Games worth discovering

After Us - A Beautiful But Not So Subtle Story About A World Decimated By Human Impact

1K View2023-05-25

After us is great looking action platformer set in a surrealistic and apocalyptic world and also made by the same developer that created Arise: A Simple Story, a game that I love and has a special place in my heart. So you can imagine I was really looking forward to this game, but is it as good or maybe even better than their previous game? I'm sad to say this one really disappointed me, I appreciate it when games convey a message in a subtle way, but After Us is so in your face that it really missed the mark in my opinion and I was so put off by this that I was barely emotionally invested by the narrative to be honest.

Anyways you play as Gaia, the Spirit of Life and your quest is to save the souls of eight spirit animals, restore life to the planet and bring back the Life Force to this entity called Mother. During her quest Gaia has to face many dangerous challenges like hungry Devourers, a human-like creature that wants to absorb your power, a lot of pollution that is full of these tentacles that can drag you down and a lot of deadly traps like giant saw blades and harpoons that will come flying at you at high speed.

When you start the game for the first time you will see this message popping up that says "preparing shaders" and this took almost 10 minutes for me, so keep that in mind. I must say I really liked the overall presentation, especially the surrealistic world building and the atmospheric soundtrack, but the world itself felt really empty to me and it wasn't that enjoyable to explore every nook and cranny in my opinion. There were also many times I didn't really know where to go exactly and sometimes I was even lost for a few minutes. The world is massive and saving the souls of the animals can be done in any order, but every area, while having a different setting and its own gimmicks, had that same empty, disconnected feel that made exploring for me not that exciting. The controls are also really floaty and there is a lot of variety in platforming, but it feels a bit clunky because of the floatiness of your character. Gaia also has sometimes these combat encounters and these encounters weren't the most enjoyable either to be honest. You have this spirit attack that works like a boomerang, but aiming it feels a bit random and it's just not that exciting. I liked the abilities overall, especially this Life Burst ability, but the execution wasn't always as polished as I hoped it would be.

I did appreciate all the different scenarios you will come across and some areas were a lot more exciting or memorable because of their gimmicks. I'm not going to spoil too much, but I really enjoyed using these television screens to teleport to another one and these bird cages that will trap you or reveal a hole when you enter them for example. There is a lot of creativity to find in this game, but it's a shame it is a bit ruined by the vastness and emptiness of the world and the clunky platforming and not so exciting combat. You also have the option to free 100 of these animal spirits and if you collect them all you will get an achievement and you can pet each one of them when you visit the ark and you can collect these memories as well by defeating Devourers, even a few that do not attack you.

So in general After Us is really not what I was expecting, I was hoping for an engaging game that would make me bawl my eyes out multiple times, but the not so subtle narrative made me less emotionally invested. Maybe it will work for you, but it didn't work for me sadly. I had such high hopes for this one, because I loved Arise: A Simple Story, but I feel like this game is a bit too ambitious and the world is so vast and overshadowed by this game's message that most of the time exploring this world is not that captivating and sometimes even a bit tedious. I do appreciate the creativity in the platforming and the set pieces and this game is really something you haven't seen before. That's why I still recommend it if you know what to expect. This game certainly didn't live up to my expectations, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. I appreciate the developer tried something new and something completely different than Arise: A Simple Story, but it's a shame it didn't manage to captivate me from start to finish like their previous game did.