Gris: This isn't a game, it is a work of art
I haven't completely moved on from Path of Exile 2 but I got kind of frustrated with running around in circles hoping for a drop and trying to level up. I realize that this is exactly how these games function but I needed a break. I pulled down some random game from the PS-Plus network that the trailer looked pretty cool for. The name of the "game" is Gris and so far it has been quite the experience that is difficult to compare to many other games I have played.
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I don't know the story of what is going on in Gris and I don't think you are actually supposed to know. You simply fire the game up and you are a girl/woman sitting in some gigantic stone hands of a statue singing, then something happens, you lose your voice and go crashing to the ground. There are no words put on screen explaining what this is all about and in a way, this is actually really good. It is up to you to interpret what this strange world is and what your part in it is.
Controls are very limited but they expand as you move on with various simple puzzles that eventually will expand the abilities that you have but they are few and far between.
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The levels that you face, or at least the ones that I have faced thus far at 50% completion, are quite simple but this doesn't take away from the fact that the visuals as well as the music are very unique, very impressive, and blend together in a way that made me feel as though I was playing art rather than a game.
Also, you can't really "die" as far as I have seen and I don't think you are ever meant to. There are certain things that will stand in your way that you will not be able to pass without figuring out what the tricks are and all of the tricks have been quite evident thus far and also incredibly creative.
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now before we get ahead of ourselves I want to explain that despite this beauty and wonderful integration of sound and music into the game, that doesn't necessarily mean that this is a great game. It is something that I enjoy as a winding-down of sorts from playing something far more intense, such as POE2 for example. Gris has been described as "wonderfully beautiful..... and boring" and I can totally understand why people would come to that conclusion.
Quite often in the game there are vast swaths of nothingness that you are forced to cross over and there really isn't any particularly good reason why that needs to be the case. Perhaps the artists behind this wanted to instill in the player as sense of the world that you inhabit being a vast wasteland and it is your duty to restore it. Again, there is no story so it is largely up to the player to decide what the heck is actually going on here.
This is casual gaming at its pinnacle because unless something kind of crazy happens in the latter 50% of the game that I haven't yet completed, this game is extremely simple and easy to get through. I finished 50% of the game in an hour as well. So yeah, this isn't going to appeal to everyone.
If that trailer doesn't tell you a whole helluva lot about the game, well I think that is intentional. For me this game was a great sort of break from intense gaming but for only a few hours or so, or so it would appear. I occasionally enjoy games where it is left up to you to create your own version of the story and there are not many games that are able to pull this off while still being playable. This is very playable and was never intended to be difficult. So if you have a PS-Plus membership I think that you should go ahead and download this one seeing as how you don't have to pay extra for it anyway.
I've enjoyed it thus far but will admit that my thumb has gotten tired a few times from simply running to the left or right for very long periods of time.
For the right person this will be a great distraction from far more difficult and hardcore games because you can really just jump right in with this one and with almost zero direction given, figure it out.