Struggling to find a new game to play: Harold Halibut

This happens to me every single time that I finish a game that I absolutely loved. I found Ender Magnolia to be such an amazing game that I 100% completed that I am, once again, having trouble enjoying anything that I attempt to move on to afterwards. It doesn't happen often to me but every now and then I love a game so much that I contemplate just playing that game again rather than starting other one. But since I have a PS-Plus membership I do like to go in there and at least TRY the games that I get as part of my membership.

Harold Halibut looked interesting and different, it kind of reminded me (from the look of it) like games I would have played in the 90's or even earlier. It's ok, and I guess what they are going for here is somewhat interesting but I was always going to have a problem with it after just finishing a game I consider to be one of the best ever made.

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I don't know how to really explain this game other than the fact that it looks like stop-motion animation, and I can applaud them for taking this route as far as the graphics are concerned. You take on the role of Harold who is a low level worker on some sort of spacecraft in alien lands. Some reviewers have referred to it as a "walking simulator" and well, I don't really know what that means but it was never going to appeal to me.

So far, I have been chewed out by my boss and sat in a waiting room to get reprimanded for something, then followed someone somewhere and have had to figure out some rather simple puzzles. And that's it. That's all I did before I logged out.

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Story-based games can be really interesting I guess but the problem that almost all of them are going to have is that they move so damn slow. Back in the early 90's when games like Space Quest or King's Quest were the norm, we were ok with that but I think now that most people require a bit more action than something like this is going to deliver, even if it was a labor of love for the small studio that spent 10 years making it.

Most reviewers give this something between 5 and 7 out of 10 but honestly, I think they are being generous because they don't want to be evil towards a tiny studio that spent so much time trying to do something different.

Different isn't always better though, unfortunately. This is especially true if you just finished a game that you consider to be one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time too.

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The story is interesting enough and the graphics are pretty damn special but at the end of the day this game is a real slog with long stretches of walking somewhere quite far away in the grand scheme of things, only to have it not be the way you were supposed to go and there is no real indication of where you might need to. Eventually you will find what you are looking for not because you were astute enough to read the literal writing on the walls, but because there was nowhere else to go and nothing left to click on. I dunno if anyone really considers something like that to be entertaining though and perhaps that is why this game was given to us for free.

If you find that 3-minute trailer dreadfully boring you are going to feel the same way about the actual game since that is meant to be some of the best bits lol.

I was always going to dislike this and I will be biased towards the next 3-5 games that I play for the same reason. If you have a PS-Plus account you have this in your library already but I would be surprised if anyone actually makes a great deal of progress in it.

The search goes on for a game to replace my Ender Magnolia love and unfortunately it is not going to be filled by this... double sadly, it will not be filled by Silksong either, but I am afraid to voice my opinion about that too much.