The Game Pass Gambols is my chronicle of attempting to at least sample every game released on Game Pass in 2022.
Game: The Pedestrian
Game Type: Puzzle Platformer
Time Played: Approximately 4 hours.
Completion level: Rolled credits/all achievements.
Approachability: Very high. Intuitive controls and no objectionable content.
Should You Try It?: Sure, why not?
It’s appropriate that the first entry in my Game Pass Gambols starts with a bit of a pleasant stroll.
The Pedestrian is a simple puzzle platformer with a polished presentation. The credits indicate that the game took six years to make and it seems almost cruel to boil down that much effort and iteration into one simple sentence, but the game itself is simple and direct. You control a little pedestrian icon, the kind you might see on a pedestrian traffic signal at an intersection, and travel through connected 2D areas within a 3D environment. These start out looking like simple traffic signs but take a few forms through the game, including video screens at various points. Your little figure can pick up a few items, push boxes, throw switches, jump, and fall through certain platforms. That’s basically it. In addition you have the ability to zoom out of the 2D play area a bit and use a cursor to interact with the connected 2D spaces. You can connect doors and ladders to their appropriate counterparts (an up ladder in one area can be connected to a down ladder in another, and the same for left and right facing doors) allowing you to traverse between the play areas. Once you have traversed one of these connections you cannot sever it or you will reset the 2D playfields. You can also rearrange the 2D playfields (with a few exceptions) which is necessary because for the connections to work they must be oriented appropriately (e.g. to go up a ladder into a new playfield your current playfield must be below the one you want to ascend to.) Once you have traversed a connection you can move the pieces so it is no longer valid and you cannot traverse it again, but as long as you do not sever the connection the puzzle elements will not reset and you can reposition the pieces again to make the connection valid and re-open it.
This combination of simple puzzle platforming and 2D piece rearrangement forms the backbone of the gameplay in The Pedestrian. As you move between the 2D pieces you also move within the 3D environment and your goal for each level is to find a component for a Gameboy-like portable gaming machine and then make your way to a subway car or elevator where you input a code and move to the next level. This is supposed to somewhat mirror the concept of being a “pedestrian” like your icon but the game’s camera swoops and flies in ways no human can. This is not really going for a walk or commuting unless you’re Superman.
Sometimes you can directly affect the 3D environment in ways that interact with the 2D play area/puzzle pieces. For example you might connect an electrical wire that causes a gate in the 3D environment to open, allowing you to move a 2D puzzle piece out of the area it was trapped and reposition it so you can create a valid connection and get at the switch or item within it. Other than those limited interactions the 3D environment acts mostly like a pleasant background to the actual play areas and almost reminds me of old puzzle games from the 90s that might have animated backgrounds to the sides of the play field, or like The Tetris Effect with its trippy visuals outside the playfield (though obviously this is not in VR, at least on Xbox.)
I think The Pedestrian is a very competent puzzle platformer. It’s quite visually polished, it manages to introduce new mechanics every level that keep things relatively fresh, it has a wonderfully pleasant soundtrack and it’s paced pretty well so you never feel like it’s repeating itself too much. It even pays off the 3D environment gimmick well on the final level in a sequence I will not spoil here. There were a few puzzles that took me a good amount of time to figure out but everything felt fair and I didn’t end up having to look anything up. When I finally got to the solution of a tough puzzle my reaction was generally “that’s clever” rather than “that’s annoying,” which is exactly the reaction a good puzzle game should provoke. My main complaint about The Pedestrian is that it can sometimes be tedious to have to move all the pieces around to set a solution back up if you make a mistake and have to restart the puzzle, especially on controller, even though the controller cursor controls are excellent as these things go. On PC using a mouse it would be a little less tedious but there’s still a fair amount of repetition and it can take a long time to try a new iteration of a solution if you’re not sure what order the links need to be in etc…
But my biggest actual complaint about The Pedestrian is just that it’s a puzzle platformer, and a pretty vanilla one at that. I’m not sure how fair it is to penalize a game for just being another good example of an overstuffed genre. The developers clearly had a specific vision when they made this and they executed it about as well as they could have, though the final twist could have lasted longer and iterated a little more fully on its ideas. There are clearly a contingent of people out there who absolutely love puzzle platformers, and this is a more polished than usual version of that formula. But it doesn’t do anything spectacular or new, and though I enjoy the genre I couldn’t help but feel like I was, ironically, treading old ground with a fresh visual presentation painted over some rather creaky mechanics. I enjoyed my time with it well enough to finish the relatively short game, but it was just a pleasant diversion. I usually ramble on at length in my blogs/reviews but it’s hard to come up with anything interesting to say about this game. It’s bland but well made. Like a good bowl of oatmeal or tomato soup.
This is the kind of game that is often termed “perfect for Game Pass” but for me that term means something other than “a competent game that I’m glad I didn’t pay full price for.” I like when Game Pass games give me something new or weird, even if it’s not as polished or playable as something like this. I’m not saying there’s no room for these kinds of games on the service, of course. There are lots of people who aren’t as burned out on puzzle platformers as I am, and I could see this being a hit for families who can work on the puzzles together and would appreciate how pleasant and child-friendly the presentation is. I think the tougher puzzles would frustrate kids, though, and the presentation is definitely adult oriented in that it’s somewhat muted and subdued and emulates a walk through various city locations rather than being full of colorful characters and the like.
I like The Pedestrian fine and would recommend anyone interested to check it out. If nothing else the slick presentation of the 2D playfields in the 3D space is worth seeing some of. I would not term this a must-play though, and if you play a lot of games you might find yourself a little bit bored. That’s no fault of the devs, but there are only so many times you can do the same things in similar games before it all starts to feel a bit…pedestrian.
GAME PASS GAMBOLS RATING (out of 5):
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