Pentiment review | Xbox Series X|S14/11/2022  The phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword” may never have been a more apt phrase than in the world of Pentiment. In this text, or rather written serif script-based adventure, you will be challenged to embody the mind of an artist through his life in the fictional German town of Tassing, as he takes it upon himself to help solve a mysterious murder.
 Fortunately, if you do find the old-fashioned text hard to read, there is an option to simplify it, though it would be a shame to miss out on the characterisations you can feel through the way the lettering is presented alone. It turns out finding a murder suspect isn’t so easy, and you can only really complete one investigative task at each point of the day before you’re moved on to a meal or off to bed. Sometimes a single dialogue choice can have major consequences later, sometimes years down the line as time marches on through the story. Pentiment is both approachable and engaging, very much a narrative adventure rather than a complex, sprawling one, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s simple... The biggest frustration we found was realising only in retrospect that we’d missed an opportunity when we are greeted with the text “this will be remembered” after making a, often quite difficult, choice. What it does mean though is that in almost every interaction you feel as though you have to keep your wits about you, even though generally you can see the spectrum of opinion on an issue or the variety in harshness of a response by a consistent use of dialogue presentation.  Sometimes choices will be accompanied by a symbol, relating to an element of Andreas’ background or skills, which at times can prove to be a great way to take a conversation into a unique direction, at others it is a shortcut to aggravating other characters and even causing you to fail decision-based crucial moments, where you’ll see how your choices stack up on screen to have characters either help you or shut you out. Quickly you learn to be careful with the passage of time, to avoid missing opportunities to press people further, but you’re well into the game before you really feel like you’re really getting the hang of it. When you finally do reach the point where you’re making accusations, it’s hard to feel confident that you truly have all the facts, or that there aren’t still more suspects to be uncovered.  Still, the challenge keeps you invested all the way through, and through dream sequences you even get to examine the psyche of your heroic artist by speaking to different elements of his subconscious, as well as vague memories of his home life, which he tends not to talk too much about.
Pentiment is both approachable and engaging, very much a narrative adventure rather than a complex, sprawling one, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s simple. The layers of stories here are tightly woven, and it will take a fair few playthroughs to convince you you’ve explored every avenue of the tale. There’s certainly not a game like it, and with it free on Game Pass from day one, it feels like an experience that every Xbox owner should at least give a try. Pros
Cons
9/10 As Dusk Falls review | Xbox Series X|S18/7/2022  When a game lives and dies on its characters and story, both need to grab you and pull you into its world. In As Dusk Falls, the adventure's first action beat is a group of brothers breaking into a house, and straight away you're challenged by the near impossible – to remember a single four-digit code.
 So who are the characters? First up is Zoe, who, rather than swimming at the pool, has taken to holding her breath underwater for as long as possible. After meeting her, complete with a chilling monologue, we immediately jump back to 1998, where Zoe is now just a youngster, on a road trip across Arizona with family, for her dad Vince's new job. The other main protagonist is Jay, one of those brothers doing a bit of breaking and entering. You can tell from the get-go his heart isn't really in it, and even though he's arguably the character that gets the most play, we found it the most difficult to sympathise or side with him. Multiplayer can lead to some interesting conversations, even creating deadlocks in decisions you can break by overriding the other players' choices... The gameplay involves timed dialogue options and simple quick time events, which can be taken on solo or by up to eight people, either locally, online or both, even joining in with their smartphone. There's even a streamer mode to open the decision-making to an audience. Multiplayer can lead to some interesting conversations, even creating deadlocks in decisions you can break by overriding the other players' choices, though this only comes into play at key decision-making “outcome” choices, which require all players to agree.  The music in the game combines a country road-friendly soundtrack with licensed songs, in particular a very effective use of Johnny case to accompany the drama as you close the first book. Otherwise, audio cues, force feedback and visual distortion play into the experience throughout, indicating when you need to act and when you need to sit back and take in the narrative. The story itself is a fairly simple series of events, connected by a lot of layers of the characters. At times you can find yourself with no good option out of a situation, for example, you might be in an altercation with two other characters and need to side with one or the other, when you feel as though the character would choose neither and just leave. Tension and suspense are racked up whenever you are forced into the aforementioned “outcome” decision points, which, fortunately, have no time limit, giving you that chance to think, or discuss, if you’re playing with others.  Depending on specific choices, you could find entire threads are closed off to you for the remainder of the game, which is why it feels sensible the team have only put together two books here to begin with, rather than three, which might feel like a more natural fit, as they only have to work out two sprawling, interconnected stories rather than three. It does leave questions hanging though. The way book two closes clearly begs for another, leading us to conclude the success of As Dusk Falls will dictate whether something like As Dawn Rises will follow. Structurally, how consistently you answer questions can lead to your characters’ behaviour being believable or a bit erratic. Of course, humans are imperfect and can be illogical and unpredictable, but when your choice is a single response which could end a marriage (if the post-chapter summary is anything to go by), it can feel a little arbitrary.  In the end, As Dusk Falls is a well thought-through story with some compelling moments, but exploring it with others might be what makes the game truly memorable. The performances are strong and just about avoid feeling like stereotypes, but limited options mean you can’t always make the characters act as you might in the same situation.
Given that it’s available day one on Game Pass, you’d be silly not to give this a try – especially since it will run just fine on Xbox One as well – and you’re looking at a fairly self-containing six-hour experience, with the potential for repeat plays to discover just how differently things might have gone. For some, it might be the perfect first page to explore this sort of game, while for others, particularly wondering what happens next, you could be left wanting more. Pros
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8/10 Code provided by Xbox. |
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