As I said in my title, this is not a review. This is a thread about Never Alone one of the PS+ games of this month, the main purpose of it is to give you my opinion about it. Here is a picture of the game so you can get a visual representation of what I'm talking about:
Ok now that you have seen it let me get straight to the point. This game sucks balls. I can't belive that people charged for this game, when it's 4 hours long. Thank god for PS+!
What this game is about: You control a girl from the Iñupiaq tribe and a an artic fox in a sidescrolling puzzle platofming enviroment. Your task is to save your village from a blizzard storm and a big weirdo.
The story is nice, it's nothing too spectacular but it uses Alaskan indigenous stories to convey it. You also get insight videos which are a bunch of documental footage about the tribe,their stories and the fauna of the area, all of this is very nice since it stimulates the untrained brain. It's all a bit "too" educational though... which led me to belive at first that this wasn't really a game but a University Project to pass the final graduation project in a career or something of the sort. And that would have been a fine, but that's not the case... this is game.
What's wrong with the game: The gameplay of course! Sloppy controls and poor design decisions make for a broken game. Let's go one by one, the controls aren't as bad as many people claim but they aren't perfect. But this is a platformer game, so having tight controls is very important. They feel sloppy and when you factor into that a couple of bad design decisions it becomes frustrating. So... what design choices? First of all, the wind. You will be knocked back by it a lot of times. You can counter it by holding the O button but that is useless when you are doing a jump! Once you jump and the wind blows you get thrown to the pit. The solution is easy, you need to time your jumps but that is made difficult as there is no cue when the wind is about to blow (except for a very tiny frame before it does). This makes the platforming a bit frustrating, specially when you get to the end of the game.
But the worst part is the fox. "Playing the game in co-op will make the following point invalid but not everyone can play this game co-op as I do". So I'll cover it anyway. The game is not only a platformer, it's also a puzzle game, so you have to use both characters! You can swap them, but some puzzles requires the fox to carry your platforms. And the AI isn't there to help you! It's out there to kill you!!! It works but not as good as having a human player, so you will get a lot of deaths thanks to your AI controlled "friend".
There isn't a lot more to this game. You run around jumping and solving puzzles and it gets very dull fast. Luckily for the game, it's very short so you won't spend a lot of time with it.
It's also worth mentioning that this game is buggy! You can get stuck on walls often and see some weird glitches, but I wouldn't count this as a negative since they are fun to watch and there are checkpoints everywhere.
So, there is nothing good about this game?: No, the graphics are nice and the soundtrack fits. I enjoyed the story too but that's about it. A nice presentation doesn't make a fun game.
Oh there are a bunch of trophies to get in the game! They are very easy and don't require you to play it 2 times or anything like that. Obviously there is no platinum since this isn't a long game and it has a serious lack of content (no extras aside from the insight videos) but it's nice to make your e-peen a bit larger.
TL;DR: As a game, it's boring yet as a school project it's perfect! If I was teacher I would give this thing a 10/10.
"I've Underestimated the Horse Power from Mario Kart 8, I'll Never Doubt the WiiU's Engine Again"
