I'm dancing between a 7 and 8 for this game, but what the hell, giving it an 8 for the ambition on clear display here. Firstly I recommend playing this game with a friend, as the fun of it for me was theorizing, speculating, and discussing constantly what was going on and what was happening, going back and forth with "play that again!" or "wait I have an idea". I do not believe I personally would have enjoyed or even finished this game solo.
I cannot talk too much about what the game's about based on the inherent nature of what it is, but my main issue lies in the total RNG nature of the progression. It could take you anywhere from 3 to 18 hours to find all the critical clips (as I've seen from dozens of forums and steam reviews) and while it took us precisely 10 hours to hit credits, the credits weren't really all of it.
In fact, we were still missing 3 critical scenes to piece the story together, which we'd been trying to do for hours up to then. The credits should have probably indicated the end of the game, but a major chunk of the story was still missing. In the end, we had to look up what happened, read about the critical clips we missed, and then spend an additional 45 minutes brute-forcing this match cuts by clicking on Marissa's face over and over and over to get those scenes.
I have seen dozens of posts of people who gave up on this because they kept looping into the same scenes over and over. I don't blame them. There was a good hour where we kept match cutting and got literally nothing new, and I was ready to give up. Immortality is one of the most experimental games ever, and while the concept is brilliant and the actors, especially Manon Gage, give award worthy performances, it just feels like it doesn't respect the players' time at all. It might just be too experimental, if that makes sense. I think this game is far, far better than Her Story but I also think Sam Barlow needs some editors to remind him about the practicality of a person spending their time to play a game. You have to trade players some indication of progress every so often or you're consuming their time for nothing.
I never had an "aha" moment, we figured it out very slowly but I had such a great time with my friend over these 10 hours that I'd be remiss for not complimenting Barlow and Half Mermaid studios on their ability to create one of the first, genuine mysteries I've seen in a video game. If this game was intended to convince me I'd be a terrible detective in real life, then it has succeeded mightily. But hey, filming three full movies to make a game? That takes guts.
I cannot talk too much about what the game's about based on the inherent nature of what it is, but my main issue lies in the total RNG nature of the progression. It could take you anywhere from 3 to 18 hours to find all the critical clips (as I've seen from dozens of forums and steam reviews) and while it took us precisely 10 hours to hit credits, the credits weren't really all of it.
In fact, we were still missing 3 critical scenes to piece the story together, which we'd been trying to do for hours up to then. The credits should have probably indicated the end of the game, but a major chunk of the story was still missing. In the end, we had to look up what happened, read about the critical clips we missed, and then spend an additional 45 minutes brute-forcing this match cuts by clicking on Marissa's face over and over and over to get those scenes.
I have seen dozens of posts of people who gave up on this because they kept looping into the same scenes over and over. I don't blame them. There was a good hour where we kept match cutting and got literally nothing new, and I was ready to give up. Immortality is one of the most experimental games ever, and while the concept is brilliant and the actors, especially Manon Gage, give award worthy performances, it just feels like it doesn't respect the players' time at all. It might just be too experimental, if that makes sense. I think this game is far, far better than Her Story but I also think Sam Barlow needs some editors to remind him about the practicality of a person spending their time to play a game. You have to trade players some indication of progress every so often or you're consuming their time for nothing.
I never had an "aha" moment, we figured it out very slowly but I had such a great time with my friend over these 10 hours that I'd be remiss for not complimenting Barlow and Half Mermaid studios on their ability to create one of the first, genuine mysteries I've seen in a video game. If this game was intended to convince me I'd be a terrible detective in real life, then it has succeeded mightily. But hey, filming three full movies to make a game? That takes guts.