CHAIRQASITION: Oxenfree

You intrepid heroes tune in, eat brownies, and explore a cave.


CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Oxenfree
Webzone: Oxenfree
Devel: Night School Studio
Engine: Oxenfree (Unity)
Price: £14.99 / US$19.99 / CA$21.99

Wazzat: Oxenfree is a supernatural thriller about a group of friends who unwittingly open a ghostly rift. You are Alex, and you’ve just brought your new stepbrother Jonas to an overnight island party gone horribly wrong.



Venn:

Does It Launch

  • Launches.

Performance @ 1080

  • 60 @ 1080 & 2160.

Graphics

  • Windowed and fullscreen work.

Control

  • No issues with the Steam Controlla OOTB.


Jordan:

Does It Launch

  • ja

Performance @ 1080

  • It perform

Graphics

  • The art style kind of reminds me of a lot of canadian animation coming out of Quebec and Vancouver in the early aughts

Control

  • I grabbed the GOG version cuz I didn’t grab it when it was on sale on humble
  • Dualshock has a bunch of buttons mismapped
  • Keyboard and mouse works fine

Pedro:

Does It Launch

  • Launches both on this box and the SteamBox 360

Performance @ 1080

  • There’s a whole lot of not much of anything on screen so even a Ryzen 2400G with its Vega 11 can push this at 1080p60
    • GalliumHUD if you’re wondering how to get a FerPS counter on SteamOS/Big Picture.

Graphics

  • There are teeny tiny characters on screen for most of it.

Control

  • Steam Controlla, 8bitdo SNES Pro and Dual Shock 4 all work.
  • Bonus soda for not having actual key prompts.

QA Score:

Fedora: 
Soulless: 
Ubuntu:


Fun section:

Fun?:

  • Venn:
    • I want to preface this by reminding everyone I both dislike children and choose your own adventure book games.
    • This (when you boil it down) is an adventure book game.
    • Night School Studio did a great job with it.
    • It runs well, controller works, looks pretty, has organic conversations.
    • However it quickly became apparent I give negative FKS about teenagers going to an island and dealing with spoopy shite.
    • I lasted 43 minutes, right up to where the game forced me to do something stupid.
    • As far as gaming, the only gaming element I could find was tuning the radio to trigger an event that furthered the story.
    • Sorry not sorry but if you don’t dig games like Gone Home you’re Drunk, Life is Strange and the like, Oxenfree will not change your mind.
    • P.S. I want to live in this world where THC infused brownies kick in around the 3min mark.
  • Jordan
    • In have a pretty low tolerance for teenage drama, and this game made the unfortunate misstep of frontloading a lot of it, which made me not really care
    • That said, once you power through the introduction, the drama bits are far between, and you get to determine how much of an asshole you are to your step brother
      • I was the biggest asshole
    • I am, however, a sucker for a good mystery
    • Oxenfree has a decent one. Lots of little scraps of information are everywhere and it’s fun for me to try and put it together
    • And I gotta say, unlike Gone Home, it does something with the atmosphere and spoopernatural stuff
    • The gameplay elements are a wee lacking though. Your walk cycle is painfully slow and exploring takes forever
    • The radio bit is a little interesting, but it basically boils down to doing sweeps until your screen starts glowing red
    • All and all, if you like FMV games or mysteries, you might get something out of it
    • People looking for more traditional games aren’t gonna dig it.
  • Pedro
    • I mention time and time again that games, in my opinion, should be about the mechanics.
    • Oxenfree right off the bat feels like a bare skeleton of game mechanics, which are there just to qualify this is in fact a video game.
    • The meat here is in the story and the dialog choices you make as you go along.
    • I can see why the first bit of the game wouldn’t punish you for making one choice over another and I do get the sense that, after the little supernatural event, that’s the point where choice starts to matter.
    • The core mechanic here is the dialog and how what your character decides changes what other characters say and do.
    • I have trouble relating to teenagers in the real world, let alone virtual ones.
    • I’m not saying the dialog here is as bad as Life is Strange, because it isn’t!
    • It’s actually much better and the characters all feel like they have their own thing going on.
    • And your protagonist isn’t just a pair of teenage pants for you to don.
    • I play videogames for what they can show me, not for what they call tell me.
    • And there’s a lot of telling rather than showing in Oxenfree.
    • I care much more about the supernatural and weird elements here than I do over the petty squabbles of teenage 1s and 0s.
    • Unfortunately, when the focus is on the teenagers my interest was kinda lost.

Fun Score:

Venn: 
Jordan:
Pedro:

0 Comments

Leave Your Reply