Review: ori and the blind forest

game Info

Platform Win, Xbox One

quảng cáo online Microsoft Studios

Developer Moon Studios

Release Date Mar 11, 2015

I"ve reviewed hundreds of games, and some have been a real pain in the ass, for sure. Some games are bad, và I have khổng lồ play them anyway. Some games are middling, disappointing examples of a great concept & bad execution. Then there are games where I want so badly to stick around in them, to lớn explore và collect everything, khổng lồ find all their secrets, and I just can"t, because I"m on a deadline.

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Ori & the Blind Forest fits into that last camp perfectly. An international collaboration with developers from all over the world — collectively known as Moon Studios — Ori feels in many ways lượt thích the apotheosis of decades of action-adventure trò chơi design, wrapped in some of the most beautiful, cohesive presentations I"ve ever seen in a game.

Ori & the Blind Forest begins as a storm buffets the ancient, life-sustaining Spirit Tree, and a single, magical leaf is blown away to land in the forest below. The leaf, it turns out, is a cat-like creature named Ori. Ori is found & adopted by the kind Naru, who raises Ori as her own. The pair live a happy life until one night, when the Spirit Tree is corrupted, leaving the forest "blind" & dying. With everything he cares about at stake, Ori meets the spirit Sein và sets off to restore the Spirit Tree & save the forest.

It"s not the most original premise, granted, but Ori và the Blind Forest gets away with it for two main reasons.

First, there"s real characterization and personality lớn Ori and the other inhabitants of the forest. Moon Studios takes enough time at the beginning of the game to invest you in the story và its leads before putting everything in danger, all without feeling too cutscene-driven. Ori treats its characters with care và respect, granting them motivations và personalities, all with almost no dialogue to speak of. There are villains in the forest, but there"s no clear evil, not really.

The second reason should be apparent with even the most cursory of glances: Ori & the Blind Forest is strikingly beautiful. There"s a quirky, distinctive art style to lớn the characters themselves, and they are painstakingly animated to lớn express the character their absence of much spoken dialogue at all can"t provide. Ori also artfully manipulates the emotional impact of these moments with a sweeping orchestral score.

Ironically, as impressive as the character animation và soundtrack are, I was more struck by the world around them. Ori và the Blind Forest uses traditional sidescroller visual cues like parallax scrolling in ways I"ve never seen before, layering hundreds of instances of animations everywhere in the trò chơi world. The result is a space that feels alive. Everything always feels in flux, in motion, ready lớn shift at a moment"s notice. I"m sure there"s static artwork in Ori somewhere, but I can"t remember any of it.

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Ori"s traditionalist streak isn"t limited lớn its visual concepts. Ori & the Blind Forest"s skeleton is deeply rooted in the item-gated action-adventure genre that reached a sort of platonic ideal with Super Metroid in 1994, & in that respect it isn"t unique. Other genres have borrowed Metroid"s name và smashed it into other games khổng lồ try khổng lồ make something new, but I"ve never played a game so determined khổng lồ take và develop those ideas & augment them with incredibly refined, responsive mechanics the way Ori does. Moon Studios has prioritized this mechanical foundation, resulting in incredibly tight, responsive controls that make Ori a joy lớn play.

Per its influences, there"s plenty of exploration in Ori & the Blind Forest. You"re miễn phí to go more or less wherever you want from the start, impeded not by invisible walls but by Ori"s physical limitations. When you encounter a barrier you can"t traverse, or see a spot you just can"t reach, it"s because you haven"t found the skill you need khổng lồ make it happen yet. As the trò chơi progresses, Ori finds new abilities that should be familiar to lớn genre vets, lượt thích wall jumps, the ability to float và more.

But Ori and the Blind Forest isn"t nội dung to use its abilities as one-off keys khổng lồ new areas, or even rote tools lớn be employed the same way over và over. Instead, it practically demands you use the new parts of Ori"s arsenal on a regular basis almost as soon as you find them, in scenarios ranging from simple enemy encounters to lớn elaborate platforming challenges that will kill you for too many mistakes.

Ori will kill you so often it keeps track of it

This save system is a smart, small tweak on established convention that typifies so much of what the game does well. But I think Ori is just as well-served by its brevity. At just over seven & a half hours, I sat at around 90 percent completion in the game. Và when it ended, I could still remember the characters, who they were, what they were doing & what I was doing.

Moon Studios seems freed by the lower price point of a downloadable game to make something that isn"t artificially extended. There"s lots lớn explore, but not so much that I lost track of the plot or my motivation, which, for this kind of game, has always been a particular challenge.

Wrap Up: Ori and the Blind Forest shows a spectacular cấp độ of confidence

Ori và the Blind Forest is a rare realization of fantastic design and production values in a space where I wasn"t expecting to find it, displaying a spectacular cấp độ of confidence in what it is and what it does. & here"s where we come back khổng lồ wishing I hadn"t reviewed it as quickly as I had to. It"s a game that provides so much khổng lồ explore & appreciate, và I would have liked khổng lồ have taken just a little more time than I was able.

Ori và the Blind Forest was reviewed using a pre-release download code provided by Microsoft. You can find additional information about doanhnghiepnet.com.vn"s ethics policy here.