Oxenfree

[radiofloyd]

Oxenfree was released way back in January which I guess makes it a retro title by today's standards. I don't know about the PS4 or Xbox One but it's currently heavily discounted on Steam so now is as good a time to pick it up as any. As it turns out, I already own it. It looks like this.

 

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/388880/ss_aae01eea5fc489c7fbb20c2e92440c1cf92f4e83.600x338.jpg?t=1465496144

 

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/388880/ss_75af452f6e7f6c5dc1ada4f001abcccac6c57db7.600x338.jpg?t=1465496144

 

I just played it for sixteen minutes so I can give you sixteen minutes worth of impressions. So far it's been a pleasant side-scrolling walk and talk simulator. Not a million miles from Life is Strange if Life is Strange was side-scrolling. The conversations so far have been kind of typical preppy American teenage stuff. At the beginning of the game the characters are heading to some kind of after dark party on an island. The main point I'd like to make is that the game has a really good electronic soundtrack. The art style has a bit of Kentucky Route Zero.

[DANGERMAN]

bought this myself today because it was cheap on Steam, hopefully I'll get a chance to play it this week

[DisturbedSwan]

Yeah I bought it too, looks interesting, doubt I'll get time to play it until the new year at least though.

[radiofloyd]

Played this for another half an hour, I really like it. I like the jazz music that you can tune in on the radio.

[radiofloyd]

Finished this. Took me 5.3 hours at my snail's pace. I hope nobody bought it on the strength of my recommendation, it's really not very good. It's interesting for an hour or two but it quickly becomes tedious. I said that it has a good electronic soundtrack - it doesn't, a lot of the time the background is just static, but the audio is one of the better elements of the game, especially the snatches of random music and dialogue you can tune in on the radio. It's an interesting idea, and I like this concept for a game (walking along, having conversations) and it's definitely something a bit different, but the gameplay itself is tedious and the story is not interesting. And the dialogue is just awful. A large chunk of it anyway. I'm surprised it has a Very Positive rating on steam. I'd give it a 5 or a 6 out of 10.

[DANGERMAN]

It got a load of praise from some of the big American sites when it was released, I'll blame them if its shit

[retroed]

I didn't think much of Oxenfree. I only finished it because it wasn't very long. I concur with @radiofloyd. 

[Whiskey_chaser]

Picked this up for £3.99 on the Switch and i'm enjoying it so far. I'm probably about two hours in? It seems quite well written - I'm enjoying the dialogue choices and the whole step brother dynamic going on. Also -  fuck Clarissa. Bitch.

[retroed]

I bought it again in the sale despite not being a huge fan of it back in October '16. I think it might have been a case of just me playing it at a bad time, so I'm definitely going to go through it again at some point. 

[Whiskey_chaser]

It's giving me very similar vibes to Dark on Netflix. Probably why i'm enjoying it so much.

[Nag]

I got it free with GwG... I have every intention of giving it a go but reasons.

[Maryokutai]

Weird how negative this topic is, this was one of my favourite games from last gen. Decided to replay it before going into the second one because I couldn't remember some of its story beats and I think the flowing dialogue in this is still just as impressive as it was when it came out. Can't even think of a game that managed to better it since then. Dustborn tried but didn't quite get there and most other choice-driven games still have 'turn-based' dialogue like in old BioWare titles.

 

IIRC there's a bit of tedious backtracking towards the end but so far I'm enjoying it as much as I did on release.

[DANGERMAN]

I never did get around to it. I did boot it up but I wasn't in the mood so probably didn't even get to the first save. Maybe one day 

[mfnick]

💩

 

Sorry just didn’t think much to this at all. It did amazingly well critically though so just wasn’t for me I guess. 

[Maryokutai]

I'm just a bit surprised considering the consensus, though I can see that maybe the popularity of Stranger Things at the time consequently also gave this game a boost. And people getting to it later maybe being affected by too highly set expectations.

[Maf]

I played this back on Xbox One. I didn’t hate it but I’ve also never thought about it a single time except right now. All I remember is getting stuck in a shack at the north part of the island and running around finding radio frequencies 

 

My memory is the game is just kind of ok 

[Maryokutai]

Beat it a few days ago. I forgot how much 4th wall breaking meta-narrative was built for this game, including webpages, videoclips etc. Went to look into some theorycrafting from fans and it's kind of cool what people unearthed, especially as I don't normally get into this aspect at all. The game itself kind of wants you to play through it multiple times, but I don't think the actual playing part is good enough for that and it would probably sour my experience rather than elevate it, despite it unlocking new dialogue.

 

Will be interesting to see how the sequel works and if it expects you to do all that homework or if it's nuanced enough to also be interesting for people with only face-value knowledge of the original (even though I consider myself somewhere in between now).