THE PEDESTRIAN (PS4)

I was attracted to The Pedestrian´s concept since I saw a trailer on the internet. I had played a similar game in the iPad (Continuity 2) and liked it… but couldn´t finish it. The problem was common to other puzzle games: The game systems at the beginning are simple and you get some nice and easy challenges, but developers feel they have to ramp up the difficulty to keep the player´s interest, they keep adding more systems and eventually the puzzle involves so many elements and possibilities that it´s difficult to progress. I hoped The Pedestrian wouldn´t fall for the same

I was wrong

I basically had the same issue: The first 40% of the game is reasonably simple to grasp and entertaining. But then designers start adding more gameplay elements, which boosted the combinations and complexity. That made me think I´m not really a puzzle gamer. After all a real aficionado would be excited by the challenge and try over and over to find the solution, no matter how many hours it takes

I guess I´ve reached a point in my life in which I don´t think I can spare days on solving just one puzzle. If I do I don´t feel rewarded enough as to compensate for the time loss, and it´s even worse when later internet walkthroughs prove I wouldn´t had found the solution by myself in a lifetime, and if I wouldn´t resorted to external help I would´ve been stuck for ages

So, for the last half of the game I followed a video walkthrough step by step. I don´t feel bad about it, I honestly wouldn´t have finished the game solo, and at least I enjoyed it to a certain degree. But I wouldn´t recommend it unless you´re a true puzzle fan. The concept is still great, but soon it can make you feel inadequate

STORIES UNTOLD (PC)

 

Much like others, I have a huge Steam library - Normally because the games are SO MUCH on sale sometimes that I can´t help to buy. But I rarely play them, I´ve been favouring PS3 and PS4 games lately. Precisely because of this I noticed Stories Untold was on sale in the PS store, and then I said to myself “wait a sec, don´t I have it already on Steam?”

And yes, I had it. I was tempted to buy the console version anyway to boost my trophy rating, but I thought using the keyboard might be a better option for a game that at times uses an early 90s word parser (I was wrong actually, the console version has an ingame word selector that would´ve made some of the puzzles MUCH easier)

Overall it´s a short game, if you know what to do it can be finished in around 3h. It´s divided into 4 episodes, each of them unique by itself, including specific game mechanics. All of them involve the player into a rather dramatic story. The last episode is an amalgamation of the others, providing an unseen-up-to-that-point connection between the stories

I like the game for several reasons: First it tries to do something new… several times. Then it tries to create an experience, to make you feel something you can´t in other media. It´s also fairly well implemented – within its humbleness, it´s an indie game after all – and largely achieves what it´s trying to. And since every episode has its own systems, there is a strong sense of variety

On the minus side, some of the puzzles were too obscure. I had to resort to an internet walkthrough – which is always either frustrating for the player (you don´t feel smart enough for the challenge), a sign that developers didn´t do a good job to make the game accessible for everybody, or simply didn´t cover that possibility with an internal hint system

Anyway I highly recommend Stories Untold. Its shortness is also a good thing: You pay less but those 3-4h give you quality content, as opposed to other games that reuse the same gameplay template over and over (cough cough Ubisoft cough)