And although the map isn't enormous, it's big enough for you to unintentionally go in circles and loops.īut when the game unfolds as intended, with engaging dialogue between yourself and your boss, Delilah, the game develops extremely well. That also means you can, and will, get lost repeatedly. You'll need to look all around for drops to take or rock faces to climb. Just because you know something is west of where you are doesn't mean you can simply point yourself in that direction and go.
There's no such thing here, and you have to dutifully consult a compass and map to point yourself in the right direction - be it to find how to make your way to smoky areas out in the woods or get to a specific creek.
There's a learning curve to, essentially, unlearning what a lot of video games have taught you: that you can navigate any area easily thanks to an on-screen mini-map. This adventure goes from a slow crawl to a fairly captivating and strange mystery, which means you'll need to stick with it for a bit longer than you might initially like, but it's worth it. Some students, 16-18 year olds, really engaged with it while others didn't quite have the maturity to accept some of the messages the game presented and were thus indifferent to it. I've taught this as a media text in a senior level high school English class before with mixed results. Worth a play for adults and perhaps older teens as well. I found it refreshing to experience a game brave enough to address such topics as loneliness, infidelity, trust, and resilience in a way that feels very grown-up. Aside from some swearing (f***, s***, etc.) it is this depiction of imperfect adults dealing with adult problems that makes the game unsuitable for younger players. The two central characters in Firewatch are neither all good nor all bad but are just as likely to behave selfishly as they are altruistically. It's an interactive story adventure that deals quite brazenly with the shades of grey that adulthood is known for. In case there was any doubt about the motivation behind all of this, I poked at the most recent 50 negative user reviews and 43 of them show zero hours played in the past two weeks of those that do have recent time on the clock, five of them are for less than an hour.There is a lot to love about Firewatch from its simple gameplay and clear structure to its superb voice acting and lush visuals.
However, negative review cause the developer is a whiny baby, filing DMCA takedowns over hurtful words." Pulls you in and keeps you intrigued from start to finish. "This is one of the most beautiful games.
Instead of complaining, he should ♥♥♥♥ing fix his game. "The fact that the creator of this game seriously went after pewdiepie is ♥♥♥♥ing pathetic."The developers seem to support censorship which I will not."."At least one of the game devs seems to be a DMCA abusing SJW crybaby who is using copyright laws to wrongfully take down videos if the reviewer uses a word he doesn't like."."Terrible story, too short, and social justice warrior developers.Firewatch was released in early 2016 and its overall rating, across well over 25,000 Steam user reviews, is "very positive." (And so it should be, I would add.) But recent reviews are "mixed"-industry parlance for "bad"-and it's not hard to figure out why.