After really enjoying Immortality a while back, I'd been meaning to try Sam Barlow's other games. I finally got around to slotting in Her Story this afternoon and it was a good time.
Her Story doesn't have the scope or flashiness of Immortality, but it was a solid experience. Since the two games are so similar in structure and content, my thoughts about this game are largely in comparison to Immortality. That's a bit unfair and I can imagine I may have reviewed Her Story a bit higher if I'd played it at launch, but it is what it is.
Much like Immortality, Her Story is an FMV game where you search for clips to put together the story. In particular, you are piecing together sections of a police interview with a woman whose husband has died. Viva Seifert is the only actor in Her Story, and luckily she was up to the task, delivering strong performances throughout. She did a great job of capturing different moods and emotional states. I can't I can't really say everything I want about her acting without spoiling things, so I'll leave it at that.
You search for new clips to watch via key words in a databse. While this doesn't have the wow factor that the object matching in Immortality did, it was a bit more natural to use. Searching for a keyword only returns the 5 earliest results, so generic words usually only get you early pieces of the interview. It's structured well so that you are constantly getting little bits to move forward, but not too far forward. Well, except that I guessed a keyword based on a context clue that led to me solving the game much quicker than howlongtobeat suggests (1.5 hours vs 2.5), but that mostly just made me feel like a super sleuth haha.
The story itself was interesting and kept me focused until credits rolled. The twist was fun, though maybe not the most original. More than Immortality, this mostly felt like watching an experimental movie. That's cool and I had fun with it, so time well spent.
Her Story doesn't have the scope or flashiness of Immortality, but it was a solid experience. Since the two games are so similar in structure and content, my thoughts about this game are largely in comparison to Immortality. That's a bit unfair and I can imagine I may have reviewed Her Story a bit higher if I'd played it at launch, but it is what it is.
Much like Immortality, Her Story is an FMV game where you search for clips to put together the story. In particular, you are piecing together sections of a police interview with a woman whose husband has died. Viva Seifert is the only actor in Her Story, and luckily she was up to the task, delivering strong performances throughout. She did a great job of capturing different moods and emotional states. I can't I can't really say everything I want about her acting without spoiling things, so I'll leave it at that.
You search for new clips to watch via key words in a databse. While this doesn't have the wow factor that the object matching in Immortality did, it was a bit more natural to use. Searching for a keyword only returns the 5 earliest results, so generic words usually only get you early pieces of the interview. It's structured well so that you are constantly getting little bits to move forward, but not too far forward. Well, except that I guessed a keyword based on a context clue that led to me solving the game much quicker than howlongtobeat suggests (1.5 hours vs 2.5), but that mostly just made me feel like a super sleuth haha.
The story itself was interesting and kept me focused until credits rolled. The twist was fun, though maybe not the most original. More than Immortality, this mostly felt like watching an experimental movie. That's cool and I had fun with it, so time well spent.