Gaming Ilustrated: 8.4/10
IGN: 7.2/10
Gamespot: 7.2/10
Games Radar: 7.2/10
Eurogamer: 7/10
Yahoo: 7/10

I do not find it beautiful. I do not find it moving. I find it precious. Delicate but gaudy, restrained but excessive, fluid but deeply static. I find it so goddamn boring.

It asks me to admire it. Insists upon it even. But I don’t. My breath is untaken, my awe uninspired. It’s all so monotonous and hollow. It tells me to feel, but I do not feel. What a terrible thing: assumed feeling unfelt.

There is nothing to hold onto here. It strikes the most self-serious art game pose — I Am Become Grief, Destroyer of Girls — but dodges all specifics. Yet grief is always specific. Trauma is always specific. Depression too, even when it feels absolutely diffuse and general. Each is rooted in a specific self. But Gris ditches the self and gives us instead the everygrief. Or is it the everytrauma? There’s no telling

We cross tiresome landscapes, past uninspired iconography, through bland mechanics, and nothing lands. Nothing lands. The game just sits there, faceless and cool, daring you to question its beauty.

Nothing in the design is wasted, every choice has pros and cons even down to where you choose to move at any given time. The result is a platformer that uses it's simplicity as a strength rather than a weakness, being both easy to learn (only one button plus directional!) and difficult to master. The overwhelming feeling of this game, perhaps more than any other I've ever played, is Zen. When you get in the groove, you are at one with the game and it feels amazing.

Plus the palette swaps are a great idea for unlocks and they serve to keep every new run fresh.