![]() ![]() In the next, you can find invisible walls and invisible ceilings that are meant to keep you on task. In one chapter, you can break boundaries freely without worry of invisible walls. While the overall concept and puzzle mechanics in Maquette may be horribly impressive, the puzzles themselves often are not. ![]() They vary not just by puzzle type, but also by architecture and atmosphere. The game is broken into six chapters that are all unique from one another. It’s breathtaking and stays impressive for the duration of the game’s runtime, in part because it doesn’t see fit to repeat itself unnecessarily. Maquette‘s puzzles require you to use this to your advantage. There are spots where you can fall over the wall and find yourself teeny-tiny compared to the massive world. Maquette often takes place in various models of the same area. As I looked skyward, while not under the dome in the center, I noticed a much larger dome overhead. It’s not that the miniature in the dome is a little, fake version of the area. The domed area has a miniature version of the area you find yourself in, which I thought was cute. You’ll need to go into each area to bear witness to memories in order to progress the story. You go through the game’s intro and then enter a location with four areas on each side and a domed structure in the middle. I felt my eyes roll at how perfect both he and Kenzie appeared in earlier plot sections, only for the game to hit close to home once it made its goals more clear.Īt first, everything seems normal. We go along for the ride as we see the romantic tides ebb and flow, and we’re right there with him to feel the all-too-familiar sting of detachment once things inevitably start to turn. The plot begins when he finds a sketchbook he shared with his ex, Kenzie, which results in him taking a hard look at their relationship and what it meant to him. Maquette takes place from the perspective of a man named Michael. However, there’s a depth of emotion in this highly relatable tale that will stay with me far longer than some of its clunkier puzzles. The signposting can be quite rough, and the early story sequences are a bit too saccharine. Maquette is a narrative-focused first-person puzzler built around manipulating objects at various sizes to find solutions. That sense of loss is universal, but I can’t recall any games attempting to replicate it. Needless to say, I was not happy with Maquette for that.Many of us have likely felt the lurching dread that accompanies the transition from a rollercoaster honeymoon period to a relationship that simply doesn’t quite work. So even when it was the game itself that had broke I still had to replay the whole chapter from scratch. And sure, that time it was my own fault, but then there were times when I got stuck in an elevator or had fallen through the world. I had to completely play the entire chapter all over again because I had messed things up. So I clicked on the restart option on the pause screen and that brought me back to the very beginning of the chapter. All I could do was restart from the last auto-save, which didn't help me as it put me back in the same spot where I had broken the game. I don't even think there are checkpoints at all. Naturally, I thought, "well, I goofed up, time to restart from the last checkpoint." Except there was no option for that. It didn't, and even worse, there wasn't a way to retrieve that item. There was one time I tossed an item over a wall thinking that could help with a puzzle. Speaking of breaking the game, it is very possible to completely ruin your own progress. Maybe I'm too cynical, but it made me downright hate these two for most of the game. ![]() Their initial interactions are way too lovey-dovey and full of dialogue that could have been ripped out of a young adult novel. Meanwhile, little bits of writing appear on the walls of the game's world that try to make this story seem grander than it is. They meet, they spend every moment together, they draw in a sketchbook, they get a house, then they get sick of each other, and it goes from there. It's just two people who fall for one another and then have to deal with their relationship not becoming some epic tale of everlasting love. But it never really feels like a story that's worth telling. It's a basic romantic tale, and that would be fine if the narrative itself had some engaging moments between the two. We follow them throughout their time together and see the highs and lows of their relationship. ![]() The story revolves around Michael and Kenzie, a couple who meet in a coffee shop, gush about their interests in art, and instantly hit it off. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |