike doesn't stem from what seems to be inherent in this subgenre (short, story-focused, dialogue-heavy, and very light, unchallenging gameplay scenarios), but rather because these games put such an emphasis on story and often don't feature a good enough story to carry the game. I talked about this in my Firewatch review and felt the same way about Gone Home, though I didn't write a review for that one. What Remains of Edith Finch is remarkably similar to those two games, but I like it a whole lot more.

Edith Finch is notably different from those games in that I felt the story succeeded in carrying the effort and provides the emotional heft necessary to make the game worth playing. While the story in Gone Home had nowhere near the impact on me its writers seemed to expect, and the twist reveal and unsatisfying conclusion of Firewatch left me feeling cold and disappointed, Edith Finch's story hit like a ton of bricks to the gut. This is a story about the last surviving member of the Finch family, Edith, and her rumination upon the curse that has taken so many members of the family due to accidents, illnesses mental and physical, and violent crime. Experiencing the story felt very much like opening Pandora's box to me; there's a whole lot of sadness and the game's somber mood, supported by a great score and some lovely melancholy scenery, is uplifted by small moments of levity in which hope seems to shine through. This is not a happy story, and though I wasn't personally moved to tears, I could easily see how one would be.

I can't really analyze this much as a video game, as it is pretty light on gameplay mechanics and heavy on story, and I can't go into the story much without spoiling its impact. I will note one stupendously designed segment of the game during Lewis Finch's story, but I'd rather not describe it in detail because it should be experienced blind. But it's a wonderfully designed segment that tests coordination and does an extraordinary job of engrossing you in the young man's experience. The game is full of notable sequences like this that help set it apart from the games I mentioned earlier, where Gone Home had not much to note and Firewatch had you trekking over samey landscapes and performing busy-work tasks.

My only complaints are that the control can be a bit wonky in some of these unique sequences, and that the game ran surprisingly poorly on my i7 4790k / GTX 1080. I experienced quite a bit of stuttering and some odd frame drops for a title that, while beautifully constructed, is decidedly not a graphical powerhouse.

Edith Finch is a remarkable work of art that's wonderfully designed. thoughtfully constructed, with a poignant story focused on the hope that drives us to persevere through painful experience. It is quite short, though, so you're better off waiting for a sale than paying full price for this one. But if you're looking for a engaging story that will leave you thinking long after you've completed it, I would heartily recommend you give What Remains of Edith Finch a shot.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 4 hours

Firewatch (2016) by Campo Santo

I'm a huge fan of story-driven, atmospheric experiences and this is a game I really, really wanted to like.

I was immediately intrigued by the prologue, which seems a simple enough choose-your-own-adventure type portion, but does very well to invest you in your player character, Henry. After doing some research I discovered this game was made by the same people responsible for The Walking Dead Season 1, which I adored and consider one of the best written games I've played. Walking Dead Season 1 had characters that you ended up growing incredibly attached to, and the same ended up being true of Firewatch. Unfortunately, that did just enough to get me to finish the game, because I was disappointed with pretty much every other aspect of Firewatch, including the story's resolution.

Firewatch looks really good for an indie, but it didn't run so great on my system (i7 4790, gtx 1080, 16gb RAM). I would experience pretty regular frame drops through my nearly 6 hours of play. And while the game looks very good, I never felt much drive to explore after the first couple of hours simply because there just isn't much to find. Aside from some notes in caches, I never found anything more interesting than a slightly larger tree or a nice viewpoint, and soon I began avoiding any exploration altogether because the characters and the dialogue had grabbed me so much. Any actual "gameplay" (ie. "walk here and then click the radio for a dialogue option") became a chore, a barrier behind which the game would reward me with some more bits of dialogue from these two characters that I had really grown attached to. There was a specific moment about 2-3 hours into the game where I was informed that I had to cross the entire map in order to find somebody to help me through a fence, and I came very close to just quitting because I almost didn't feel driven enough to take the next step. That's how dry and unfulfilling I felt the actual gameplay was in Firewatch. But I ended up doing it anyway just to hear more of Henry's and Delilah's story. I was fully invested in these two characters.

And that's really saying something considering how short this game is. The ability of these writers and the voice cast to grab me so quickly is pretty impressive now. The big problem I had with this game is simply that nothing else even came close to being as compelling as the relationship between Henry and Delilah. There's an overarching mystery that drives the plot forward, but once you actually begin to uncover what's going on it just felt too hokey, too clumsy, and just not believable enough despite being pretty grounded in reality. One of my issues with this mystery was that I simply wasn't feeling the isolated paranoia that my avatar within the game, Henry, seemed to be feeling. His actor seemed close to completely losing it, whereas I was just making my way to the next task and hoping for some interesting Delilah dialogue. The game failed to impart any sort of anxiety due to the setting and the isolation, possibly because it was so short, or that it had to skip days in order to keep things interesting due to a lack of any real gameplay systems outside of walking to an area indicated to you and pushing a button, or reporting back to Delilah via your radio.

Firewatch reminds me a lot of Gone Home. Both games offer an interesting setting and premise with some well-written characters, both try to impart a feeling of creepiness which succeeds at first but both ultimately fails to amount to anything substantial and becomes overly hokey after just a couple of hours. Additionally, the resolution of both games' mysteries are wholly unsatisfying, and the endings in general are not very good. Firewatch, in particular, really dropped the ball and left me feeling unfulfilled; like I had wasted my time despite really enjoying the characters and dialogue. It's the type of experience that will you have you saying, "Really? That's it!?" as the credits roll. If the ending had been a fulfilling conclusion for these two characters then I believe I'd have recommended this game just on that strength alone. But squandering the story of two compelling characters left a sour taste in my mouth, and for that reason I can't recommend it to others until it begins selling at a sub-$5 price point.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 6 hours