Off-Peak
1 hour of playtime, 6 of 6 achievements
★☆☆☆☆
This is a free game and a (spiritual?) prequel for “The Norwood Suite”. I wanted to play this to see if I would like “The Norwood Suite” which seemed like an interesting game. And I’m glad I did, because I really didn’t like this one. This game is a surrealistic (which I would normally like), amateurishly made, indie walking simulator. The game world is very crude, which I can kinda forgive since it’s an indie game, but the dialogue is just simply really weird and plain boring, and the game doesn’t have much else than it’s dialogue and game world. Again I’m baffled this game has so many positive reviews, probably simply because it’s free and isn’t just shovelware or an asset flip.
TL;DR Surrealistic (which I would normally like), amateurishly made, indie walking simulator with a crude game world and weird/boring dialogue. Not recommended to anyone but fans of “The Norwood Suite”.
I interpreted the end of Norwood so incorrectly that it made me laugh to read the dev’s explanation. The games to me kind of felt like looking around in an art gallery or museum.
Edit: I just looked at your profile. Congrats on so many completed games! What was your worst experience trying to get all the achievements?
It’s nice when developers explain their ending at least instead of just letting you guess and you never really know. The game does feel a bit like an art gallery. There were some interesting pieces of art in the game, but none that really captured my attention for long.
Yeah, I’m completing every game 100% that I play for the time being, though I’m thinking about not doing that anymore in the near future. That’s an interesting question and the more I think about it the more I can come up with. Some of the most annoying ones by far are luck based achievements, like “No more Bloodirony” (Shooting Stars!). Several of the most annoying ones are also in my Achievement Showcase like “By My Hand Alone” (Dishonored) which is one of the most annoying ones I ever got, “Blue Ribbon Champ” (BioShock Infinite) was very annoying to get too, “Aperture Science” (Portal) which is basically time trials and limited amount of portals to use left a distinctly bad taste since you have to use game glitches to get those times, “The outside world must be ten times bigger than inside the Wall!” (Attack on Titan) is by far the grindiest achievement I’ve ever done. Team Fortress 2 deserves a special mention for the sheer amount of achievements that took around 300 hours to get them all, there’s another achievement that takes around 100 hours, but you can AFK it fortunately. These are just of the top of my head I could go on for a while.
Yeah, I noticed you had all the achievements in a lot of games that seemed like it would be hard to do that in. I had Bioshock: Infinite and Team Fortress in mind when I asked, too, but I didn’t know Portal had such a bad achievement. Thanks for the response.
Most achievements aren’t too bad though, most are just time consuming. Achievements that have a luck involved tend to be the worst and the largest time wasters. Valve games tend to have some terrible achievements though.
Portal surprised and aggravated me too with that revelation, especially since it’s such a casual game otherwise. It’s only because I loved the game so much that I endured it. Portal actually has the worst time trials I’ve ever come across in any game, since it’s impossible to get the best time without these specific glitches.
How interesting! I did like this game.
I think the farther out you go from ‘standard’ things, the more a piece of work depends on it just ‘clicking’ with a particular person for it to work. I’ve experienced that same thing where I’m just like ‘this plain just Doesn’t Work for me’, and it’s hard to pin down exactly why.
Congrats on another 100%, at least!
I always find it interesting to have people with an opposite view, what did you like about the game? Or was it a general feeling?
I think you’re right about certain niche games clicking for some people and not for others. I think if the dialogues were a bit better or the graphics a little better I might like it. But this felt a bit too crude and really amateurishly with no real sense of direction for the story. I don’t play games to add another 100% completion to my list but thanks ^^
My review is here, and rereading it now with the distance of a couple of months lets me crystallize why I liked it: because it reminds me of a place that existed in my mind as a child. It tapped into how my young brain grappled with themes and images I didn’t really fully understand yet. It Clicked. It Just Worked.
I can see what you mean re: dialogues and graphics, though the graphics in particular are right at the exact quality that made me go ‘welp it’s 2001 and I’m 8’. Any better and it might have missed that sweet spot. It’s funny how all of this works, huh?
Ah, I must have missed it or I don’t remember it, because I actually read most of your reviews :D You make a unique point by comparing it to a Tony Hawk’s game which kind of fits, because they did have these large open spaces which didn’t always make sense. I spend a lot of time with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 and 3, great fun. But I guess it didn’t give me that nostalgic vibe, like you said it’s funny how different people experience these things.