Observation Review - Worthabuy?

[@EastyyBlogspot]

I am afraid we cannot let you play this dave

[@SnowWalker1]

♥♥♫♪Happy Birthday to you ♪♫•*¨*•.¸¸♥♥ ¸.•*¨*•♫♪ Happy Birthday to you ♪♫•*¨*•.¸¸

[@Youssless]

happy birthday mate, I hope you had a great one, you deserve it brother.

[@Mfreak87]

To me this game is great, is true that if you dont like puzzles maybe it's not gonna be for you, but is far from a not worthy game.

[@BloodyRosie]

I don't like puzzles but in Observation they were all doable, and only the ones closer to the end were hard, requiring some extra thinking and multiple attempts.

[@Luke-vp3bz]

Agreed. I loved it.

[@Space_Ghost91]

Yeah pretty daft slating a puzzle game for having puzzles in it. I thought they were pretty decent, especially some of the memory ones which actually make you have to remember stuff which is quite rare for gaming these days.

[@paulocarreirapinto]

yeah. this guy is delusional. And thumbed up cyberpunk lol

[@anonamoutsxc]

I love it when you do lesser known games some times! Seriously all my best steam hits come from your videos.

[@SmashingSnow]

Lesser known? Plenty of youtubers are playing this. It is a smash hit.

[@anonamoutsxc]

SmashingSnow oh, well this is the first I’ve heard of it. But my PC is on its last legs rn so I’ve mostly been playing console until I can buy a new one.

[@SmashingSnow]

@@anonamoutsxc Oh dang sorry to hear your pc is nearing its end. Do you have a build put together for your new one? What have been playing lately?

[@ronaldli5]

I love the filter making the graphics look authentically like 90s color distortion.

[@mosterdpottv]

“They should have left the helmets on” lol

[@audiogarden21]

Happy belated you bell-ringing pillock.

[@hellonearth6411]

Happy Birthday Mack, bless you man. 😊🎂🎉

[@Honnebambel]

oh yeah, happy birthday mack, all the best wishes :)

[@Lyraeone]

Watched a no commentary playthrough like as if it were a movie. Most enjoyable! Thanks for the review as always

[@jericosha2842]

I love the contrast of you ranting into your happy and calm outro music lol

[@jarigustafsson7620]

So, now we know why HAL went bonkers, the camera gave it epileptic dissorders.

[@FunkyBaconArts]

Oof, you weren't kidding about the flashing and flickering. That is some headache fuel right there.

[@centuzezaim7471]

Not the worst part. Trying to drive a drone is like trying to drive a car with a really shitty non-respondent axis.

[@raidone7413]

We are waiting for you to play Kenshi

[@today8832]

Played for about 3hrs, then Epic decided to delete my save game. No way am I going through the tedious sphere/controls ever again. Don’t feel too bad as I got it for £8 on sale.

[@SmashingSnow]

What epic deletes saves? That's strange.

[@Mr-R.R.]

This is such a wild statement to make without actually backing up why it happened.

[@MolitovMichelleX]

Zero sympathy sorry not sorry. Hope it was Epic while it lasted.

[@NecroMorrius]

Well, I found the ending (and really, the entire thing) to be a whole lot of nothing. The final puzzles are the same as the first puzzles - the game gives you the answer and you simply tap it in via an irritating interface. There's an ending sequence which had some technical issues for me (unintended clipping through the environment for a lot of it which left the screen flickering and me seeing outside of the level) and concluded with some done-to-death sci-fi stuff that was even less surprising than I'd expected. The sparse dialogue hints that you went through some kind of arc but there wasn't one present while playing, in the storytelling or the mechanics. Ultimately it's the kind of thing I would probably have overvalued and oversold to people when I was younger, mistaking vagueness for intelligence and forgiving the numerous annoyances as an uncompromised vision. If the story or gameplay were compelling I could easily forgive the other, but neither really worked for me. If you're after beautiful retro-future interiors and a scary atmosphere, play Alien Isolation. If you're after a great puzzle game with some rumination on the nature of AI and the soul, play the Talos Principle (or the Turing Test, or The Swapper). If you want to pipe hot existential dread straight into your consciousness, play Soma. If you want 2001, just watch 2001. I can't recommend this above any of those, even for the £7 I paid in the EGS sale. I'd be a bit bummed out if I'd paid £20 for this. The 9/10s I'm seeing dotted around are totally mystifying, the metro review (which I hadn't seen until a moment ago, after writing all of the above!) has a more accurate take on it from my perspective: Quote It’s upsetting to play a game that has clearly had so much effort expended on it; as you realise that all its obvious potential is slowly being drained away, like oxygen out of a leaky spaceship. The fact that you’re an AI rather than a human has almost no bearing on the story or your interactions, and the denouement is entirely underwhelming. It’s a rare video game that has both good storytelling and a good gameplay, but either on their own can still be perfectly compelling. Observation has neither. In Short: 2001 is hardly the most obvious movie to use as inspiration for a video game and perhaps predictably the end result suffers from slow-pacing and a lack of meaningful interaction. Pros: Fantastic visuals and a stunning, and impressively realistic, portrayal of space travel. Great music and atmosphere. Cons: Extremely dull and simplistic gameplay that goes out of its way to be as slow-paced as possible. Predictable and unsatisfying story that lacks originality and narrative depth. Score: 3/10 The gameinformer review is especially weird, "I ripped through Observation in one six-hour sitting, propelled forward by the novel blend of challenging puzzles and gripping storytelling.". The game's three hours long even with a good bit of getting lost, the puzzles have zero challenge (the answer is literally printed on the screen next to where you input the answer half the time) and the storytelling is increasingly uninteresting as it progresses. Their suggestion that the replay value is "moderately high", and that "navigating the station is easy thanks to a snappy interface and simple controls" makes it sound like they played something else entirely. Ah well, I'm glad to see that some people are enjoying/buying stuff from a small UK developer at least. I picked up stories untold when it was free too, I'll give it a go.

[@gladiatorscoops]

Any Epileptics GET OUT NOW! Happy 30th birthday Macketh!

[@Kie-7077]

So, It breaks my £1 per hour max rule.. Will wait for 85% sale.

[@illusionlb]

with that rule your never going to play any good games , other than shitty open world games that waste your time.

[@StarContract]

You aren't the brightest of them are you

[@matthewbassett88]

I have the same rules as you

[@RyTrapp0]

About the facial animations... [Ranty_McRanterson] I watched a YT video on movie VFX the other night, with the realistic hair in 'Monsters Inc' being mentioned, and it immediately reminded me of the movie 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'. Now, I've NEVER been a fan of ANY of the FF games, I'm certainly not going to call them 'bad' by any means, they've just never been my style; however, I remember seeing this movie on HBO or something at 6 in the morning in the early-2000s and rolling my eyes because "...oh great, it's another shitty, low quality video game movie..." and turning it on to find out just how steaming garbo it was. But, then I couldn't turn it off, I was just absolutely utterly amazed at how immersive this computer animated movie was. Now, we've all seen some Pixar movies - my 9 years my senior brother took me to see the original 'Toy Story' on opening night, and it was just un-fucking-believable considering that nothing like it LITERALLY had ever come out before. But, 'The Spirits Within' was different; it was decidedly more 'grown up', the color pallette, the voice acting, it was all very mature and very very high quality. However, the faces, the body movements - as someone that quite literally grew up with video games, always having at least one of the 'latest & greatest' consoles between myself and my brother, not to mention having a PC back when a 1GB hard drive was a fucking shit load of storage capacity for a home PC(Napster certainly changed what many of us thought of as a "lot" of storage, LOL), watching a computer animated movie that had such an incredibly accurate level of namely facial & fine motor movements was just... it was absolutely STUNNING. That's the only word that I can use for it. I mean, if you hadn't seen this movie at that time, then get this 'FF: The Spirits Within' was released in *2001*. Guys, 'Toy Story' changed everything, being the first computer animated feature film; it came out in 1995. Only 6 years after the first computer animated feature film(and in the mid-'90s mind you - just imagine how LONG it took them to render that shit!!!) was released the first 'photorealistic' computer animated feature film; and its human facial and fine motor movements STILL absolutely destroy anything out there today. To get to the point - the rather pessimistic point, as is typical of my "back in my days" comments on this channel - it was 2002-2003 when I first saw this, and I thought that I was seeing "the [proverbial] future" of video games as we knew it, about two decades before its time. And, yet, it's 2019, and this shit is what we're still getting. Now, don't get me wrong; 'Max Payne' also came out on 2001, and, while as a game it was absolutely incredible, it's facial "animations"... well, about two decades later, I hope that everyone has finally gotten the low resolution 'constipated Max' face out of their memories... but, we're a LONG way from 2001 now. And, I understand, even next gen consoles(powered by the JUST announced killer AMD Ryzen & Navi hardware) can't even sneeze at the amount of rendering horsepower that was required to create that movie back in 2001; but that's no excuse at all for the shit show facial & fine motor animation quality that haunts nearly every modern [human featuring] video game today, especially the ones with the budget to invest into those fine details. Just another disappointment in a long, long list today. And, the fucked up part is that the absolutely INCREDIBLE voice acting only emphasizes how utterly fucking trash the facial animations of this game are. It's like ray tracing - it just wo... I mean, if you want to be reminded of how shitty video games still are compared to even OLD computer animated movies, then turn on the feature that makes reflections look photorealistic in these worlds that simply just, well, aren't... [/Ranty_McRanterson]

[@ShagadelicBY]

Guess I'll be heading over to Mackscorner and wait for the gameplay :D ... :(

[@honspeter6208]

You describing the gameplay already makes me wanna jump out of the window!

[@FA-tq9ip]

I enjoy those puzzles in Alien: Isolation; it all adds tension and constraints on your ability to avoid staying the open while the alien is on the prowl.

[@ForcePF]

I'll definitely take your advice and watch this on youtube. Not because I don't want to play it (I do want to, sadly), but because it's an Epic store exclusive. Happy belated birthday BTW :-)

[@thegamingwolf8755]

"The Crew had gone missing and you have to find out why" Hmm deja vu. I think i heard this music before lol. Great Review!

[@gyloir]

It's like 12.49 usd on the epic game store, hard to pass it up for that price.

[@timweenie725]

Epic Shit Store? No thanks.

[@OseanBigshot444]

I like the camera fx, but I see your point, more than a few minutes and it would probably give me a headache too. A simple fix, would be to add toggle options for each distortion effect in the menu, or sliders to set how often each type of effect happens. That way you could enjoy the views, and have some immersive visual effects, but could set the ones that bother you to be rare or disabled entirely.

[@coddeh87]

Happy birthday for yesterday Mac, much love from Norfolk

[@garf412]

Mac = thank you so much for the early warning about Flashing. Whilst I don't have Epilepsy I am Autistic and some us suffer in the say ways, RE flashing images etc. Thank you so much for the warning

[@Unibot47]

A game could have the best story ever. If the gameplay is a chore, it's a shitty game IMO. Like you said, I'll just get the book. Happy birthday mang.

[@stalkerlohh]

review- Pathologic 2 ... looks something really special in today's gaming climate

[@mirrorblade6268]

Houston whe have a problem. First we had walking simulators... Now we have peeping simulators.

[@Grandmastergav86]

Ah so you got to that bit in Yakuza Kiwami 2 as well?

[@mirrorblade6268]

@@Grandmastergav86 no. I dislike the yakuza games.

[@IRMentat]

Sounds like it’s somewhere between night trap and République.

[@nicholaswheeler507]

Happy late birthday mack. You are worth the donation money

[@europeansovietunion7372]

Was thinking the same about tell tale "games" like Waling Dead... I wish they made a cheat code so the "game" would play itself like a movie.

[@PeterGriffin-gh8dz]

The best voice-acting ever done is in ''Everybody's Gone to the Rapture''

[@Kaunte]

Good God that game was boring.

[@calexus5880]

BEEN WAITING FOR THIS - CHEERS MACK!

[@bstoker9468]

Happy to see this, thanks for all you do!

[@emmajanebread]

Happy Birthday Mack,life begins at 60 !!

[@MakoRuu]

Happy Birthday, Mack!

[@vinniecorleone62]

Very enjoyable review, I've been quite intrigued with this game & appreciate your take on it.

[@backstabbath1979]

Open the pod bay doors, Sam.

[@Sam-ey1nn]

This sounds exactly like The Turing Test with worse puzzles.

[@darthraider450]

Hey Mack, will you wab Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled?

[@swahiliranger1022]

"five nights at freddies" in space.

[@ShawnKavanagh]

I was waiting for your review on this. Are there special glasses I can wear to overcome the headache inducing visuals? Happy birthday, my good man!

[@bloodrunsclear]

Is it still a walking simulator if you float?

[@kovugreen]

Floating simulator?

[@XMG3]

happy birthday mac, wish you a wonder year ahead. On to the game, I can't believe nobody QA this game, even watching this review gave me a headache.

[@XmanVon]

Happy Bday Mack! Cheers!

[@NewOrderOfAlexandria]

Would've made better as a sort of multi-narrative game where you got to help her get home but can be evil, good or incompetent and completely fuck up or something like that. Maybe you play as her and the computer is like hal?

[@slimburg1]

maybe a bit late but happy birthday mack, hope you may continue making videos for the years to come because you´re the best reviewer on youtube.

[@MBCsi]

Cheers for the epilepsy warning, much appreciated :)

[@gellertn]

I fking love those puzzles

[@lastninja4661]

I love Mak's video's and sound tracks he uses,😄 keep up the good work👌👍👍👍

[@gigidasha4475]

At the end of reviews there are Graphics, Music, Sound, Immersion and Fun categories. Maybe Mack could add Gameplay and Level Design ratings.

[@YaBoiJessy]

Happy birthday Mack, love your content.

[@qarinah8586]

Happy birthday Mac.

[@alexa1591]

Thought I recognised the chicks voice, she’s the same voice actor that played Amanda ripley in alien isolation

[@mykb]

Happy birthday Mack!

[@Reuquar]

Aw Happy Birthday Mack :) Hope you had a wonderful day, you deserve it

[@wraith277]

Happy birthday Mack. I love your work

[@ShallowDepression]

Floating Simulator.

[@northernlad52]

Happy birthday pal. hangovers are reserved for epic people. :-)

[@hazed1009]

Thanks mate, I was about to buy it cheap on offer for 8 quid but as soon as i heard you say "gameplay was tedious and shit!" 😁 I decided I reckon it's not for me lol. I don't fancy playing a fucking CPU chip and play fucking join the dot for 5 hours no matter how good the story would be. You saved me a few quid. So I thought I'd give a like and a comment to help the algorythms! 😂 Good luck with the channel.

[@Idelacio]

Pretty much what I thought of the game watching an LP on KZbin. I am intrigued though.

[@Wolfsheim23]

Mack.. It's an adventure game. Remember those?

[@blank9567]

Happy Birthday for both of us!

[@MunkeyChips]

2:54 Alex from HL2 shows more emotion. I feel like they should have spent more time on animating characters in a game based around character development.

[@windrasshean]

I did watch it on Jack's, done in 4 videos. It's like watching mini-series

[@denisbourmistrov7321]

For someone who complains about easy puzzles 9/10 games, to complain about hard puzzles, seems....

[@bullshitdepartment]

I think he complained that they were more repetitive than anything

[@Denis-bo8ms]

Its good to have the bell back. Happy birthday!

[@mobilesuitjesus]

happy birthday mack

[@PHeMoX]

Yeah, I have to agree the gameplay is kind of...... meh. Which is a shame because the game oozes styles and character and I do dig the sci-fi theme that is somewhat believable. But.... I'm not sure the core gameplay 'works' for me. It's a bit boring, probably mostly because of how it is literally telling you what to do, second to second. I don't mind this game looked at Alien Isolation mini-games / puzzles and made it the primary gameplay, but this just isn't good. In fact, the Alien Isolation puzzles are kind of terrible anyway. Way too easy. And the ones that are 'difficult' are mostly so because you need to do something within a few seconds time.

[@jericosha2842]

I've played alien isolation 4 times. I can't even recall any puzzles of that nature. They must be so fast and easy and I didn't pay any mind to them.

[@Kie-7077]

So, what's your favourite beer?

[@MicaseHD]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! keep up the good work!!

[@WeAreCameron]

something about this review was especially solid

[@da_jeezuss8922]

So it's Night Trap meets Space Odessey.

[@Stilloffside]

Happy Birthday MACK

[@brokengames9020]

observing the Observation or how consumers are getting consumed by consumerism.

[@moonpatrol9717]

It sounds like you found the ideal way to celebrate a birthday, mate. Going out to a club, bar or for dinner is totally overrated.

[@introvertplays6162]

Did a walking simulator ever get a thumb up by mack?

[@MRJBoxing608]

Happy birthday champ! Mine is on Tuesday!

[@rasterb1aster]

Mack, will you wab planet zoo when it gets released

[@SmashingSnow]

I sure hope I look forward to that

[@WorthABuyreviews]

yup

[@jarigustafsson7620]

Smells like a DLC that got upgraded to a full price game.

[@Frequency-ct4sf]

Happy Birthday man.

[@byzantiumn8564]

I thoroughly enjoyed observation although wish it was cheaper, even at $20 on epic store was a bit too much for a five hour one shot

[@slayr-gh9sx]

Happy Birthday Mack! Love yr reviews

[@schalkespringer]

I have photosensitive seizures so geuninely appreciate the heads-up to listen only. Shame it sounds like even for people without visual issues it's still hard to play. ‚Story‘ games aren't my thing but I do like space stories that aren't over the top SciFi.

[@simulify8726]

Please review Steel Division 2 beta

[@paulwade4058]

It’s a bit naff, and a bit short. It’s basically a walking (floating) simulator. Goes for thick alien isolation atmosphere but with a “lost” structure where they keep piling mysteries on top of mysteries and never really resolve anything. The “playing as an A.I.” hook doesn’t work. The characters ask if you are ok. Tell you to be careful. It’s not right. It’s like they wrote the script for a human operator, but changed to an A.I. halfway through production and couldn’t redo things on the budget. The puzzles are shite. Not cerebral. The answer is always obvious, but frustrating because nothing is explained. It’s trial and error puzzle solving. I have more to say, but this is going long. Thanks for all the videos mac.

[@raysissum]

How can it be not fun to play yet fun's rated at 6? Surely crap should be around 2 out of 10?

[@andy74108]

For a game suggestion would check out Outward.

[@davedave2738]

will you review seven: enhanced edition?

[@TheRealKingOfHun]

Ooooh boy! I've been waiting for this!

[@eldenringer6466]

Thanks for your opinion Mack. Pleased you had a rad birthday!

[@neoxonfire8128]

Happy Birthday Mack

[@Ferdinand208]

Mack it is not only epilepsy. Any people with tiny amounts of migraine Will get a headache. Which means at least 25% of all people will have a horrible time. It is not immersive. It is like gaming through a 30 year old vcr. The console quicktime events are so lame and forced. I think most people will enjoy this game more as a let's play.

[@vidfreak56]

just seeing the TAA blur and all the filter blur means hell no for me.

[@shawncosta1851]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MACK!!

[@tbhreviews6611]

I was thinking about getting this I didn’t think it was just going to be a puzzle game though so no I’m not big into those

[@KlingonGamerYT]

im a star trek fan cant wait for picards wine club tv series