Drizzlepath: Genie Reviews

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To begin, I'll say what I did find good about this game: it was really pretty. I enjoyed walking through all the different environments, looking around, and especially catching sight of the dragon. Now let's get onto all the things which spoiled this experience. 1) It's a slog. I played nearly 3 hours and didn't even finish one path. (I didn't get much further past the dragon, had to stop to go to bed, and never picked it back up again. I'm not a masochist.) There is no map, and I have terrible - I mean TERRIBLE, non-existent - spatial reasoning, so I can get turned around within 2s flat just by stopping to look at a pretty flower. The path was mostly obvious - until points where it wasn't - and there are many places along the route which look quite similar (just think how easy it is to get lost in the real world when hiking), and where two completely opposing directions are both uphill. So I found myself reversing my route more than once, and having to retrace my steps after realising - or reaching one of the very rare 'you can't go back further this way' natural barriers. At a couple of points in the game, the character tells you you're going off-path, so WHY COULDN'T SHE SAY I WAS GOING THE WRONG WAY?! There is no running. At one point I got stuck in 'crouch' mode and didn't even realise, which slowed the whole experience even more horrendously. Why is there a crouch mode, you ask? Because you can't actually stop moving, so you need a slower movement rate for when you want to take in the scenery. It's less 'crouch' than 'dawdle' mode so it's not immediately obvious since normal walking isn't a great deal faster. It's not really an issue when you're going forwards enjoying the unfolding sights, but when you're lost and trying to backtrack it's a nightmare. And there are some distinctive landmarks, but they are spaced out so that you can spend a long and frustrating time walking back and forth between them. I also managed to get stuck in a couple of places (between trees or rocks) and had to go back to the nearest save point, which are also few and far between and give no hints as to which way you should be going when you return to them. I'd say that a good third of my time was spent in this sort of frustration rather than looking around, and the fear of getting turned around stopped me from exploring quite as much as I would have liked to. In short, the game both encouraged and punished exploration, which is mind-blowingly off-putting. 2) There was a nice little progressive story, narrated by the character, which explained the world and her (your) place in it, but this was utterly ruined at several points by the narrative switching to the most pretentious and nonsensical philosophical "poetry" I have ever had the misfortune to listen to (you can't turn this off and anyway, you don't know when the story might resume). My feeling was that the poetry had suffered from translation and perhaps was better in its original language, but if that original language was in fact English, all I can say is that the author should not attempt it again. My English is excellent but I would swear some of the words were made up! It would have been awful even at a poetry recital; it had no place in a game, or on a ramble through the countryside, whichever you take this game to be. It honestly felt as though I had been click-baited into playing just to be forced to listen to the creator's 'creative genius' because it was the only way they could obtain a captive (and non-consenting) audience. If it was intended to be filler for the unrolling story, it would have been far better just to maintain the ambient peace of the environment. Between the getting lost and this pontificating irrelevancy, I was near to tearing my hair out. I cannot stress enough how much both of these factors stopped me from wanting to return to this game, or made me feel that I wasted the 3 hours I had already spent on it. Even a promise of getting to meet the dragon at the end (there was no such promise) would tempt me back, and nobody is more obsessed with dragons than I am. 3) Rather more minor, but still detracting, issues:- There are several landmarks which are buildings, with what look like quest items inside - shiny, spinning, out of place beacons to the inquisitive - like a giant lollipop or a glowing carrot. You cannot get to these items. You cannot interact with them in any way. There is no explanation. They have no intuitive meaning relating to the storyline (or the appalling poetry). They look like models which were intended to be used, but the game was finished and put out before anyone could actually get around to coding. They were jarring, ridiculous and pointless, and didn't even have any aesthetic merit (most background scenery is 'pointless' in game terms, but it provides valuable enrichment). You have a command for interacting with key items. At no point, as far as I got, was I required to use this command (and believe me I tried, especially around the phony quest items and other interesting features). Doing a little post-play research, I discovered that there is only ONE POINT in the ENTIRE GAME where this command is used. I don't think I need say much more about that... Finally, in a game which requires little more than walking (automatically) along a given path, listening to the narrative and appreciating the scenery and quizzical landmarks along the way, you suddenly come upon what is probably the only platform style jumping obstacle, AND IT IS REALLY, REALLY DIFFICULT! No warning. No practice with other jumps along the way. No narrative link. No reason for it to exist, honestly, since at other points when they really don't want you going back any further they just put in a steeper uphill bit that you can't navigate. Why, in the name of SANITY, does this jump exist? By this point you've spent hours walking and getting lost and you just want the game to progress somehow, even slightly, and suddenly you realise that in order to get through that arched hole in some rocks, you have to take a running jump off this particular rock, with the angle just right, and oh yes, don't forget you can't actually run. It took me several attempts and never have I had to undertake anything so pointless in a video game before. Several people would have quit at this point, but I am stubborn, and I was not going to be turned back by a difficult jump. I made it through. I might as well not have bothered. To summarise: if you can get this game on sale, a short ramble around appreciating the graphics is probably worth it. Maybe. Unless you can find any other pretty game with both nice (and at this point in technological progress, almost certainly better) graphics AND stimulating gameplay. Or, you know. Go outside. The real world is even prettier, and harder to get lost in. You can also avoid the would-be poets.