I usually enjoy puzzle games and walking sims and love to support Annapurna produced content. But I don’t think I finished this game - I need space on my hard drive so this got the boot to my external storage (and since you can’t play ps5 games that are on external storage it’ll be stuck for a while).

The game starts off pretty cute. The entire premise is watching a couples narrative unfold while uses a maquette to manipulate the size of various key items to drive the narrative forward.

The game is a bit abstract with the buildings and what they mean. Sometimes it seems like a place the couple lived but sometimes it looks like a rundown castle? The key items are also abstract and the connection between why you are using said item to unlock a memory doesn’t have any explanation or seem relevant- example the one level you use these different crystals but I don’t think there is any connection why you have those items - their usage is completely irrelevant to the story other than unlocking the next dialogue. For me this just made it a bit flat. I’d rather collect plants that had the same purpose and the plants tie into the memory. It felt like a big miss to conceptualize the memories.

I also felt some of the puzzles were glitchy / non responsive and some were so confusing - theres a rule that’s there is no rules. I definitely got to a point I broke my save file as I managed to break a door thinking I was solving the puzzle and when I looked up the guide on what to do I was just quite angry at the solve. I can’t say why without spoilers but I felt there was no explanation/ hint or anything on what you had to do to even get to the conclusion of the answer.

Prior to this I had about 2 hours lost in that one section and had to redo it and with the guide it took me maybe 10 minutes. That’s how complicated some of the puzzles are because you can’t always tell where you go next and you spend 20 min on a dead end only to retrace your steps.

The problem with this is you really lose the narrative if you follow a wrong lead to dead end. I forgot what the story told me by the time I finished the area the unlocking the maquette once it gets locked. And then I just lost interest and found the game to be draining to play.

I liked how Bryce Dallas-Howard and her husband did the voice acting they really did well voicing their affection for each other.

I just think the game could be more refined to help the flow so the puzzles can be complex but not hinder the narrative.

Very interesting concept that really doesn't get explored much. I like the way it looks, I like the tunes, and I like the drawn aspects of the cutscenes. Other than that it's pretty rough. It controls very poorly, often plodding and sluggish, and frequently glitchy. I got softlocked multiple times in a 3 hour playthrough. The narrative is garbage - it's uneven, it's trite, it doesn't resonate. The voice acting is really bad despite the actors attached.

The puzzle sections are uneven too, but they're the most enjoyable part - unfortunately it feels like you spend a solid third of the game being dragged into poorly written cutscenes. I think this is a decent game with exactly as much meaning if you cut out every bit of floating text or voiceover.

In Maquette, a promising concept is stretched into eternal, multi-layered stupidity.

In defense of this game, I was not in my most patient shape while playing this game. But yet, it really tests you throughout the full playthrough. The main focus is to solve recursive puzzles, by experimenting with changing the size and the original use of objects, which sounds cool on paper, but was not well executed.

I felt stupid, while playing the game and that is a feeling you should strictly try avoiding to invoke your players. I found myself cursing over and over again about plot, mechanics and movement, because the console controls are laggy and tedious, the puzzle solutions are mostly counter-intuitive and the plot is the pinnacle of head-scratching, lazy storytelling.

The underlying story, told in text fragments and audio snippets, is a pain in the ass. It retells the dysfunctional love story of Kenzie and Michael, which are complete idiots, when it comes to communicating properly and at least try to live in a healthy, respectful and open minded relationship. Their interpersonal inability is just painful to watch and listen to and to be honest, I am tired, bored and annoyed to get served with these copy-and-paste, expired, so-called love stories, that still try to manifest that this is the circle of life and love is equal to pain and ignorance. Either grow out of your ego-mania or go to (couple) therapy!

On the one hand, I feel sorry, to be this rude, but on the other, this game made me feel gut wrenching miserable and repelled me from minute one till the very end.

Why do I still rate this game a 2.5 or even finished it, when it hurt so much? One thing that really stood out and frequently saved me from quitting, is the splendid selection of tunes, that really hit the right note every time. If you have a weakness for kitschy indie, soft-rock music, the tracks will produce a regular dose of goosebumps. They finally made my head nod in emotional response and not in endless desperation.

I got about halfway through the game, which felt like enough to warrant a review. Unfortunately, it just didn't do it for me.

The art style is genuinely outstanding and easily the best part of the game. Finding new items/clues and completing puzzles felt satisfying. Unfortunately, it just wasn't enough to make up for everything else. The navigation didn't feel right and was often frustrating, combat is god awful, and the story just didn't do enough to pull me in. Also, the extra voice in your head was really annoying

Benedict Fox certainly has interesting ideas with its mix of metroidvania exploration and escape-room style puzzles, however it needed a lot more work. The interesting 1920s Lovecraftian investigation setting is offset by clunky controls and movement, dreadful combat and poor player feedback almost as if there was no playtesting or QA. The performance is choppy and more worryingly the game is riddled with bugs - on multiple occasions I had a good hours worth of progress lost. A missed opportunity.

I finally quit after playing at least the half of it. Just couldn't force myself to continue anymore. Awful combat, uninspired enemies, clunky controls, awful platforming, bad map connections, TOO MANY puzzles, meaningless upgrades mostly, AWFUL voice acting. I especially hated how they implement the discovering new areas with puzzles instead of satisfying skill upgrades. I don't want to solve puzzles all the time! When I play a metroidvania I want to know that if I upgrade enough previous areas feel like a breeze and I can continue new ways. It's not like that in here. Also map is overwhelming and cryptic. Too hard to remember which thing was where and that's a really annoying thing for a metroidvania.
Sad thing is art design and lore has so much potential. Story is intriguing enough too.
Another wasted potential which I really come across a lot in recent years with indies.
I really want some Hollywood studio to buy this and turn it into a big budget series or movie. It could be great

Kind of a disappointment with this game the more I think about it. I like a lot of the concepts and the world itself but once you get deeper into the story and mechanics, it all goes downhill.

The story and characters all on the surface are interesting and intriguing but the story itself is really difficult to follow.

The combat is easily the worst part of this game as well. It's standard melee and long range combat but It never feels good. Every enemy is a damage sponge. The gun has very limited ammunition. There are options to upgrade your weapons and other power ups (the game features a set of items you can use in combat. Some are great and useful, others are not) but in doing so, and upgrading everything I owned to its full potential, you just never feel like it's doing much to change things. Some of these increase the amount you can carry, so that is helpful but they never feel like they last that much longer or do that much more damage.

The combat controls also just feel clunky and cumbersome. Despite having a slide and jump and a nice range of motion, the game never strings it together in a fluid way that feels satisfying, often having enemies that can block or make movement difficult. Some enemies are difficult to slide underneath and knock down, others have a wider range of motion in the air and can knock you down. The biggest culprit to this issue is the hit detection is terrible in this game.

There are many bugs in this game but the hit detection is one of the more egregious and consistent issues I ran across. Often times I'd be seeing my character jumping well over an enemy, only to get hit by an attack that was visibly off the mark. It does work in your favor at times as well, so you can use this to your advantage as well, but because every enemy is a sponge, it doesn't really feel like a massive assistance.

On top of that, I had a handful of random crashes, some times when audio didn't load, another time where I loaded up on a save area, only to be met with a black screen (could still see my character luckily). It's fairly inconsistent.

There are some big annoyances this game has on top of this, the one worth mentioning over the rest is that the game will kick you out of some areas if you've died too many times in a row on an area. You'll randomly have this happen just because. It's so damn annoying.

This game sadly I don't think is worth your time. Maybe if you gel with the combat more you'll enjoy this but there are games just like this that are much better, much more stable and deserve your attention.

I don't want to be completely negative about this game though so I will add The vibes and art style are nice, the level design is pretty good, some of the world building and story beats are also interesting. It's just not enough to make up for the deep flaws that exist in this game.

A good art style and interesting use of Resident Evil-like puzzles isn't enough to salvage what's otherwise an well below average metroidvania.

The animations are terrible, the movement is generic, combat is boring, exploration is standard, additional abilities aren't interesting, the story is kind of a mess, the soundtrack is forgettable...

Really, the only reason this isn't flat out the worst I've played is because this game really does make a great use of Lovecraftian aesthetics and I loved the idea of incorporating puzzles in a metroidvania. Because otherwise this game is just... One of the games ever made. It isn't even outright bad, it's just perfectly mediocre.

Benedict Fox is a Lovecraft-inspired metroidvania with combat and puzzles but the main focus seems to be more about the visuals and interesting world. Originally I was put off by the poor reviews of this game and almost didn't try it even though it was on Xbox Game Pass. I'm glad I did though, since there is a lot to love about this game, but sadly the overall experience is definitely flawed.

The graphics are something people praised but they didn't really draw me in from looking at the Steam store page. It was only after I actually started playing that I saw how impressive the environments look. The game is entirely 2D but features 3D graphics like in Bloodstained: RotN, only this game does it much, much better. I was consistently stunned at how detailed and expansive the environments are in this game.

The weird thing here is that I didn't feel like the amazing visuals really did much to aid the gameplay at all. Often I'd find myself running through a room that was barren of gameplay elements but had totally beautiful scenery in the background, it almost felt like a waste or rather that the detail here could be appreciated more in a different kind of game. Sure, it helped with the world building but a lot of the time it just felt like a bonus feature. It's not necessarily a bad thing but I guess it's like getting a world-reknowned artist to paint butter on your toast.

As for the gameplay itself, the combat is not terrible. It's fun enough but I'd say it presents itself as being a lot more complex than it actually is. There are quite a few mechanics but at the end of the day I was mostly just mashing the attack button. The puzzles are pretty good, particularly at the start as you are learning the game. Later on they become a bit more of a chore as you aren't really solving anything so much as just following instructions. The standard metroidvania gameplay loop of exploring the map is good once the ball gets rolling.

The main problem I had with this game is the obscurity of mechanics and direction. Many times I would find myself totally lost at how to solve a puzzle or where to go next, only to look at a guide and realise there was some tiny detail or intuition that I'd missed. This game also has the same issue a lot of metroidvanias do where it's unclear at times if progression is gated by player skill/knowledge or an actual ability that the player hasn't yet obtained. There are some map markers to show when you need a certain ability to progress but this isn't a complete solution nor a perfectly clear one, it also takes away from immersion. This summarises a lot of design choices in this game; they've clearly tried to add QOL features but generally the implementation seems flawed in that they try to be the jack of all trades but end up with a result that isn't complete in any area.

Overall it's a mixed bag, the world and atmosphere is great and it looks amazing, the gameplay is serviceable but playing this without a guide might take me a thousand years. I think if this game had another 6-12 months to cook then it could be great but as is, it's more of a half-baked experience. I would still recommend people try it though if they have Game Pass and like metroidvanias.