What Remains of Edith Finch is yet another walking simulator. And it's just that. While the story does have some moments, especially it's ending is beautiful and I would need to write a whole different article to explain what that ending meant to me but the gameplay side of things is not good. It is BORING. I'm sorry. And the game is not technically impressive as well. So while I don't say it's bad, it's also not a mediocre game. And I definitely do NOT recommend this game to anyone.

The Full Review(No Spoilers):

Yet Another Boring Walking Sim
I don't know why I am doing this to myself. EVERY time, without question. I see a game that gets incredible reviews not just from the critics but players as well and I see that it's a Walking Simulator and I think I might enjoy this one. Well, here is another one added to that list with What Remains of Edith Finch.

Our story is about a young girl, Edith. At a young age, her mother forcefully took Edith and herself away from both of their childhood homes and the home of their family, The Finch House. Edith never learned why she did that but now, after her mother's death she comes back to the Finch House to discover what went wrong in her family. Starting with like, 3 generations before her.

The story is of course the part that this game focuses the most. And it's actually not a bad tale. It could be a great movie story but in the video game format, I just didn't connect with the characters.

The game is an FPS and maybe never seeing our characters' faces and bodies took me out of the experience. I don't know, I just know that I didn't connect with the story or the characters.

However, the ending of the story is brilliant. It's like the best ending they could have possibly delivered and I think that is a big factor in this game getting very positive buzz. You will leave the game feeling refreshed, emotional but still full of hope. It's a really, really good ending and I can't say that enough.

But, what do we do in this game? How do we get to the ending? Well, we mostly walk. And we basically play some mini games. So, here is how it works. At the beginning of the game, we come to the house and we start exploring it.

We find out that all rooms have been locked but soon enough, we find a secret passage and enter one of our family members' rooms. We find a special item in the room which throws us into a mini game to learn the story of that character.

When I say mini game, you might think something like a Yakuza series' mini game. Something fun and exciting. It's definitely not that. In one of them, you switch from animal to animal. You control animals. In another, you only take photos. You take photos until you take the correct photo and then the scene switches automatically and you take another photo. No walking, nothing.

With these types of mini games, you learn the stories of your family and go further and further into the house. Missing a story is very hard because the game clearly guides you.

So it becomes a loop of walking, playing mini game, walking and playing mini game until you reach the ending. Mini games have a great variety but I have to say, most of them are boring. There is one very close to the end, might even be the final one that is just really good.

Like, it's CINEMA. But other than that final one, it's again all about the story. In fact, many of these mini games are barely games. Like you barely do stuff. In one of them you just move the right analog stick a few times and it ends.

In another you press both triggers for a while, then release. Then press again for 6,7 times and it ends. Both of these 2 examples I gave are shocking and good story wise but again, gameplay wise there is nothing here.

That's why I thought this game could have been a great movie. Because it actually plays like one. Which means it barely plays at all. You barely play at all. By the way, I know this is the genre. I know that's what a walking simulator means.

But I liked some walking simulators before. Like Firewatch for example. Or I like Journey and Abzu and games like that. And I love Sam Barlow's games as well. Like Her Story and Telling Lies. But unfortunately, Edith Finch didn't work for me.

Technically, the game is fine. Graphics are okay. Enough for a walking simulator. But art direction could have been better. It looks like the PS3 era games where they all had that grey filter. I don't remember any music in the game. Performances are mixed. Some of them are good, some of them are not. I played it on PS5 and there is a native version. It's 4K, 60 FPS. Still doesn't look very good to my eye.

For trophy hunters, this is an easy platinum so if you want to play the game; get the platinum as well. You don't need to do a second playthrough but there are some missables you can get via chapter select that unlocks when you finish the game for the first time.

What Remains of Edith Finch is yet another walking simulator. And it's just that. While the story does have some moments, especially it's ending is beautiful and I would need to write a whole different article to explain what that ending meant to me but the gameplay side of things is not good. It is BORING. I'm sorry. And the game is not technically impressive as well. So while I don't say it's bad, it's also not a mediocre game. And I definitely do NOT recommend this game to anyone.

Man, 16 hours sure feels a lot, especially for a horror game that for the first half keeps dropping more and more mystery on top of more mystery. It’s no wonder that I finished several other games in between starting and finishing this (including R&C: Rift Apart and Gravity Rush Remastered)

There are enough reasons for the game to deserve some attention though. From the very first moment, it looks great, with darkly graded atmospheric asylums, cityscapes, and the periphery of a broken city. Even the sewer level is noteworthy for its gooey dark malaise.

The action feels nicely heavy, especially when Sebastian, the player character, tries throwing anything, moving his whole body forward with the inertia, making handling grenades a tricky affair and bottles for stealth perhaps even trickier (though once I managed to figure out the timing and placement of the body, stealth became something I looked forward to).

The shooting has a similar weight to it, which I found to be enjoyable. The weapon selection is limited and mostly ordinary (you’ve got your pistol, your shotgun, your sniper rifle, and, if you’re replaying it, even some assault rifle), with the exception of the crossbow that you can craft different arrows for, but unlike some of the more boring shooters I’ve recently tried, the way the weapons handle here and the natural threat the game instils in every action sequence make up for what they might lack in originality. Perhaps regular weapons even add to the verisimilitude that helps a horror game to be more effective.

They have also managed to strike a good balance in how much ammunition they provide you with, managing to make it always feel as if you have just a bit too little and yet always enough. The ability to craft arrows helps, though considering how difficult and dangerous it is to get the crafting components (often gotten from disarmed traps that sometimes blow up in your face if you disarmed them badly) you always feel like you have to be careful about not wasting them.

The story, concerning mental hospitals and impossible events, made me fear at first the most that it would become another boring “oh, it was all in his mind!”, and while it ultimately certainly has touches of it, it’s done in a way that is somewhat unique and more interesting for it. What’s more, there are no real twists in the narrative, just the slow reveal of the true nature of this nightmarish world. I even became genuinely interested in the story, once the game started providing some answers. Even Sebastian’s backstory which I had scoffed at with the lightly-sexist first note, had me running with glee whenever I saw the tell-tale reddish aura of another note about his past. There were entries in it that as a parent really touched me and made me care more for this one-note character.

Another reason I had to take breaks from the game though is how thoroughly unnerving it can be. It doesn’t spend much time scaring the viewer through disgusting sights or jumpscares (though there are certainly both, especially the first, with some truly impeccable body horror), but there’s a constant sense of dread drenching the whole game. Part of it is due to how vulnerable Sebastian feels. Sure, he’s a strong-bodied hard-jawed macho man who’s pretty damn good with a gun, and yet that’s nothing compared to the army of weird creatures, the way danger can come from anywhere, the simple oppressive atmosphere of the game, or his almost utter impotence when confronted with the uncontrollable nature of his world, even further emphasising his emasculated role. The few times that you feel powerful or safe, for example the mounted gun sequences, are all the more enjoyable for how rare they are.

My biggest problem with the game though is its infatuation with one-hit deaths. Many sequences filled with traps or monsters require you to execute them to near perfection or be sent back to the beginning with an instant death, however much health you might have had. While I might understand the aim (though I’m not sure I do), moments like this quickly become infuriating and, what’s more, they eat away at the sense of dread. If you’re repeating the same moment over and over again, whatever horror you might have felt at first evaporates and it just becomes a mechanical exercise in patterns. A horror sequence repeated is rarely a horror sequence that is effective.

And it’s made even worse by the trial-and-error nature of these moments. The simplest example is not knowing when you’re supposed to fight and when you’re supposed to run, ending with moments where I tried fighting when I was supposed to run (and died a few times, before I understood that this time the insta-death was supposed to be a lesson and not just part of the fight) or spent a long time looking for a way out that didn’t exist. But it’s even more aggravating during puzzles (or boss fights that act as puzzles) where every time you try something new, you might be punished by instant death and the need to repeat everything up to this point in order to try something new.

Oh, and the game has some awful film-style black bars beneath and above the image that I instantly turned off and never regretted.

If there wasn’t as much of insta-death, this could be up there amongst my favourite games. But I was as often annoyed with the game as I was enjoying it (though the idea of enjoying this consistently intentionally dreadful experience made me wonder why it is that we do this to ourselves, those of us who love horror). Perhaps time will be kinder to it as the negative aspects slowly fade from memory and in a year I might be updating my favourites list with what I consider fondly as one of the best horror game experiences I’ve had.

Or perhaps the sequel will help me make a decision. Because whatever my annoyance, as soon as I was done with this game, I put the next one on download. How about that for a recommendation.

waaaaayyy too long. The main story is of reasonable length but the extra stuff after it drags it on to 70 hours, now this isn't an issue with other long games, the issue with odyssey is that it's forced. The total story isn't 70 hours long because it needed to be, it's 70 hours long because you need to do every single side quest or else your level simply won't be high enough to face the next boss. It is quite clear Ubisoft did this hoping you would give up and buy micro transactions instead. Hearing that Valhalla is just as long made Odyssey the final game I will play in the franchise.

For this reason, despite Odyssey being the better game overall, I would recommend you play Origins instead. It's clear in Origins that Ubisoft have not nailed the RPG elements yet but at least you can complete it in a reasonable time.