Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy A few CGs were altered to remove or lessen nudity. Also, according to the publisher:

All “Child” bedtime event cutscenes removed

Not entirely sure what that means, although the conjunction of the words child, bedtime, and censorship strike me as vaguely ominous.

oh. Oh. OOOOOOOOOH!

That sounds... bad out of context to say the least @Ralizah

In context of the game though They're clones and die within 14 days. Being reborn as kids via the extend machine only to repeat the process over and over. You find that out about ten/twenty minutes before the prologue ends and it's confirmed as the prologue ends so... It makes much more sense.

I can see why it might've been removed though too... plus it doesn't seem like it's cut too much content out at all (or seemingly important either)

It shouldn't ruin your enjoyment of it... Or be blindingly insulting over editing like a full body wedding dress

I completed CONCRETE GENIE this weekend and although I’ve trickled out a few early and mid-game impressions, I feel inclined to leave a more detailed and thorough review of the whole experience.
Also, shout-out to @Arugula for his recently posted more succinct and infinitely more readable post-game impressions of this game. I mostly agree with his assessment of this very good, if not great, PlayStation exclusive. If you want the short version, I recommend his thoughts on the “What PS4 games are you currently playing” thread. For the rest of you who are stout of heart and have a spare 15 minutes, read on....

Extent of completion
First off, I should say that the game is quite easy and has a very nice obtainable platinum, but I’ve not platinum’d it yet. With just playing through the story and putting a small amount of extra effort to capture a few easy to do trophies along the way, I finished it with an 80% trophy completion. I completed the entire story and some of the postgame content, including the end game secret area and spent some time in the free paint mode. What I lack are some more hidden collectibles at the end and few specific scenes you have to paint for the genies called “Genie Moments.” I’m not sure if I will go back to put in the extra couple hours hunting all they stuff down. I probably won’t, not necessarily because I am sick of the game, but more because I have such a backlog and I’d rather move on to other things.

As for difficulty, I played the game on the default difficulty and I only failed a couple times - usually it occurred when I made an ill advised jump off a building and fell too far and once when I was too slow to accomplish a timed event and failed while I was scrambling through the art pages to find the right thing to draw. But 90% of the time it’s pretty hard to “lose” in this game if you’re at least an average gamer. In fact, I didn’t even know the game had selectable difficulty levels until a prompt came up toward the end game about it.

The Concept
What is most impressive about Concrete Genie is that it has a truly unique gaming concept. The intermix of art creation and a simple story, mingled with exploration, combat, and platforming in game is worthy of praise in and of itself. I’m always a fan of developers pushing the envelope with regard to game design. So for nothing other than trying something new and different, it’s a game worth one’s time.

The Graphics, Art, and Animation
Much has been made of the game’s art design. I think most would agree that the visuals are quite stunning. The thing is, there are layers of what Pixel Opus is presenting here. What do I mean? Well, let me explain, as I feel like the graphics are a bit of a mixed bag:

• The backdrops and set pieces are of high quality; the world feels realistic in its presentation with a slight “artsy” nature that doesn’t detract from the nice attention to detail in the buildings, dumpsters, roads, boardwalks, waterways, etc. of this abandoned harbor town.
• Then when you paint and create genies (the little monster creatures Ash draws that come to life and serve as companions) and pictured landscapes on the desolate and abandoned buildings of Denska, the art work comes to life in a beautiful and vibrant way. It is so easy to paint scenes of wonder with the art tools provided. Sure, you’re basically picking from a subset of predetermined designs, but the way you mix and match them, position them, and alter the size and shape of them ... well, the possibilities are nearly endless. Even randomly putting up images with reckless abandon yields a mural worthy of a snapshot.
• Then you have the graphical presentation of the characters, such as the protagonist Ash and the bullies that bother him. And here is where I have some issues. The character design choice for the human characters is oddly of an antiquated vibe that I can only describe as the next iteration of claymation. If you have seen the old stop-motion animation TV specials then you know what I mean. As realistic as the environments look, the characters and faces are very stylized in this strange retro look. The facial movements are stuttering and simplistic and appear almost doll-like. Ash’s hair for example looks very much like fake locks stolen from a Barbie and Ken collection. The whole thing is very off-putting and at odds with the nicely designed world and the gorgeous artwork you create with your paintbrush.

I became accustomed to the character designs and animation over time and grew to appreciate them by the end, but I still think they needed some work. I’m not sure if Pixel Opus went with these character designs intentionally as an artistic decision, or if was a technological limit and they didn’t have the time or resources to make the characters look better or more real. At first I thought it was lazy developing since they look almost alpha design level, but the more I played the game, the more I think it may be just the way they wanted to present their ideas. I don’t know. I suspect it may have been a combination of the two — they didn’t have the resources to make photo realistic faces and motion, so rather than have an ugly rendition of the uncanny valley, they went further away to make the people look cutesy and stylized, which fits within the world I suppose. It’s a hard line to draw and I guess I can’t fault them for how it turned out, but it took me some time to warm up to the design choice of Ash and company.

The Characters, Voice Acting, and Plot
Speaking of characters, if we put aside how they look, how well are they realized and presented as people to get emotionally attached to? Well, that’s also a mixed bag. Ash is a sympathetic character, the victim of bullies who make fun of his artistic hobby. There are attempts also to get deep into the psyche of the bully characters as well and the game is clearly trying to make a worthwhile social statement here, despite the lack of depth obtained. The whole thing functions fine, but I don’t know if I really fell in love with Ash’s character the same way I did for, say, an Arthur Morgan or Aloy.

The voice acting is fair, but at times a little cringeworthy, honestly. Ash’s interactions with the genies seems storybook and definitely on the juvenile side of things. At times this makes for a feeling akin to watching a kids animated TV feature like Strawberry Shortcake or The Wiggles. For example when Ash tickles a genie with his brush in a playful way it’s intended to be cute I think, but it ends up feeling awkward as an adult playing this game.
For Ash’s VA, it can’t have been easy to pull off a good voice acting performance when you’re conversing with an imaginary friend who doesn’t talk back, and it shows here. The genies too are a strange mix of creepy in appearance and unintentionally disturbing in the gurgling and growling sounds they make. Again, they are supposed to be cute and endearing, but for me they can often come closer to the things of nightmares.

The plot is fine. It does push a few agendas; subtly making a societal statement, but it’s not too heavy handed in its delivery. It’s mostly a quaint tale of a boy and his paintings overcoming conflict and I’ll say no more to avoid spoilers of what little plot there actually is.

The Gameplay, Control, and Functionality
So how does the game function as a ... well, as a game. That’s the point of the whole thing, right? If it’s not fun or engaging to play, then it doesn’t matter how pretty or how basic it looks.
The painting bits are spot on and excellently implemented. The platforming, jumping, climbing, and traversal... not so much. Ash handles and moves with a lack of accuracy I’ve not had to deal with since platforming on the PS2. His movement is a bit jerky and certainly inaccurate. It’s easy to overshoot a jump because he slides a little and the control is quite temperamental. Fortunately the “sticking and grabbing” part of jumping to a handhold is fairly generous. Also the game is not designed to be difficult, so if you miss a jump and end up in the drink, the game puts you right back where you started and Ash just says something like “Yuck! I hate getting wet.”
I will say that there is a shift in gameplay and movement possibilities in the last third of the game and I enjoyed his move set much more at the end. I don’t want to get too far into spoiler territory, but suffice it so say I wish the latter gameplay was a bigger part of the game than it ends up.

Among other shortcomings is the map. Bringing up the in game menu gives you access to a map with a few icons to guide you, but I found it unhelpful. In its attempt to be stylistic, it become fairly cryptic and borderline useless. It’s a cartoonishly rendered version of the streets and buildings and took me about halfway through the game to decipher in any meaningful way. It was easier to just wander around until you found your way or happened upon the collectible you were looking for.

>> And here I must say that Concrete Genie has one of my least favorite gameplay mechanics — the chasing a collectible that is triggered to flee when you get near it and moves around randomly trying to get away. I understand that it makes sense within the game because the collectibles are pages with design ideas for your art and I guess pages fly around in the wind like that, but I just hate this sort of chasing stuff in a game. First of all it takes you on a wild goose chase through the map for a little while and you’re so busy running after it that you lose your bearings so when you finally do catch the blasted thing you’re lost as to where you are. After which your inner dialogue goes something like this: “Oh, let’s look at the map.... oh yeah, I forgot —that’s pretty useless. Guess I’m going to wander around for 10 minutes to find the area I was working on...”.
A lot of games have these super annoying object chases and it’s one of my least favorite gaming tasks. (See also: the pigeons in Marvel’s Spider-Man.)

A small comment on the motion controls — I typically dislike motion controls, yet I left the painting on this default control setting despite having the ability to change the movement of the brush to the right analog stick. I never really was annoyed at the motion aspect of the control set even though I thought I’d eventually go in and switch to the alternate controls but I never felt the need.

Technological Achievement
Whenever a game bucks convention to do something different than the status quo there is potential for technological hiccups. How does Concrete Genie run and stay true to what it wants to be? Well, the game performed admirably for 95% of my playthrough until one of the final cutscenes it froze and then black-screened, forcing a complete exit from the game. This followed with a prompt to do a report to Sony, which I did. I had to reload the game, do the final gameplay sequence again and watch the scene for a second time (about a 10 minute investment). Of course I held my breath in panic that either my save file was corrupted or I had hit a game breaking bug, but fortunately the game didn’t stutter the second time and I proceeded through the last cutscene to the ending where the completion trophy popped and the credits started rolling. Honestly that was the first time in a long time and many gaming hours that I have had a game freeze and kick me out like that. I was running the latest patch, which I think is 1.04.

>> Minor annoyance with that aside, what the game achieves technologically is quite amazing. The murals you draw, including the genies you create, are all saved and show up throughout the game including the cutscenes. We have all played games where you customize a character’s outfit or appearance and then conveniently during cutscenes the game reverts back to the default appearance. I understand the complexity of making individual user customized tweaks save into the game architecture so that a pre-rendered scene can play out, so I forgive most games for the shortcoming. But here in Concrete Genie we see a very individualized environment and actual genie characters you draw and create are saved into the game structure and are permanently part of the backdrop and gameplay. It’s really impressive stuff. Even at the game’s opening menu when you boot it up it displays at static screen of a scene somewhere in Danska and it has your murals and paintings contained in it.
A lot of the genies can end up looking the same but if you make yours look a little crazy, you’ll be able to recognize them showing up repeatedly throughout your playthrough, and I love that.
Despite my quibbles with the character and facial animations, I send kudos to Pixel Opus for what they achieved here.

Value
I know in the purest sense a review probably shouldn’t consider a game’s price into a review. But I’m not a professional reviewer and I feel like commenting on Concrete Genie without mentioning its affordable launch price would be omitting one of its positives. I feel $30 is a fair price for the amount of content here. Yes, it’s only about an 8 hour jaunt, but if you’re so inclined there are several more hours to explore for a few hidden collectible, some post game content, a solid photo mode, and a free paint mode to just wander around and paint the town at your own will and pleasure.
The game appears to not be selling well, so I suspect it’ll probably be $20 by Black Friday and then potentially even lower within 6 months. Or if you are on the fence, maybe this will be a PS Plus title eventually, but for the current price it’s a decent value.

Overall Impression
Even with its inconsistencies in graphics and animation, wonky imprecise controls, and relatively forgettable characters, Concrete Genie is a solid value. It’s worthy of your time because of the innovative things it does technically and artistically, and has a unique beauty in its presentation that sets it apart. You’ve really never played a game quite like it, so if you’re feeling adventurous or stuck in a rut with a long open world shooter, check it out.

My score would be ... about 6.5-7 out of 10.

@Th3solution Oh wow, that was a terrific write-up. I get what you mean about the character designs, but, personally, being a fan of that 'stop motion animation look,' I actually really dig the character designs. Less enthused by what I'm hearing about the controls, however.

You mentioned it controlling like a PS2 game, but really, it sort of seems like what a PS2 era game might look like if it was made for today's technology. Especially with regard to the weird theme (the PS2 was home to many strange and fascinating titles like this). I'll probably wait to get it until I actually have the time to give it the attention it deserves, but it's commanding more of my interest than most Sony-published titles this gen.

@Th3solution jaw dropping review Sol. Now I want concrete genie too.

These reviews are going in depth like the old magazines. 10/10.

@Ralizah Thanks! And yeah, I hope I didn’t come across too harsh on the character visuals and character movement and control. I mean, the game is a lower budget AA type of offering and has a little bit of the indie charm that is becoming more rare on PS4 lately. Perhaps that’s why it took some adjustment for me. I shouldn’t expect Ash to jump around with the dexterity of Aloy or climb and traverse with the accuracy of Nathan Drake. It’s just the Sony first party games have set the bar so high that it felt almost half-baked in comparison (when in actuality it’s more likely a conscious decision to just be a different style of game). But if you like the aesthetic and know going in that it’s not going to have the big budget lifelike graphics then you’ll probably be happy with it.

@themcnoisy Thanks, man. Being a Dreams fan, I think you’ll especially like it.

@Arugula Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I agree about the pleasant emotional impact, as I felt the same.
I’m tempted to go back for the last 3 or 4 trophies, but the fact that the collectible pages and genie moments that I have remaining are not highlighted on the map means that I’ll be hunting for a while. I looked up a collectible guide online and it was really overwhelming. Maybe some day. I’m sure all it would take is about 2 or 3 hours to finish off the platinum.
How do you feel about the stop-motion animation for the characters and the climbing and platforming?

@Th3solution Eh, that's where I'll disagree with you. You don't need a massive budget to achieve a satisfying level of control. Zero budget indies do it all of the time. There's no excuse for the game not having satisfying controls.

I do like the implementation of gyro, though. The DS4 has such a nice gyroscope in it, but the Playstation crowd in general is so closed-minded about any control scheme that's not pure dual-analog.

@Ralizah @Arugula Yeah, fair enough on the issue of controls. I can’t help but compare it to the last game I played which was Spider-Man and the traversal was quite a bit more fleshed out, to say the least 😂. But on a similar level, I was comparing CG in my mind to the only other Sony exclusive released at a budget price this gen I played — Ratchet & Clank, and that game handles buttery smooth by comparison.

@RogerRoger The first screenshot is actually mine! My first screen post! I had representative shots for some of the other graphics that I wanted to display but I didn’t get them ported over in time. But the messaging trick worked well for me that you mentioned. I’ll be using that for future screen shots.

Edit: Oops.. let me give credit where due — it was actually @JohnnyShoulder who mentioned the message app trick to get the pics transferred. Thanks man!
(The PS4 web browser was as useless as predicted to upload screenshots to an internet library)

All of my screenshots so far have been self-generated, but I probably won't have that luxury for systems like Wii/U, PS2, 3DS, etc. that don't have screenshot utilities.

@Th3solution I set up a twitter account specifically for screenshot transfers, and just use that.

I set up a twitter @Th3solution for uploading screenshots straight from the PS4 with pretty much no faffing about.

Never gonna touch the obnoxious site aside from embedding those piccys in the screenshot thread and review topic! 😅

As for the actual review it was a great read during my lunch break earlier and just re-read it again! 👍

I'll be choosing MediEvil as my budget priced Sony purchase when I get round to it... but Concrete Genie sounds very different from what I usually get and I'll probably bite at some point as it does look quite charming!

God of War will be my next budget Sony game when it inevitably goes on sale for $10 like HZD did I don't have a good feeling about it, but I'm willing to risk wasting $10 on a critically acclaimed game.

Or maybe Shadow of the Colossus. Or The Last Guardian. I have a lot of PS4 titles to catch up on.

@RogerRoger Cheers man, glad it helped someone!

My the forums been quite quiet today hasn't it @RogerRoger?

I like the VAST difference in our reviewing styles. Maybe mine are a touch too factual at times... I need to inject a bit more levity into mine lol

I... probably won't touch this game at all. Ever. But it was presented in such a way that, even if terribly generic, I was engrossed in reading it. Well done!

@RogerRoger Well done review, sir! I had been waiting to read your post until the end of my shift so I could give it the attention it deserved and it did not disappoint. The “World’s Worst Marine” level had me especially chuckling as I could visualize the whole debacle in my head. 😂
Thanks for the enjoyable read.

Or, in the parlance of the Push Square community:
Thank you for playing this so that now we don’t have to.

Ha ha well you know from the creative writing thread I started @RogerRoger (I should probably do something with that...) I'd like to hope I'm somewhat of a dab hand at fiction too.

But with these reviews, something clicks within me and I just go like a robot.

I guess it's probably cus I don't want to miss anything or give the wrong impression to people. By being factual about the mechanics and the likes... it's quite hard to give off the wrong impression that way

The important thing is to just embrace the approach that speaks most naturally to you, I think. There are drawbacks and benefits to every approach: Rog's style might be light on facts, but the emotional and subjective aspects of playing a game are just as important as analyses of the framerate, gameplay modes, etc. Particularly since he acknowledges and accounts for his own biases going in. He's also quite funny, which is its own virtue.

Foxy's approach has the benefit of often deep-diving into the design of these games. I gained a great deal of actual knowledge about how Jade Cocoon 2 operates, for example, just from reading her post on it. I also like the background information she incorporated into the Crash Bandicoot remastered review, since it gave me some grounding historical context for the product itself.

I expect people, myself included, will change things up and try different approaches if it seems fun or suits certain types of games better (my next two "reviews" will actually be radically different than usual, because I don't see a lot of point in going at them with my usual style). But I also expect they'll do what works out for them. And, @RogerRoger @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy you're both fabulous at doing what you've done, and continue to do. The only thing that matters is that you continue to authentically pour yourselves into your posts.

I'm not blushing @Ralizah... You're blushing! 😁

In all seriousness it was quite lovely to hear, thank you

The only reason Crash honestly got such a nice historical context about it is thanks to the game being a huge hit franchise and in turn the events leading up to it were well documented with some genuinely interesting facts coming out about it.

Jade Cocoon 1for example hasn't got a whole lot of info about it at all without sifting through a lot of stuff, probably even having to google translate some japanese and I'm a bit too lazy for that much effort.

Jade Cocoon 2 however had next to no info about it's development whatsoever!

Whilst most games now are quite well documented they don't usually have any interesting developmemt stories behind them unless they're more mid to low tier or maybe an exclusive.

Before settling on my current style the "little background info" bit was mostly just the game's plot before going into the pros and cons list like review.

@RogerRoger Brilliant review dude. I would say "thank you for playing this jank so I don't have to" but I've already played it in split screen on the 360, which was an interesting experience to say the least! 😂

Anyhoo, I have to agree with @Ralizah how great all the different styles of reviews we get here are. I like writing in the more emotive, descriptive style, focusing on elements that give me an emotional response. @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy's Crash review was excellent, too and very informative.

ZombiU on Wii U.
It is a survival horror game. Originally it was a Wii U exclusive, but disappointing sales figures meant that it was eventually ported to PC, Xbox One and PS4 as Zombi.

The game involves playing as a random survivor of the zombie apocalypse in the centre of London. You'll be guided by a mysterious character known as The Prepper, who'll watch you from the CCTV cameras as he'll offer guidance on survival. The story is fairly basic, mainly involving gathering supplies and investigating what's going on (instead of doing the obvious thing and trying to escape a densely populated city overrun with zombies).

The gameplay is first person, and involves exploring various areas while killing or evading any zombies in your way. There's plenty of back and forth between the different areas, but shortcuts and fast travel points can be unlocked to prevent the traversal from becoming tedious. The cricket bat is the primary weapon in this game, but there's a variety of weapons that can be used if you have enough ammo, such as pistols, shotguns, and crossbows. There's health packs and ammo to be found, but they are usually in short supply. The slow and careful approach is generally best in this game, taking your time to advance and gradually taking out zombies one at a time.

There are some cool London landmarks that will be visited during the course of the game, but mostly the game takes place in dark and gloomy streets, buildings and underground passageways. The flashlight will help you to see in the dark areas, but even that's risky. Zombies will be attracted by the light, so it's harder to stay hidden with the flashlight on.

There's a sort of permadeath in this, as if your character dies, then you'll start back at the safehouse again with a brand new random character, armed with only a cricket bat and a pistol with 6 bullets. It's likely the previous character will now be wandering around as a zombie near where they died, if you can defeat them then you can reclaim your items. Annoyingly, your past characters don't always show up (especially if you die multiple times), so you could lose any items they had. If any weapons are lost by this, then the weapons will generally respawn somewhere in the world, and your computer in the hideout can help find them. The permadeath system isn't as bad as it sounds, as unlocked shortcuts and fast travel can make it much quicker to get back to your previous location. Also, zombies don't usually respawn in areas that are directly related to your current objective, making it easier to get back to where you last died and continue with the story.

The real stars of the show though are the title characters, the zombies (or should that be zombis?). The zombies in this game look like actual people who have turned in zombies. They'll be wearing either standard civilian clothing or other uniform. Zombies move at a fairly slow pace, but they're still frightening and a deadly threat to the player character. The zombies in this game have a secret weapon that's common in zombie movies, but is rarely seen in other zombie games, and that is their bite. Zombies will do the standard swinging arms around thing and other attacks to reduce your health, but they'll also bite the player character if they get the opportunity to. If they bite you, then you've lost. Your character will turn into a zombie, and you'll start off in the safehouse again with a brand new character. Later on in the game, you'll get a syringe that'll offer some protection against the bite, but even then zombies will still be deadly.

Combat is alright, but can quickly get repetitive. There's a few different types of zombies to battle, but most of the enemies feel very similar. There's plenty of weapon types, but scarce ammo means that a lot of the combat will involve repeatedly hitting the zombies on the head with a cricket bat. Zombies don't work as a group, so often it'll be easy to lure zombies towards you one by one (they're attracted by your flashlight), and take them down individually. Battling a single zombie with your cricket bat is easy enough, it's only with multiple enemies attacking at once when things get tense. One annoying thing is explosive zombies, who have a canister on their back that explodes when hit. In the game's dark and gloomy environments, there's been a few times where I've swung the cricket bat at them, only realising that they're explosive zombies when it's too late. Losing in those situations feels cheap and frustrating. Occasionally zombies can seem to come out of nowhere when you're making progress on your current objective, while that is frightening but also feels a bit cheap.

Gameplay makes extensive use of the Wii U touchpad. If you've found and hacked the CCTV control panel in the current area, then its map will be shown on the touchpad. The touchpad also has a scanner mode, which let's the player use the gyroscopic controls to look around and analyse nearby objects or creatures. The gamepad is also used for inventory management, and allowing you to quickly switch between equipped items and weapons. It's also used for some tedious tasks, such as tapping on the screen a few times to remove a barricade from the door.

The gamepad also has a radar, which shows a red blip for any moving nearby creatures. That's very useful for detecting nearby zombies, but it's not foolproof. The red blip could just be a harmless bird or rat moving, and the radar won't detect any stationary zombies. So while it's helpful, there's still a lot of tension because you can't be sure of what the radar is showing or not showing.

The game carries on while you're looking at the gamepad, so it can be easy to miss a zombie moving towards you on the big screen while you're looking down and browsing your items. This does a good job at adding tension, as your character is exposed while the player is looking down and using the gamepad features.

There are some social elements to this game. Messages can be left on the walls (consisting of a few symbols from a selection of symbols), which can be used to warn other players of zombies and tell them of any useful items. Messages can be marked as "Don't Trust" if they're misleading, which helps reduce the potential for misuse. Other player characters who have died and turned into zombies will occasionally appear in your game, and you can kill those zombies and take whatever items they had. Similarly your dead characters can occasionally appear as zombies in other player's games, and a message will pop in the corner of the screen when another player kills your zombie.

One other issue with this game is the loading times (I'm playing the disk version if that makes a difference). They're long enough and frequent enough to be annoying. It's especially noticeable when you're try to open a door to another area, where you'll have to wait around for a while before it opens.

So overall, it's a decent enough survival horror game. It has a good amount of tension due to the zombies, dark environments, permadeath, and from having to occasionally look down at the Wii U gamepad while looking away from the main screen. However, the combat can get repetitive, and a lot of the dark and gloomy locations can be dull.

Overall score: 7/10