![]() ![]() Simply put, there are minor but constant grievances throughout the entire experience that exist as a sort of phantom, unscratchable itch. ![]() The gorgeousness of the game’s overworld often comes into tension with its rather unintuitive UI. Systems like cooking, considered central not just to the mechanics of the game, but the narrative itself, are confusingly underused. ![]() It is, at times, a little bit bloated - while I have already mentioned how much I enjoy taking my time in this world, there is occasionally an overabundance of cutscenes that, while lively and vital in their own right, can overestimate themselves in terms of engagement. Boss battles are often overly persnickety thanks to the twin-stick shooter combat style and intensely precise counter requirements. Despite how much I appreciate the atmosphere and outlook of its world, I also take issue with quite a lot of its design choices. It would be remiss to talk about Eastward only in terms of what it does well, though. And so, I’ve stopped to smell the post-apocalyptic roses. To storm through it at blistering speed to make a review embargo just felt like I was actively compromising my enjoyment of one of my favourite games of the year. Eastward is surprisingly - if not deceptively - long. All of a sudden, the very thing that makes Eastward so special made sense: I didn’t want to rush. So, this weekend, I started again and was cracked across the skull with a cinder block. Unfortunately, my progress didn’t transfer across to this new build - something that came as quite a surprise considering I had planned my play sessions around the fact that I had, in fact, already been through the vast majority of the game. When I gained access to my preview build, I was able to explore the entire game, so I played through quite a bit of Eastward and waited for the official review build to continue my journey in a newer, more refined version of the game. This brings me to an intriguing part of my review, where I feel obliged to admit that I have yet to actually finish Eastward. To relegate that coherence by stripping it of what makes it coherent would be to do a disservice to what is quite frankly one of 2021’s best and brightest games to date. There is life to its lyricism and vitality to its verbs. When I think about Eastward now, as I write this review, the ideas that endure are tied to its atmosphere, its tone, its mood, its feeling. It is an impressively cohesive experience that would only suffer if it were to be divided into, in this instance, arbitrary items on a stale checklist denoting the top ten quality-affecting factors of what constitutes a ‘good’ game. That is intentional, because playing Eastward is acknowledging and appreciating the sum of its parts. ![]() This might seem like a bit of an unconventional review: I haven’t gotten into the nitty gritty of its relatively robust combat, or waxed lyrical over dungeon design, puzzle variety, or its gorgeous art and wonderfully weird soundtrack. Put plainly, it is extremely clever but never pretentious, despite how ostensibly pretentious my previous sentence might seem. It’s packed with Austenian marital melodrama, Wildean absurdist hyperbole, Dickensian veiled nonsense, and a sense of humour that would give Terry Pratchett a decent ab workout. On the other, this is a world filled with mayors sporting walrus moustaches, photo shoots dedicated to the deity of cheese, and rubber duck monsters who spit spherical duckling bombs at you. On one hand, the events of Eastward transpire in a world where a Matrix-esque human farm is located beneath a train station with a beached and breathing whale on top of it. That subversion is worth expanding on, too. Through it all, however, Eastward remains committed to carving out its own distinct identity, and, for the most part, it succeeds spectacularly. And yes, there will be occasions during which you will feel as if this is something you have seen before. Yes, it will, often and almost brazenly, be comparable to its vast wealth of influences - it even has a minigame called Earth Born with an internal combat system that is remarkably similar to another relatively popular ‘Earth’ game, with all the necessary ‘mother’ lingo that comes with it. It is not the first video game to explore what happens when demagogues replace institutions in the wake of cataclysm, converting history into historiography as survivors become philistines not just by necessity, but by design.Īnd yet Eastward is stunningly original to the point of near overambition. It is not the first video game to juxtapose vibrant colour and vital noise with a thematic core that is much darker. Eastward is not the first video game to pit parent and child against the encroaching apocalypse. ![]()
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