Games are defined by the experiences they leave the player with, usually I wouldn't pay much heed to a game that doesn't set out to accomplish something grand and leave me something to chew on a long while after I'm done playing but I guess my hand slipped today and I ended playing "A Short Hike".

A Short Hike isn't interested in providing you an experience that will last you forever but one that in the meantime will let you escape into a peaceful world where you're free to roam and set your own objectives. Colorful NPC's rich with the whimsical flavorings that you'll find present within Animal Crossing NPC's, a landscape that due to the visual direction chosen is stunning but didn't quite leave me in awe and tons of charming activities.

Go in with the right expectations and you'll leave content like you just took a short hike.

I went into boltgun after watching some glowing reviews on Youtube and unfortunately I did not leave this game with the same emotions or thoughts as those youtubers did (No hate though love those fellas, pancreasnowork especially) there were several reasons for this.

First being the level design because my lord is it atrocious at times you don't have a map for this game which just doesn't make sense as a design decision.

There's an emphasis on verticality in the game and tons of backtracking due to you having to get keys and other doohickeys, I think an ideal compromise would have been a realtime updating map as you move around but no map at all makes it super frustating to reach locations you've already seen.

Combat is quite good in the first act. You get new weapons almost exactly when the weapons you already have start getting old but the enemies you fight don't really evolve to compensate for all the weapons you have even accounting for the weapon reset that happens each act as you get all your weapons very quickly. This weapon reset thing is also very annoying as each time it happened it almost felt like you were starting the game AGAIN, this was not only frustrating but made the game last way longer than it should have.

Third was the movement, it was fast which is always cool but honestly in a genre that this game claims to be part of which always has insane movement tech this game lacks...anything of the sort except the dash you get from the chainsaw and the put-myself-into-a-bad-spot charge which is super useless past the first act.

In conclusion, if you ever want a game that you can mindlessly play while some guy on youtube talks to you about how boomer shooters are cool and internally feel confused as to you why you're continuing to play one that would have probably benefited tremendously if it actually straight up copied things from it's betters play this one!