Quick Look: Unravel

The negativity in this Quick Look is baffling. The game looks fine, and it was pretty obvious where most of the issues were coming from. Needing to be told that that you had to control the kite? "Shimmying" on the logs for fifteen minutes before even trying to just stand on one side? This was infuriating to watch.

Game looks cool, though. I'll probably pick it up.

Game's hella adorable!

The physics in this remind me of Trine.

So much fun watching Brad flounder on puzzles my 6-year-old aced on her first run through. I love Brad.

Game looks cool to me. Drew didn't seem to give it a chance perhaps because Brad voiced his disdain for it from the jump. I'll give it shot for sure.

That music sounds super irritating after about five minutes.

Also Brad isn't an expert at the game so I'm going to moan about it.

Trying not to be negative here but can we stop giving puzzle games to Brad for Quick Looks. Having seen JUST this video i was already miles ahead on how the mechanics work in this game. Numerous times in this video I could see what was supposed to be happening while hearing "this doesnt work very well" when it was clear you didnt get the mechanics, from waggling back and forth on a stick to move it in water (which you finally got near the end and didnt mention your mistake) to "it feels bad/wrong" to your correct solving of the door puzzle it just gives what seems an unfair impression to any one just casually viewing this video. Those of us (just look at all the comments) that actually pay attention to what the game is subtly teaching and overtly telling you to do can see its a sweet all be it fairly simple puzzle game that just got negged all over by Brads inability to let the game speak for its self

Just one guys opinion of course and love 99% of the content (been a gold sub since it was possible to be one) but really hate seeing these kind of videos that kinda give the site a bad look

I can't wait to return to Yharnam. Oh, wait...

This seems like a fun little game.

zzz

This game is chillin me out man.

another case of bard faulting a game because he dont understand how games work

Music is totally Braid-esque. A very pretty but potentially shallow puzzle game.

This reminds me a LOT of Limbo, a game Brad gave 5 stars, has similar physics-based puzzles, and was also starkly beautiful albeit in a different way. I guess a lot can change in 6 years.

I definitely want to pick this game up.

Kinda reminds me of Toki Tori 2, only with physics.

PS4: Your home for arts and farts

I don't think anyone expects him to be an expert. He just comes off as negative/dismissive when he hasn't fully grasped the mechanics. Seems unfair to the game.

Testify. It's too bad 99% of this almost universal feedback will probably just be dismissed.

The Swedish is strong in this game

@dougfunk15: invariably Brad gets the most shit for it when everyone else does it too. Vinny fucks up in a game and everyone laughs. Bit unfair, no?

@ripelivejam I personally don't laugh when Vinny goes buckwild and goofs around in games. I don't mind if Brad or anyone on staff criticizes a game if they have legitimate valid complaints.

Knocking Unravel for not having a tutorial or explicit directions that pressing Up/Down on the controller will move the kite Up/Down? Come on, man. He's a great writer, but I regularly find his complaints about games to be unfounded. To each their own.

This is a Brad-ass Brad quick look.

@silenceuk: I think what isn't shown on the video is how an individual (in this case Brad) feels a game is reacting to their input. Because for example, all it takes is the kite being a bit slow to react for you to feel like your attempts to use up/down to move it do nothing. It's the disconnect from the controls that comes from purely watching a game, "I don't know why X had so many problems, I could totally do that it looks EASY" is another result of this. (and we all get that when we see someone fail a challenge a few times.)

When you're playing a game you can attempt something and feel like it's failed, when in fact you haven't pushed it far enough or attempted hard enough/long enough. It's happened to me once or twice in the past and it comes up in quick looks sometimes "Hey dude, I have no idea why that didn't work before, I swear I tried that at the beginning" etc especially in puzzle platformers. The need to keep the video chugging along seems to make it happen more often in quicklooks etc, and all it could take is a second or so more for the attempt to actually work, but when you're playing video games for site content do you double check everything? Or do you push forwards? Because we'd have just as many complaints of "It didn't work the first time, why would it work the second time?" if people spent more time on each potential solution.

It's a hard thing to solve, and honestly I don't think handing a genre of games over to someone else would do it, you'd just have a 'grace period' where people are more forgiving to someone because they're the new puzzle game expert. Then after they had 6 months of the same mistakes/situations under their belt (because every puzzle-game based video has at least one of those points where people get stuck.) there'd be more calls to hand it over to another person, and there always will be, because it's not so much a problem with an individual as it is with watching someone solve a puzzle. Either you take Patrick's approach to the Klepocalypse etc, and take it slow so you just keep running it over and over with minor variations to exhaust the possible solutions, or you just have a go and try to move on a bit faster (which for a quicklook setup is probably the better way to go).

That being said, it's obviously fine to feel frustrated with someone's method, but seeing if you can actually pick apart why that frustration exists is an awful lot more constructive than just pointing it out.