This is the penultimate game on my backlog. It's pretty fortunate that I was able to find time to get all these games done. BACKGROUND:
Two words: Steam sale. I actually don't remember if I beat this. I'm pretty sure I didn't, but either way, I'm finishing it. PLOT: Does this even have a plot? I don't fucking know. Nothing makes sense in this game. The only thing in this game that conveys any sort of coherent thought is the occasional text you can read in the levels. A lot of these are phrased like one of those motivational quotes, and if you find that shit pretentious, you'll probably find this game insufferable. I personally don't feel strongly about it. PRESENTATION: The visual style is strikingly simple, if that makes any sense. There's not a lot going on in terms of color (apart from the occasional gradients), and objects and the environment don't have any complex detail to them. Most of the areas are simply white rooms with the odd splash of color here and there. You should probably tone down the brightness if you play this game. Where this game excels in terms of visuals is how everything comes together to look like an abstract painting in video game form. There are odd shapes in all sorts of configurations everywhere, random models and writing that defy explanation, stairs all around M.C. Escher-style, all sorts of morphing objects... it's rather surreal at times, and the fact that the visual style is as simple as it is makes everything look even more trippy. The music is more on the ambient side, and to add to the bizarre presentation, you hear a wide array of sounds that make absolutely no sense. Some areas sound like they're underwater, and I occasionally heard completely out-of-place sounds like birds chirping or the sound of thunder. Everything about this game's presentation is designed to fuck with your senses, and as I will discuss below, this is a rather deliberate choice. GAMEPLAY: Antichamber is a first-person puzzle game, in the same vein as titles like Portal. The objective is the same: move around the rooms, solve puzzles to progress. That is where the similarities end, however; whereas Portal is relatively more straightforward in terms of its mechanics, Antichamber is anything but. What makes this game special is how practically everything in it defies conventional logic. Going back the way you came could take you to an entirely different place. Looking through a window can completely alter an area. Some walls could be walked through and some bridges aren't solid at all. I could go on and on with examples, but we'd be here all day. Long story short, nothing makes fucking sense, and the sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be. The fact that you're in some twisted dimension where real-world rules pretty much don't apply makes this game incredibly difficult to figure out at first. You pretty much have to think outside the box every single time because common sense is virtually useless in solving puzzles. I spent a good amount of this game muttering "what the fuck am I supposed to do?" In any other game, that would be an indicator of poor design, but in Antichamber, that utter confusion seems to be very much intentional. It is engineered to test your goddamn patience, and if you don't have a lot of it to spare, you probably shouldn't touch this game with a ten-foot pole. At first, figuring out how to do anything takes an immense amount of patience. You're being asked to leave common sense at the door, so you're left with trial and error, wandering aimlessly, and scouring the area for anything that remotely feels like a way forward. It takes a long while, but if you stick through the game, you'll slowly figure out the game's rules (or, rather, its lack of rules), and soon enough, you'll be cruising through rooms in no time. In this sense, the game almost has a sort of reverse difficulty curve; the longer you play, the easier it gets (provided you're actually taking the time to figure things out, of course). Of course, the journey to get to that point is a struggle, and oftentimes, you're just stumbling into the answer. I eventually played enough that I could somewhat make sense of the game's nonsense, but I could see the game's deliberately obtuse puzzles being too frustrating for other people. Even if they end up figuring it out, whether or not they feel a sense of accomplishment after doing so is up in the air. Once you progress far enough, you'll encounter a device that has the ability to place and remove tiny cubes in the environment. This device is incredibly versatile, as the cubes you place not only activate designated switches, but they can be used as platforms, too. The game becomes even more interesting thanks to this device, and throughout your time, its capabilities are expanded to give you even more ways to manipulate your cubes. However, some aspects of it are a bit of a pain to control; one ability in particular is quite cumbersome to use because you're working in a 3D space. Nothing is really straightforward in this game, and the solutions to some puzzles are pretty open-ended as a result. There's usually an optimal approach to many of the puzzles, but you can get away with a lot of shit if you do it right. I love when I have the opportunity to experiment on how to solve something, and this game gives you freedom to do just that. If you ever get stuck (which, in this game, is a guarantee), you can always return to the starting area. There, you have the ability to warp to any area you've already visited, allowing you to revisit puzzles you may have skipped or explore new paths. The game even indicates which areas still have paths to unlock and which areas are fully explored, which is nice. The only gripe I have is you have no access to the map in the actual game; you have to return to the start if you want to see it. The game's collectibles come in the form of drawings strewn about the levels, which display the aforementioned "motivational" quotes I described earlier on when you click them The game keeps track of what you've found, but there's no real incentive to collect them since the game doesn't have achievements (a choice I found rather odd). Notably, the quotes sometimes serve as hints, and are the game's main tool for teaching you to stop applying real-world logic to the puzzles. VERDICT: Antichamber is a strange game through and through, taking your preconceived notions of real-world logic (or even regular video game logic), saying "fuck you" to those notions, and throwing them out into the street. It laughs at your intuition and common sense by presenting a world of puzzles that require the brainpower of beings from another dimension to solve, and makes you feel like a fucking moron in the process. Once you take the time to figure things out (and I use that term loosely in the context of this game), you'll feel like you've seen the code Matrix-style. Mix in some incredibly abstract visuals and surreal audio design, and you have what would be a good answer to the question "what would a hallucinogen-induced fever dream look like in video game form?" I highly doubt I did it justice in writing here (nor would I wish to spoil anything about what this game throws at you), but you'll just have to trust my word that it is an otherworldly mind-bending experience to play through. Whether or not I enjoyed it as a whole is up for debate (there's plenty I enjoyed about it, but there were also a good amount of things that frustrated me), but either way, it's an experience I'll never forget. I don't think this is a game for everyone. I see its intentionally confusing design being a massive hurdle in a lot of people's enjoyment. Its puzzles easily go from "holy shit, that was pretty cool" to "how in the goddamn shit was I supposed to know that was the answer?" One may also find the quotes in the game utterly pretentious. I'd completely understand passing on this game, but I think the people who are curious ought to check it out. There really isn't a puzzle game out there quite like it. If you're on the fence, try and watch some gameplay (but not too much; don't spoil yourself); it's difficult to put into words exactly what the fuck is going on, so it'll probably be better if you just looked at it yourself. Get Antichamber on Steam here: Antichamber on Steam (steampowered.com) - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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