In what was my very first loop I accidentally
1. Electrocuted myself
2. Ate dessert in front of Wife and
3. Locked myself in the closet until the cop came.
This was probably the most fun I had playing the game! But it also set the justified dread into my soul that it was gonna be one of those point and clicks.
I'm not a hater of the genre by any means. In fact, I adore clunky point and clicks, and it might be why I'm more forgiving to this one than I should be. But even with a high tolerance for trial and error bs, Twelve Minutes just crosses a few lines in it's design.
The information found in each loop isn't exactly the most intuitive and most of the progression is found by just fucking around. It's funny at first but gets old really fast when nothing is skippable and the length of the loop just flies by, especially when you have to keep convincing American Daisy Ridley of the situation every single time.
This is all made worse when the sequence of actions doesn't really change a ton. There's a lot of information that gets uncovered, but the path to new info often just involves retracing your steps and then experimenting to varying degrees of success. There's also a few late game fuck you loops that you absolutely need a guide for and essentially make you repeat everything you've already done except for one change with very precise timing.
Also may be a mobile port issue but the selection precision is realllly rough, and it griefs you often into doing the wrong thing or having the wrong timing, especially when it comes to objects that are close to each other.
Through some combination of these, the act of playing the game is just stale when it works and frustrating when it doesn't. It's discouraging to want to try things when the act of resetting takes as long as it does, so much that when something you do is successful, it gives you a feeling of relief more than satisfaction.
And yeah, the story is also a mess but like not in a quirky fun way. This game feels really impressed with itself and how it unravels information, but it's just a slow unfolding of grim partial truths, people just forgetting and remembering things and a whole lot of plot convenience.
The characters here are pretty flat and nothing, which to be fair, writing convincing relationships and round characters is really tough to do with a super limited time concept like this. But they are dull. And it makes the onslaught of oh so shocking reveals just not really stick when I just don't give a shit about anyone involved in the first place.
The main twist is one you can see coming for a while, but choose not to because you're just hoping the game doesn't go there and it wouldn't really make sense anyways. And then it does go there but still doesn't really make any fucking sense. Just shock value that's overly reliant on your suspension of disbelief.
Also just a lot of questions? Why is this so well put together in some aspects and corner-cut to shit in others? Why is this cast like a Hollywood blockbuster? Why did they cast two British leads and then make them put on American accents??
Did Annapurna just owe a lot of favors to Luis here? This feels like somehow the most expensive game they've published but also a clear step down in quality from the stuff they typically back. The high profile cast and visual direction are the biggest things pulling anyone towards this game, but both those things are just polish. The core of what's here just isn't that good.
1. Electrocuted myself
2. Ate dessert in front of Wife and
3. Locked myself in the closet until the cop came.
This was probably the most fun I had playing the game! But it also set the justified dread into my soul that it was gonna be one of those point and clicks.
I'm not a hater of the genre by any means. In fact, I adore clunky point and clicks, and it might be why I'm more forgiving to this one than I should be. But even with a high tolerance for trial and error bs, Twelve Minutes just crosses a few lines in it's design.
The information found in each loop isn't exactly the most intuitive and most of the progression is found by just fucking around. It's funny at first but gets old really fast when nothing is skippable and the length of the loop just flies by, especially when you have to keep convincing American Daisy Ridley of the situation every single time.
This is all made worse when the sequence of actions doesn't really change a ton. There's a lot of information that gets uncovered, but the path to new info often just involves retracing your steps and then experimenting to varying degrees of success. There's also a few late game fuck you loops that you absolutely need a guide for and essentially make you repeat everything you've already done except for one change with very precise timing.
Also may be a mobile port issue but the selection precision is realllly rough, and it griefs you often into doing the wrong thing or having the wrong timing, especially when it comes to objects that are close to each other.
Through some combination of these, the act of playing the game is just stale when it works and frustrating when it doesn't. It's discouraging to want to try things when the act of resetting takes as long as it does, so much that when something you do is successful, it gives you a feeling of relief more than satisfaction.
And yeah, the story is also a mess but like not in a quirky fun way. This game feels really impressed with itself and how it unravels information, but it's just a slow unfolding of grim partial truths, people just forgetting and remembering things and a whole lot of plot convenience.
The characters here are pretty flat and nothing, which to be fair, writing convincing relationships and round characters is really tough to do with a super limited time concept like this. But they are dull. And it makes the onslaught of oh so shocking reveals just not really stick when I just don't give a shit about anyone involved in the first place.
The main twist is one you can see coming for a while, but choose not to because you're just hoping the game doesn't go there and it wouldn't really make sense anyways. And then it does go there but still doesn't really make any fucking sense. Just shock value that's overly reliant on your suspension of disbelief.
Also just a lot of questions? Why is this so well put together in some aspects and corner-cut to shit in others? Why is this cast like a Hollywood blockbuster? Why did they cast two British leads and then make them put on American accents??
Did Annapurna just owe a lot of favors to Luis here? This feels like somehow the most expensive game they've published but also a clear step down in quality from the stuff they typically back. The high profile cast and visual direction are the biggest things pulling anyone towards this game, but both those things are just polish. The core of what's here just isn't that good.