The Norwood Suite

 PC
User Score
7.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 12 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 12
  3. Negative: 2 out of 12

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  1. PublicNuisance
    Apr 24, 2021
    7
    I played Off-Peak before The Norwood Suite so I kind of knew what I was in for. A trippy experience that wouldn’t always make sense but would hold my interest. That’s pretty much what I got. There is a lot more content to The Norwood Suite than in Off-peak but that isn’t always a good thing. Off-Peak knew how to move things along and keep a good pace but Norwood Suite got bogged down atI played Off-Peak before The Norwood Suite so I kind of knew what I was in for. A trippy experience that wouldn’t always make sense but would hold my interest. That’s pretty much what I got. There is a lot more content to The Norwood Suite than in Off-peak but that isn’t always a good thing. Off-Peak knew how to move things along and keep a good pace but Norwood Suite got bogged down at times. There are quite a few side quests you find and no objective list to keep track of them. There is also no map, and while there are signs to point the way to specific parts of the hotel, it would have been nice to have a map as it was confusing at times. There also was a few hidden passages that really just became like short cuts to areas you could already visit. I will just say that I hated the piano puzzle where you have to play specific notes to open a door in the wall. I could understand what it wanted me to do but nowhere could I find good instructions on which keys were which. I don’t read sheet music or play piano so even knowing which keys need pressing I had no idea which was “a” or “d” etc. Luckily near the end the story started to pick up a bit and it finished strong. The music was fantastic and did a good job setting the mood to the different parts of the hotel. The graphics while only decent benefits from a great art style and use of colour. The sky and cars were good. The road and lighting was decent. The clothes and faces were poor. The game also employed a door opening mechanic similar to Amnesia where you use the mouse to slide things open or shut. I wish developers would start doing this as no one has done it in a way I enjoyed yet.

    I played The Norwood Suite on Linux. It never crashed on me. I did notice one glitch where in one room there was this white object on screen that would follow you around like a flickering texture stuck on the screen making it hard to see. This didn’t occur outside of that room. The load times were pretty slow with the initial loading screen taking up to 30 seconds on my NVME SSD something no other game has exhibited. The game would save on exit and had just the one save slot. There was one AA option and your resolution setting, nothing else to tweak image quality. There was a v-sync toggle as well but the game had a 60 FPS lock so it was redundant. The performance was overall decent but there drops to as low as 41 FPS at times which given the image quality shouldn’t have happened. Off-Peak also had this issue.

    Game Engine: Unity
    Save System: On Exit
    Game Version Played: 1.3
    Disk Space Used: 1.9 GB

    Settings Used: 1080P, AA on
    GPU Usage: 0-100 %
    VRAM Usage: 1909-2072 MB
    CPU Usage: 34-50 %
    RAM Usage: 3.7-4.0 GB
    Frame Rate: 41-60 FPS

    Overall despite the technical issues and the slow middle of the game I can say it was a decent experience overall. CosmoD has a way of telling stories that creeps from throwing you in the deep end where nothing makes sense to slowly revealing bits to you in a way that ties it all together enough to make sense but still have some mystery. I finished the game in 2 hours and 7 minutes. I paid $14.27 CAD for it. I think the price was fair for the content and a tad could have been shaved from the middle to speed things up.

    My Score: 7/10

    My System:

    AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.0.2 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 21.0.2 | Mate 1.24.1 | Kernel 5.11.14-1-MANJARO    … Expand
  2. mugsy
    Dec 23, 2020
    10
    Great surreal and fever dreamish atmosphere and great sound design, like all Cosmo D games
  3. kiank
    Feb 28, 2018
    9
    The Norwood Suite is one of the most different PC games I've played. The music is brilliantly done and I love how the music is incorporated into the dialogue. When I play it, it gives me an unsettling feeling so I have to put it down after playing it for a little. But I love the dialogue and find it well written. I also love all the different plot points and themes. The ending is aThe Norwood Suite is one of the most different PC games I've played. The music is brilliantly done and I love how the music is incorporated into the dialogue. When I play it, it gives me an unsettling feeling so I have to put it down after playing it for a little. But I love the dialogue and find it well written. I also love all the different plot points and themes. The ending is a bit weird but the game is a bit weird so it fits. My one complaint is that the game was a little confusing at times in terms of what I had to do next. Overall, I would give it a 9.2.… Expand
  4. NightGeisha
    Mar 23, 2019
    7
    The Norwood Suite is a weird "musical" experience, and I mean weird in a good way... It is a "exploration-puzzle-adventure" kind of game that I found very different, unique and original.

    The game is not easy to describe, it's like a surreal payment that you merged in. You get to explore this mansion, this hotel and solve multiple puzzles that help you understand this strange place and    The Norwood Suite is a weird "musical" experience, and I mean weird in a good way... It is a "exploration-puzzle-adventure" kind of game that I found very different, unique and original.

    The game is not easy to describe, it's like a surreal payment that you merged in. You get to explore this mansion, this hotel and solve multiple puzzles that help you understand this strange place and it's old disappeared owner, Peter Norwood.

    Visually is weird (what can I say, is the best word to describe it), but is the music that make it shine, and since the first loading, on the start of the game I was hooked.

    I very different gaming experience, that I fully recommend!    … Expand
  5. nabeshogun12
    Jun 21, 2019
    10
    great surreal first-person adventure Curious characters, forgotten secrets, and head-nodding music
  6. Oskad
    Apr 29, 2022
    0
    ➤The Norwood Suite est une expérience "musicale" bizarre, et je veux dire bizarre dans le bon sens... C'est un genre de jeu "exploration-puzzle-aventure" que j'ai trouvé très différent, unique et original.

    Le jeu n'est pas facile à décrire, c'est comme un paiement surréaliste dans lequel vous avez fusionné. Vous pouvez explorer ce manoir, cet hôtel et résolvez plusieurs énigmes qui    ➤The Norwood Suite est une expérience "musicale" bizarre, et je veux dire bizarre dans le bon sens... C'est un genre de jeu "exploration-puzzle-aventure" que j'ai trouvé très différent, unique et original.

    Le jeu n'est pas facile à décrire, c'est comme un paiement surréaliste dans lequel vous avez fusionné. Vous pouvez explorer ce manoir,
    cet hôtel et résolvez plusieurs énigmes qui vous aideront à comprendre cet endroit étrange et son ancien propriétaire disparu, Peter Norwood.

    Il y a pas mal de quêtes secondaires que vous trouvez et aucune liste d'objectifs pour en garder une trace. Il n'y a pas non plus de carte, et bien qu'il y ait des panneaux indiquant le chemin vers des parties spécifiques de l'hôtel,
    il aurait été bien d'avoir une carte car c'était parfois déroutant. Il y avait aussi quelques passages cachés qui sont vraiment devenus comme des raccourcis vers des zones que vous pouviez déjà visiter.

    La musique était fantastique et a fait du bon travail en créant l'ambiance dans les différentes parties de l'hôtel. Les graphismes, bien que décents, bénéficient d'un excellent style artistique et de l'utilisation de la couleur. Le ciel et les voitures étaient bons. La route et l'éclairage étaient corrects. Les vêtements et les visages étaient pauvres.
    Le jeu utilisait également un mécanisme d'ouverture de porte similaire à Amnesia où vous utilisez la souris pour faire glisser les choses ouvertes ou fermées. J'aimerais que les développeurs commencent à le faire car personne ne l'a encore fait d'une manière que j'apprécie.

    Les temps de chargement étaient assez lents, . Le jeu sauvegarderait à la sortie et n'avait qu'un seul emplacement de sauvegarde.

    j'ai l'impression que il bouffe beaucoup de ressources meme plus que red dead redemption 2 je ne comprends pas mais Dans l'ensemble, malgré les problèmes techniques et la lenteur du milieu de jeu, je peux dire que ce fut une expérience décente dans l'ensemble.
    CosmoD a une façon de raconter des histoires qui rampent de vous jeter dans les profondeurs où rien n'a de sens pour vous révéler lentement des morceaux d'une manière qui lie le tout suffisamment pour avoir du sens mais qui a toujours un certain mystère.

    ☞Note :
    7/10    … Expand

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
78

Generally favorable reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. Adventure Gamers
    Nov 23, 2020
    80
    Forsaking both challenging gameplay and a traditional narrative structure, The Norwood Suite is a welcome odyssey into oddity that will more than satisfy those craving strangeness or just another piece of the delightful Off-Peak universe.
    Read full review
  2. CD-Action
    Jan 10, 2018
    95
    The Norwood Suite shames all other walking simulators with the quality of its storytelling and the way it uses player interactions in the narrative. It’s a unique, intelligent and ambitious game that eludes simple interpretation. [13/2017, p.37]
  3. GamingTrend
    Oct 20, 2017
    65
    The game doesn’t ultimately suffer from its technical issues. Instead I felt more like it was muddled by lack of creative cohesion or foresight. The game’s story was intriguing, but doesn’t really resolve in a manner which is coherent. The level of visual fidelity works, but doesn’t entirely seem premeditated. Yet it’s over very quickly, and in its broad strokes paints a captivating picture. Had it required me to spend more time to reach its pay off, I might have been bothered by this. To compare it to music, this works well as a free mix-tape, but I wouldn’t tolerate it as a full album. That said, I’m interested in what the artist’s point of view is. If they were to be signed, I’d likely want to check out what they could put out with the support of a record label.
    Read full review
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