I have a real soft spot for the Amicia-Hugo relationship from the first game, it's the rare sibling pairing you don't often see AA/AAA games (even if it is the typical Big Guy protecting Little Guy motif, it's rare to play as a big sister who is a borderline maternal figure). And in general the throwback linear game design really lights up my small video game brain. It's why I was so excited to play this. I felt immediately foolish less than 30 minutes in, and then continued to feel foolish as I committed a week's time to finishing this.
It's just repetitive as it transitions rapidly from peaceful idyllic walking sections to shuffling you down "oh my God, what a grotesque sight of human body horror" corridors, over and over again. Amicia kills, goes on a rampage. Feels guilty. Repeats. Hugo has a similiar arc. The stealth sections are painful. The puzzle sections are rewarding. The actual combat is woeful. It's The Last of Us Part II - But Worse.
It's incredibly difficult to take serious as a tortured story when the game shifts from stark depictions of brutal middle-age France life to "here's a video game wave of comical proportioned rats". The rat stuff is just so blah. It's just so stupid. The attempts at building lore all fall flat. The story beats are telegraphed a mile away. There are two worthwhile additional characters but they're completely underwritten. The villain is underutilized. The mother is literally shipped off for half a game. I enjoyed how it ended, it was an effective note until the post-credits scene kind of tied a weird bow over it.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is a bit like the gaming equivalent of an Alejandro G. Inarritu movie. A self-tortured poe-faced seriousness that's really just an excuse to show us some beautifully rendered environments. It's more interested in showing off and giving the pretense of emotion through depictions of suffering than it is in anything else. If I didn't like the end of Chapter 16 I'd knock it down to 1 star. I really feel stupid for waiting to play this for so long.
It's just repetitive as it transitions rapidly from peaceful idyllic walking sections to shuffling you down "oh my God, what a grotesque sight of human body horror" corridors, over and over again. Amicia kills, goes on a rampage. Feels guilty. Repeats. Hugo has a similiar arc. The stealth sections are painful. The puzzle sections are rewarding. The actual combat is woeful. It's The Last of Us Part II - But Worse.
It's incredibly difficult to take serious as a tortured story when the game shifts from stark depictions of brutal middle-age France life to "here's a video game wave of comical proportioned rats". The rat stuff is just so blah. It's just so stupid. The attempts at building lore all fall flat. The story beats are telegraphed a mile away. There are two worthwhile additional characters but they're completely underwritten. The villain is underutilized. The mother is literally shipped off for half a game. I enjoyed how it ended, it was an effective note until the post-credits scene kind of tied a weird bow over it.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is a bit like the gaming equivalent of an Alejandro G. Inarritu movie. A self-tortured poe-faced seriousness that's really just an excuse to show us some beautifully rendered environments. It's more interested in showing off and giving the pretense of emotion through depictions of suffering than it is in anything else. If I didn't like the end of Chapter 16 I'd knock it down to 1 star. I really feel stupid for waiting to play this for so long.
4 Comments
I love the combat in tlou2. Requiem, tonally and design wise, is clearly heavily inspired by TLOU, but nowhere near as fun to control or actually play through.
Thank you! I feel embarrassed scrolling through the reviews and seeing countless 4-5 stars and people calling it a masterpiece.
Yeah it's a far cry from a masterpiece. Which is disappointing because I liked Innocence so much.
NinJai
10 months ago