brutalbacklogreviews

[brutalbacklogreviews]

Basically how this blog will work is, I'll play games like normal only I'll note down everything that's particularly good or bad while playing. I probably won't end up reviewing game's I've already cleared as they won't be fresh in my memory. If anyone has recommendations for what I should review, let me know! I would prefer smaller, shorter, cheaper games. I have a Nintendo Switch, which is my main console, though I also have a PS4 (which I got recently and is basically just my Until Dawn machine) and a PC that should be able to run most games (including hopefully 360/PS3 era games?)

But yeah, this blog's essentially just a way for me to get through my absolutely massive backlog instead of just playing Splatoon 3 for the umpteenth time. Plus it'll hopefully lessen the blow of paying for a bad game if I know I'll be shitting on the game online afterwards. I do plan on reviewing stuff I actually like, though! And I try to see the good in even the worst games.

[brutalbacklogreviews]

Rainswept (2019) Review

Bottom line: This game is barely even worth thinking about. 1/10

Rainswept, published by Frostwood Interactive in 2019, is a "character-driven murder mystery game" in which you can't form any meaningful attachments to the characters, and which has a disappointing and bland mystery that the player has no hand in solving. I played the Nintendo Switch version.

Writing

As a mystery game, the writing is arguably the most important aspect of the game. The writing is also easily the worst aspect of Rainswept. The game is riddled with grammatical errors, missing punctuation, misspellings, misused sayings etc., making it very clear that no effort was put into proof-reading or editing. in fact, I would be extremely surprised if someone fluent in English even looked at the game before it was released in English. I couldn't enjoy the narrative at all due to the lack of care put into the actual writing.

The characters and relationships in the game are painfully bland. The protagonist is vaguely interesting due to his PTSD, but every character he interacts with feels like a prop to move the mystery or his journey of self-forgiveness along. We're told that he is becoming more friendly with members of the community, but we don't see any of this despite spending all of his investigation with him. We also see flashbacks from the perspective of one of the "murder" victims/possible perpetrator, Chris, which chronicle his relationship with his fellow victim and girlfriend Diane. Their relationship is completely unrealistic, they have zero chemistry and it's very difficult to empathise with them until the final few scenes with them. For a "character-driven" game, the audience doesn't even get the chance to like any of these characters.

The game utterly fails as a murder mystery. The player isn't given any relevant information until a few minutes before the killer is unveiled, and has no agency in the unveiling. It is a very linear experience, with the illusion of choice barely maintained by letting the player carry out their daily chores in whichever order they please. The player has no impact on the narrative, there is no fail-state as the game solves the mystery for you. Rainswept feels less like a mystery video game and more like a badly-written murder mystery novel that you'd skip to the last chapter of just to get it over with. It is clear that the narrative cares more about the detective's mental health journey than the murder mystery, and the mystery is barely enjoyable or even functional due to this.

Gameplay

Rainswept plays like a modern point-and-click adventure game. Most of the game is spent walking around a 2D plane speaking to NPCs and asking them questions, while occasionally investigating objects. The dialogue sections don't allow the use of the directional buttons, forcing the player to use the imprecise joystick to choose dialogue options. Outside of conversation, the game is a chore to play. The game doesn't tell the player that there's a run button (ZR, R2 etc.) despite it being sorely needed. Even with the run button, the gameplay just feels like busywork. A fast-travel option would've been greatly appreciated here. The game also features about 3 classic point-and-click-esque busywork fetch-quests. These feel completely out of place and serve no purpose other than padding gameplay time.

The game's performance leaves a lot to be desired, at least on the Switch. Loading screens are quite long and occur very often considering the game's limited locations and simple presentation. The screen often flashes bright white after loading, which is very jarring. I also ran into a bug where I couldn't move after dialogue, and had to replay about 5 minutes of conversation as there is no manual save or skip text option. Pressing the X button allows the player to see every object or person that can be interacted with... as well as everything that could have been interacted with at any point. If a character had been standing in a certain location, the interact icon will remain in that spot for the rest of the game, even if there's nothing there, which makes investigation quite confusing at times.

Presentation

The game is visually heavily inspired by Night in the Woods, and it's as if the artist/s just lifted certain elements of NitW's art style without understanding why they worked. The style is very simple, both backgrounds and characters having little detail, and would've looked much better if the colour schemes were also less realistic, a more vivid and stylised colour scheme may have suited the art style more. Another element lifted from NitW are the dialogue boxes, black with coloured text to show who's speaking. Rainswept completely misuses these, however, as there seems to only be 3, maybe 4 dialogue colours shared between the cast. This makes it very difficult to keep track of who's talking in situations where two characters have the same text colour. It's clear here that the developers just wanted the visual flair while ignoring the utility of this aspect of NitW's visual style.

The animations in this game are simple yet poorly executed. Characters often teleport between animations, sometimes even teleporting to a different location in the scene completely. Walking and running animations make characters look like eggs balancing on sticks for legs. The animation just adds nothing to the game.

The character models are very simple, with their only facial feature being their eyes. This works for most of the game, however there are a couple of instances, which are intended to be more emotional, that feature close-ups of the character's faces with the most terrifyingly hilarious eyes imaginable, or just with the game's laughably poor animation. The ugliness of the characters in these scenes completely ruins any potential for an emotional response, for instance I found myself laughing during the flashback to the murder/-suicide.

The game features pretty good music for the most part, however there is a single track that feels completely inappropriate and out-of-place whenever it appears. Throughout the game, the protagonist has distressing dreams, which are undercut by a fun and upbeat vocal track that doesn't fit in the slightest. Otherwise the music usually fits well with the game, nothing to write home about but no complaints.

Conclusion

This game has "very positive" reviews on Steam right now, which may sway people, but this game is truly awful. The story is boring, the mystery is basically non-existent, and the visuals are so bad at points that they completely ruin any possibility the game has at eliciting an emotional response in the audience. The game suffers from a very clear lack of care, likely from the publishers, while the developers leaned a bit too hard on their inspirations and forgot to make something original that can stand on its own merits. This game is a complete waste of time and truly isn't worth investing your time or money in.