The Shore is a painful walking simulator/trial and error puzzle game. You'll find yourself mainly walking on a lifeless beach, aside from the seagulls stuck midflight in the air, before you're walking through innards and dreamscapes, all in the search for... well nothing, really.

In the beginning, you might think you're going to be playing something like Dear Esther, only with a bit of a spookier edge to it. As soon as you hear the voiceover, you'll likely realize something is wrong, and it's got nothing to do with Cthulhu: poorly written English voiced by someone who may not even know they're being recorded. Delivery so wooden they may be catatonic. These voiceovers can overlap one another, so if you pick up two things too soon, you're in for some nice, flat, mumbled gibberish to assault your ears. Pausing the game does not stop the voiceovers or anything, actually, because apparently this game is Dark Souls.

The textures are nice, the animations are not. Everything looks uncomfortable, really, including the elder gods who certainly are not imposing. There's some brief moments when interacting with something throws you into a trance where you're assaulted by images of the 'unexplainable', and even though they're kind of jarring and annoying, they're probably a highlight, here. At least it wasn't a sequence where you had to run and shoot at something that won't die, you'll do that multiple times and it's immediately stale.

Your time with The Shore will be dry and eventually loathsome but fortunately very brief. I don't think this game should take more than two hours, but those are two hours you're never getting back. I do not recommend The Shore, it's pretty crappy stuff.