I'm so bummed out by this. We wanted to love it so badly, but the writing was intolerable. The wife is mean, the husband is annoying, the book pelvic thrusts... that's the character dynamic and it doesn't get any deeper than that. You never know why they're getting divorced in the first place, you get "you're never home" "yeah well someone has to make money to pay for food" and some bickering about them both mutually failing to do chores. Their reconnecting feels so forced and unearned, they're so nasty to each other the whole time and in contrast, the bits we see of them talking about the divorce they seem pretty mature and reasonable about it. They really should have gotten the divorce, it would genuinely improve the game, they have no chemistry and it did not feel like they actually fixed things. The plot is just a mashup of Freaky Friday and Inside Out, while forgetting that those narratives actually have character development to earn their narrative beats.
So many of the gameplay gimmicks are just taking something from another older game and doing a lite version of it for about 10 minutes, getting you to just start to like it before taking it away and never returning to it. Don't get too attached, it'll be over in no time and then you'll do a different gimmick. You'll have Crash Bandicoot running towards the camera, Mario Sunshine fludd gameplay, Mario Galaxy gravity gimmicks, Diablo, a bunch of Ratchet and Clank... they actually do a solid job of mimicking these games, they clearly understand why they worked, but they never quite go the distance with these gimmicks and they're over just as you're trying to figure out how they'll escalate it and really hammer the concept home... no escalation, just an abrupt ending, like the story.
Lastly, I really did think the elephant scene was gonna be overblown. Nah, it's as unpleasant and mean-spirited as I've read prior. It'd be so easy to make it work with the narrative, too... have them say how they were senselessly hurting their child, or that they were being selfish and short-sighted... nope. They do it and never remark upon it again.
So many of the gameplay gimmicks are just taking something from another older game and doing a lite version of it for about 10 minutes, getting you to just start to like it before taking it away and never returning to it. Don't get too attached, it'll be over in no time and then you'll do a different gimmick. You'll have Crash Bandicoot running towards the camera, Mario Sunshine fludd gameplay, Mario Galaxy gravity gimmicks, Diablo, a bunch of Ratchet and Clank... they actually do a solid job of mimicking these games, they clearly understand why they worked, but they never quite go the distance with these gimmicks and they're over just as you're trying to figure out how they'll escalate it and really hammer the concept home... no escalation, just an abrupt ending, like the story.
Lastly, I really did think the elephant scene was gonna be overblown. Nah, it's as unpleasant and mean-spirited as I've read prior. It'd be so easy to make it work with the narrative, too... have them say how they were senselessly hurting their child, or that they were being selfish and short-sighted... nope. They do it and never remark upon it again.