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dkirschner's Antichamber (PC)
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| [September 25, 2013 07:04:33 PM]
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Gonna be blunt. I didn't enjoy Antichamber very much. I played a little over 2 hours and by the end I was frustrated and had a headache I think from the white walls and the solid color blocks everywhere. The visuals are just very minimalist and I think the colors and the geometry just gave me a headache. That's fine. I could play in chunks. But here's the thing too. I think after spending years playing and researching Portal 2, games that are similar feel automatically inferior. I think, why would I play this since I've already played Portal 2? Granted, I see lots of merit behind the design of Antichamber. The technical wizardry with perspective I really appreciated, but the philosophy behind it I thought was boring and I felt like I was being hit over the head with all these little quotable quotes like "Sometimes taking a step back is the only way to go forward" or "The same puzzle can have multiple solutions" or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I've played puzzle games.
The signs that had these sayings, accompanied by a picture on each sign, often were placed after you'd just done whatever it said, which I thought was odd. Why not put the signs before so players anticipate how to think instead of realize after doing that they've (perhaps) thought a certain way? The signs I suppose are interesting ways of teaching the player and guiding them at the same time. They teach how to think about puzzle games in general, and this one in particular, though like I said, I felt I already had everything I'd done in 2 hours under my belt beforehand. Sometimes when you went backwards, things would be different. Sometimes, what seemed like a dead end wasn't, when you returned to a spot there was a new path, when you looked at something from a different angle, a new path appeared, and so on. I didn't feel any of this was that amazing. Then there was a sort of gravity gun where you could pick up blocks. You can upgrade the gun later on, but you essentially pick up blocks and use them as ledges, as doorstops, as keys...neat okay, but nothing new or exciting.
I was intrigued at first by like going backwards and how the hallways changed, but after a couple hours, I wasn't anymore. I was just trying to progress, solving each little room until I hit a snag, then just going back and retracing my steps looking for a new path to have opened, or looking for something I could now do with the block gun. There was a certain logic to the game that I enjoyed, the logic of multiple perspectives I guess, but it felt more like a logic of "ok now come back and look." Yeah, it's a different perspective on the same room, or yeah, now you have a new tool to help, but it's still linear in that way. This, then that, then come back and now this, and now that. Underwhelmed and a little bummed out. Headache's gone though.
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dkirschner's Antichamber (PC)
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Current Status: Stopped playing - Got Bored
GameLog started on: Wednesday 25 September, 2013
GameLog closed on: Wednesday 25 September, 2013 |
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