REVIEW : Ever Forward (PC)
You might not be cowering in a closet while a mumbling ghost stalks the halls but, more often than not, there’s an unsettling story woven into the puzzle-solving shenanigans. Those containers you’ve been pushing into place? You’re secretly a serial murder and every one of them carries a victim’s corpse. There’s a similar feeling of unease threaded through Ever Forward.
Sure, Maya’s an appealing little moppet but, as you guide her through this puzzler, you’re bracing yourself for a completely uncomfortable resolution. Will it Limit the curtain to unveil she’s been grafted to the back of some alien murder-beast? Or that she’s some AI, cut loose and flowing through the cosmos?
The teasing, story glimpses you get from finishing a puzzle just underline the effort it needs to solve Ever Forward‘s riddles. Ever Forward has heart, but it’s the game’s otherworldly artistic and ever-escalating difficulty that drives the play. You’ll spend 30 seconds seething at Maya’s seemingly careless mother and a good 15 minutes thinking out how to stop her being gunned down.
Despite Maya’s young age, the main barrier you face is hovering gun turrets, dubbed “Roundies”, that will turn her into digital detritus. Except for the last few stages, all the puzzles require you to avoid or divert the Roundies, before applying a cube to initiate the level’s exit point. But despite the relative lack of variety, Ever Forward seldom feels repetitive; you’re too busy racking your minds for the one quick trick that will see you safely through.
What sets Ever Forward apart from Portal, its indisputable influence, is that you don’t have the luxury of an enclosed arena; instead, the levels are suspended over a bottomless abyss. Ever Forward‘s mechanics seldom change – instead, the level geometry becomes increasingly complex, forcing you to think in new dimensions. There’s a firm contradiction between Maya’s beachside fantasy and the puzzle realm she plunges herself into, but both are nice to view.
Roundies have two states: standard and alert. In some games, putting a gun turret into ‘alert’ state would mean you’ve failed, but not in Ever Forward; in a stroke of wicked genius, there are occasions when you have to alert a Roundie, then use its enhanced alertness to your advantage.
It’s these little epiphanies that make Ever Forward such a pleasure to play; the puzzles are sometimes complicated and are always fascinating to solve. You do have the choice to use hints if you’re stuck. Ever Forward‘s puzzles will have you scraping your head, but you won’t be pulling your hair out. However, there are times when disappointment kicks in – and it’s all Maya’s fault.
Ever Forward‘s problem is that its main lead decides she knows better than you, at least when it gets to sneaking around. She can be gently unwieldy at times, but she insists on going into auto-sneak when you approach a turret.
It’s the only point she displays any sort of autonomy and you could argue it’s in her interest to stop herself getting gunned down. But apart from taking the decision away from the player, it can end in more deaths.
REVIEW : Kill It With Fire (PC)
