Aaru's Awakening

Inconsistencies aside, Aaru's Awakening does make for a relatively enjoyable experience, even with its control flaws.

It’s lack of accessible controls or incentive for laboring through arduous stages, combined with the sloppy presentation of its story suggests that Aaru woke up a little prematurely.

As it stands, Aaru’s Awakening is more entertaining to watch than it is to play.

Aaru’s Awakening is a competent if unspectacular game, that with a little more time in the oven could have been much better as an overall experience.

Beautiful and creative, but controls and design issues often drag it from challenging to frustrating.

Aaru's Awakening has a serious difficulty curve, but when you combine the twitch-based controls, the confusing art style or the camera zoom, you end up with an experience that, once completed, doesn't offer a feeling of joy or accomplishment. You just feel like you've finally completed a tedious task.

Despite being instantly engaged by Aaru’s Awakening‘s artistry and intrigued by its innovative teleportation mechanic, I came away frustrated. I had no desire to keep playing, no need to better my times or scores. Each completed level led to a sense of relief rather than satisfaction, and if all I was after was a sense of relief I could achieve that by taking an Aspirin rather than subjecting myself to scores of irritating virtual deaths.