What Remains Of Edith Finch (2017)
What Remains Of Edith Finch is an interesting “walking Simulator” type of game, it has some really fun little pieces of storytelling, which are more enjoyable than the entire game is bad, but it just doesn’t seem to really stick with you after it is finished. It’s a game that just kinda ends, and then that’s it, no real point. No real memories of fondness or a “oh that’s really cool” type of things that stand out particularly. It’s more of a “Yeah, I played and finished it’ and that’s all you can really say. It’s very melancholy more than anything else.
I played Edith Finch in two sittings. The first one was only after about 20 or so mins. I stopped because I just finished the first real story, where your character reads/talks about the death of one of the family members and you read her journal and act it out in your mind. You take control of a cat and catch a bird while climbing trees…. It’s weird. Which is what this game totally is. Then I picked it up, because I knew I was already a decent chunk through the game and just wanted to finish it.
So I picked it up about a month later after being away for a few weeks and was excited to finish it at least. So I started playing and got feelings of “Gone Home” and other walking simulators. The walking was just too slow for it to be enjoyable. Yes you are in a house that doesn’t have a TON of places to go, but it still takes too long. The narration is great, but you often end up at a place and need to wait for the narration to finish up before going forward. It’s not too bad, but it does happen a few times.
The way they tie in the different styles of gameplay, like the movie stars death, into a comic book adaptation that you actually play though in the style of panel by panel cells are really really cool (actually my favorite part of the game) Others like flying a kite, taking control of a drugged up teen going about his job and encountering Highway Hypnosis… It’s really a cool story telling device.
Edith Finch’s story about the curse and subsequent death of the Finch family is a fun little 2 hour game where you explore at a slow pace, but once it’s done, it’s just kinda done. No reason to ever go back and play it again. It would have benefited greatly by a VR mode where you can explore it and also pick things up. It’s a decent game, but only worth about $10. I usually like these games more than most, but this one just have a eerie feeling associated with it, where I didn’t really feel good while playing it. I wanted it over more than I wanted to keep playing. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like it could have been a bit more upbeat. Play it if you like these types of games, it’s one of the better ones, but not some of the best.