Arise: A Simple Story

Short, sad and sweet at the same time, decent difficulty for the puzzles, a platformer you have to play trough at least once. make sure you have a decent controller to enjoy it even more.

The title of the game is very fitting, it is indeed a simple story and an emotional one on top of that. It is nothing ground breaking that will blow up your mind, just a man reliving his past, the highs and the lows. The story is accompanied by lovely visuals and nice music. The game is short, it took us around 4/5 hours to beat main story, then additional 2/3 to get all the achievements. It is not a game that should be played fast, just relax and get immersed in the story. The main gimmick of the game is time manipulation, you can stop, forward and reverse time, and I think it is utilized good. The controls are fine, main issue I have is camera, sometimes the perspective can be confusing and you will miss the jump. Air controls during jump also are not the greatest, if you jump in given direction it's really hard to stop and often you can overshoot. It's not a big issue, you can easily adjust your gameplay, but one thing that some people might find annoying. Co-op is a bit of letdown for me, it just splits time control and character control for player 1 and player 2. If one player likes more engaging gameplay it might lead to boredom. But if both of you just want to chill for few hours then it will be fine. I haven't run into bugs some people mentioned, grapple worked fine for me and webs although a bit confusing at start were also working just fine. One tip, if you struggle on webs or other bouncy platforms, the second jump will make you go much higher than the first one. There's not indication of that innerworkings so no wonder it can be frustrating and assumed a bug. Visuals are beautiful, you can feel the passion of the team behind them. Achievement hunting in this game is also nice, the only level I can complain about is level 4, it's hard to tell wether you've fulfilled the requirement for the achievement or not, there's not much of a visual or sound indication. Being touched by fire? You can see fire, die of cold, well... you die. But here, you either need to guess or keep your eyes focused on things that might lead to failure of requirement. Overall, game is good, if you like simple story games with simple gameplay, go for it! Though I wouldn't pay the full price for it though, it's too short for that price. On discount? For sure!

Beautiful game. The music, the atmosphere, everything is perfect. Really hits you in the feels. Played it with the wife (non gamer) and both loved it.