Original post
12.
Beaten in 15 hours
This game captivated me for the best part of two days. Having only casually followed the updates on Kickstarter, I was mildly excited to play this, but after having just finished it off, I'd be jumping back in if it weren't for BotW.
Night in the Woods is an off-beat adventure game following the return of Mae Borowski to her hometown of Possum Springs after dropping out of college. Her day-to-day interactions with family, friends, neighbours and random pieces of scenery are amongst the first things to shine in this game – she's ridiculous. Every observation she makes, every piece of internal monologue, every single assessment of a conversation is dialled up to the max to make a character whose quirks are comparable to Okabe Rintaro from Steins;Gate (though Mae is so much more deadpan). While this is certainly a positive thing, it did grate me as the game continued (not exclusive to this, Steins;Gate often made me feel frustrated with how Okabe processes things in the story), and only alleviated by the supporting cast. I honestly cannot fault a single character you interact with during this game, as each of their mundane interactions with Mae just seemed so, earnest without being too bleak. As an adventure game, plot is arguably the key element here, so I'll steer clear of even spoiler tagging any synopsis and say it was thoroughly satisfying, if a little loaded by the end. If you've played it yet you'll get the picture.
As far as gameplay is concerned, the general exploration of Possum Springs is what really dragged in the hours of this playthrough, Mae isn't particularly quick and to get the fullest out of each section of the story, you must navigate her across every part of town. While I did get into a nice routine of ‘I'll go here and visit Germ, then I'll back-track to see...' it did become tedious after a while, where something like a simple fast-travel between sections of town may have alleviated that. Also, platforming with Mae was a times a bit of chore considering a) her speed, and b) some awkward jumps that require a three jump build up to make – platforming clearly wasn't this game's strong suit and when the player is engaging with it, it shows. The game does have some very unique and more entertaining minigames (with the exception of a rhythm minigame that consistently floored me every time I attempted it), dabbling in rouge-likes to
that add some more flavour to it. Not a whole lot to fault them here, but the weaker aspect of the game when compared to the cast and story.
I'm not too sure how much I like the soundtrack – it's by NO means bad, but apart from the title screen, I can't really recall any track that really sticks out. Each and every scene had a nice tone setting track but, given how the voiceless dialogue is displayed and the very subtle animations of the cast are always attracting your attention, the music often plays a very low backdrop compared to every other element of a scene. Again, not bad, just not memorable imo.
Like I said at the start, if it weren't for the imminent arrival of my copy of BotW I'd be right back in on this to see what I may have clearly missed in parts. Alas, I'll add it to the list alongside Hyper Light Drifter in games I'm clearly gonna replay again this year.
Overall: 8/10
Massive Edit: to anyone who'll glance over these earlier pages
So BotW came, blew me away in a lot of different (but good!) ways than this, as too did Nier (still working on that), and whilst I write this I'm still not ready to say I've 'completed' enough of BotW outside of the main quest, I still believe I can turn away and look at this again. This game never left the back of my mind this past month. I'd be on the bus to work, I'd stumble into a trail of thought that led to Mae's social anxiety. I'd work and reflect on how I've done certain cringey things very similar to here, seemingly out of nowhere. I'd chase up Shrines in BotW and I'd compare how unattached I was to this cast, spectacularly designed as they are, and the fact I was still lamenting snippets of Angus, Gregg, Bea, Germ, Mom, etc.
I jumped back in, playing an entirely different route than last time, and found whole other facets to NITW's I missed the first time. This game has immense replay value, considering it does not alert you to essential conversations outside of hanging out with Gregg or Bae.
And, 180ing hard here, I wound up buying the OST after a few hours of the second playthrough. I guess the tracks needed to sink in a bit more, but all of the Astral themes are sublime to me now, even the more ominous tracks give such a soothing presence. Scratching that earlier complaint well and truly off the board, and adding to it the game felt just as good, if not better, after giving it a second run, means that 8/10 was too hasty in my eyes now. This is certainly my forerunner for GOTY, it just took a while to realise.
Overall: 9.5/10 (jumping still sucks, sorry)
I quite enjoyed this shooter and its visuals and music are pretty good. While it doesn't have the best gfx options for a game released on PC, IMO it runs wells enough and is a fun shooter for anyone who prefers traditional style shoot'em-ups.
