Huge expectations toward Vane - a game that was supposed to bring an ICO-like or Journey-like experience - turned out to be unjustified. Although Vane has its bright moments, she hardly reaches a level of mediocrity where she tries to keep her teeth-nails. Or if you want it differently - it once again looked a bit different on paper than it actually did. Introducing Vane to you.
Unlike today's traditional walking simulators - and beware, you have to know this genre, it is not enough to force the player to hold the arrow forward - Vane is trying to bring a little play to another sometimes boring journey. So you don't go, but this time you fly. In doing so, you perform relatively simple puzzles based on spatial riddles whose problem is just to get to the right place. There's no pointer and no interface. But laudable gameplay and even absurd striving for the artistic string are devastating efforts. Because today it is in fashion and all players must look for signs of a hidden message. They don't have to, and maybe they don't. Sometimes, with seriousness and wisdom, it is mainly the developers who may have something to say, but they can't.
The beginning will give you a childish figure carrying a mysterious object that tries to get safe from the sandstorm. Lightning snarls around you, the debris of civilization flies through the air, and when you think you will be safe, they will close the door in front of you. Blik. You're a crow. You fly through the desert, sometimes you find the remains of civilization. Long abandoned, dead, eroded by the tooth of time. What is your goal, you have no idea, but eventually you will be guided by a glowing point in the distance. You land on a special pointer, stalk and join the flying companions. You have to do it several times, but nobody tells you so you just fly and look. Goodbye, the desert is not so large and desolate. The few minutes run like water. But Miss Boredom comes.
But well, I may just be puzzled, but finally, I can get a joke on a tower that falls below the rush of crows, breaks the protective cover of a ball hiding a bright golden emulsion. If you dive into it, the crow turns into a baby again. I see. Now where? It is not a problem that nobody leads you by the hand. However, immersing itself in the universe itself stands on the shoulders of the player, whose atmosphere first draws, but in the dead world, without hints of any action, even spills out. So you go where you suspect you should go because there is nothing in the desert, just wasteland. In the temple, you are moving objects, with a crow flying to otherwise inaccessible places, a little strange, which can echo the destroyed environment to a conclusion that is just a classic way to find a way out of the maze.
If you know how to solve a puzzle and what it is exactly the only way forward, it takes a few minutes to master it. But most of the time you're just looking for and trying what you can do and what to do. The environment is not always so interesting to absorb you with its architecture. For that, the graphic is indeed personal, but otherwise quite drab and uninteresting. The strings on the artistic line rarely work for a long time. In Shadow of Colossus, we were twitching, with Journey being powered by a simple but functional architecture, the Last Gardian was once again breathing the atmosphere - none of it is here. I objectively evaluate this aridity as a major stumbling block, which eventually knocked Van out of at least a mild over-average into gray boredom.
The main thing that a game to offer free exploration of a forgotten world is frustrating is checkpoints. The game is stored on a few (literally, the game contains 5 chapters) places, but the player often abandons it before they finish. Either he does not know how to go further, or boredom or camera control. Repeating long passages becomes another despair - more discouraging from further launch. The point is not that the game is challenging or I am too spoiled, but after half an hour of investigation it would have been at least manually saved. Many times the classic head-catching game works after a short break from playing. Why you couldn't solve such a simple puzzle, you have to start over.
In response, many criticisms came to the control of the crow. It didn't seem impractical, though maybe a little clumsy. But especially other than arcade titles, where you fly with your finger in your nose or in another favorite hole. What's more, who's behind the Lair is a little surprised. With one analog you control the direction, the other with the camera, tilt down to gain speed, X-waving with wings, braking with the Eye again. After a while you will land on poles or other objects with little hesitation. Just keep in mind that the crow does not fly where you point the cursor, but that is the moment you start enjoying your flight. It's worse with a character on the ground: he's stuck, clumsy, and the camera's foot undermines her.
At some moments, the camera zooms almost completely to the crow. The feeling of speed and sailing is great. But you can't control it. The worse is flying when you are close to another object and see nothing or the crow gets stuck. Running with a character becomes much more frequent. When jumping and overcoming obstacles when looking through textures, rotating around an axis, the question arises whether anyone has ever tested it. You can also adjust the camera manually, but it is never perfect and often slow, pulling away from playing. Stomping when everything is uncomfortably dark and the brightness setting is not recognized by the game. You will then realize that the reasons why Vane actually plays have disappeared somewhere in the distance and you cannot remember them.
I admit that I was just trying to wander, walk the world, or fly open spaces, or walk around. But the attraction in them is the minimum, no bonus items. If there were at least some hints of a story where I would learn during the play, what actually happened, where the civilization went, where everyone is, who is a mysterious figure in the dark with a bird mask, and who I do control it and why? Vane just suggests, moreover, discreetly. Because it worked in Dear Esther, Gone Home, and I don't know where to go. Yes, only the player could - if he wanted to - find a tone of accompanying text that gradually put him into action. Here you will get an explanation at the very end, where you just shrug your shoulders well.
I admit that I enjoyed Vane, I like playing similar games. Disregarding critical feedback because it just looked interesting. On the pictures. However, playing is shallow and also parched as a desert at the beginning of the game. The story background is just hinted at, and letting the player, in a short game (repeatedly play over an hour) think, is just a waste of his precious time. Sometimes it is better to use a simple flint: written text, not even dubbing, but to draw the player into the bowels of the universe with its functioning. Then you will forgive him even the absurdities.
The camera is shocking, the control curls. Above this, eyes can be closed. But that emptiness and deaf moments, it is not forgiven. Walking simulator (well, well, there is flying), which tried to enrich the gameplay with more intense gaming than just walking, finally fell to the mouth because actually playing it is sometimes desperate and sometimes boring and often unnecessary. The world of Vane is not worth looking for more than a pathetic camp that you have already seen and heard. If you want to try and not cash your money, just in a huge discount.