Vibrant environments may make this a fun game to look at yet the rest of the experence didn't live up to the visuals
This might just be my greatest review challenge yet. Most of my reviews come down to either liking the narrative or enjoying the gameplay. With Abzu neither of those factors are a big reason why I liked this aquatic adventure. I can even sum up the narrative in one sentence. A lone scuba diver wakes from what seems like a long slumber and must travel through the ocean to seek out magical life portals to bring back life to the ocean.
Since the main gameplay loop is just swimming through a ocean it could be a bit boring if this wasn’t such a short adventure. Which just leaves the fact that each zone you’ll be swimming through looks beautiful. A mostly relaxing romp through a differently colored underwater paradise is most of the game. Sometimes the area the swimmer is in turns into a auto scrolling linear path that quickly shows off some neat looking spectacles. Other than those sections most areas are just big zones that you swim around occasionally pushing a button or just looking at some fish as you continue down the path.
So they successfully made a great looking game with a vibrant graphical style that kept me interested enough to see this through to the end. Yet the parts that weren’t just a relaxing romp through a ocean kinda fell flat for me. The emotional moments they decided to include felt pointless and they never really made me feel like I was slowly earning the trust of the Shark. Plus the one minor mystery that ends up being revealed never gets resolved but I guess that wasn’t what this game was about in the first place.
Moments like the vague one I just mentioned kept making me think of Journey. Hard to not compare to two since it is obvious that is what Giant Squid was trying to recreate. Yet that comparison isn’t flattering at all since I don’t think Abzu managed to hit any high notes that Journey managed to make me feel other than the art style. Even the collectibles felt pointless this time with the shells doing nothing to aid the player other than it had to have collectibles because it is a video game apparently. With me being so down on most of the elements that make up Abzu it makes it really hard to recommend. In the end I just can’t say this was a game worth playing.
