You know those Steam reviews where they've played 3000 hours and then give it a thumbs down? I finally understand how they feel. This game is made for me, and I love it a lot, but I also hate it a lot and I absolutely can't recommend it.

The decision to make this an always-online MMO-lite is ruinous. The servers can't cope, and you keep getting lagged out of position, which is a killer when so many puzzles are based on accuracy or dexterity. I had to stop playing for a month when the server just refused to let me in. I'm also certain they've got the min specs wrong - my computer is within the min specs (if not the recommended specs, admittedly), but I had to turn the graphics all the way down, which makes some of the puzzles in the recent Archipelago of Curiosities update impossible because the object I need to target is being automatically culled.

If not for all that, this would be one of the best puzzle games ever made. The variety is fantastic, and the sheer amount of puzzles scattered around make this compulsively playable. The set-piece Enclave levels are cleverly constructed, with a few good gimmicks peppered through them, and the Mysteries (post--game challenges which usually require you to hunt down and solve a previous puzzle with a new set of rules) really make me appreciate that puzzle design is an art. Not all the puzzle types are winners (sorry, Morphic Fractals), but the good ones are really good. Logic Grids, styled after Japanese logic puzzles, are the clear winners, but Pattern Grids and their lateral-thinking solutions are delightful too.

I feel sorry that the publisher closed the dev studio. I don't think any of this was the devs' fault. All this needs is an offline mode, really, and then it can be fully appreciated.

Harold Halibut is an outstanding technical achievement. It's not, however, a compelling game.

Harold Halibut is an adventure game that looks just like a stop motion movie. And my god do they ever do a great job at that. The game is downright gorgeous and the stop motion continuously impressed me. I really wish this tech was used in service of a better narrative.

I found it very difficult to care about the characters and plot in this world. The voice acting is excellent but the dialogue is so dull. Very rarely do characters have anything remotely interesting to say. And although some personalities shine through (namely Harold and his surrogate mother Mareaux), most of it is forgettable. This is especially true in the first 10 hours of the game which is very slice of life. The plot gets a bit more interesting by the end, but it's too late by then.

I appreciate the themes they're going for. I really like how they approached an autistic coded main character with Harold for instance. There's something so pure about how he deals with problems. I'm sure this game is for someone. Just not for me.

ingame screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/cE30mYy.png

A joyous blissful hydrating nourishing follow-up to Rez, but I'm not the keenest sadly!! Child of Eden is a rly gorgeous example of that latestage Frutiger Aero Sharp Quattron Tech Advertisement aesthetiq, fully encompassed by Mizuguchi's spacey yoga house band, Genki Rockets. It's just a little loser of my own personal battle of appeals because none of this really hits my palate in the same way anything from Rez did. There's this lack of energy I can draw from Child of Eden - whereas Rez's thumping techno OST that blossoms in complexity across the span of a stage, alongside the Char Davies wireframe anthropology artstyle.... I just have a very clear fav, and Rez quite simply doesn't have the nerve to ask me to replay a stage with better scores to progress to the next one. Incredibly corp behaviour 🥲
Well worth a play/emulation for anyone who loves Rez though, there are like three games in this genre if i'm generous and Mizuguchi made most of them.

In the first hour of the game, there is a script where the ground collapses and the game expects you to fall into a hole. its so sad.
I didn't fall, but the game had a dialogue programmed with groans. The game assumed that you had fallen into the scripted trap.

It is incredible how the AAA pop have appropriated the narrative resources more typical of the indies of the beginning of the last decade. Those that allowed you to explore the space in a more reduced and detailed way, interacting with small objects on a stage, only to end up mixing it with Walkie Talkie sections and Voilà, you already have your cinematographic level.
Actually, an older version of space exploration reduced but exhaustive through the details already existed in the blockbusters since the late 90s (Shenmue? , MGS 2-4 maybe?) but they were never so frequent.
because the exploration can be slightly guided, since the digital worlds are a powerful and wonderful ultra-designed lie... But dictated? no plz

This game drowns you with absolutely all the trends it can afford, leaving no room for thought. grabs you by the neck without conviction, with such a corporate plan. its scary.
I'm on board for narrative-driven pop games (gosh, I love MGS4) but I need A LITTLE bit of authoring.