There is a bit of controversy surrounding Zed as the game that was delivered was far different than what was promised and many gamers were put off by that. We were promised a strong puzzle game in the vein of Myst and what we got was a walking sim that only had simple puzzles. I’m not mad at this myself but that’s because I enjoy walking sims. If you promise me “A” and deliver “B” but “B”There is a bit of controversy surrounding Zed as the game that was delivered was far different than what was promised and many gamers were put off by that. We were promised a strong puzzle game in the vein of Myst and what we got was a walking sim that only had simple puzzles. I’m not mad at this myself but that’s because I enjoy walking sims. If you promise me “A” and deliver “B” but “B” is still a good product that I can enjoy then I can’t get very mad. If you don’t enjoy walking sims then I can understand the anger. Even as a walking sim though i would say that Zed has strengths but also weaknesses. It’s story; voice acting and presentation are excellent. It sometimes is too linear and straightforward though even for the walking sim genre. The story is about going through the memories of a former comic book creator from his early years all through to the end of his life. It is a great story filled with realistic struggles, sometimes brutally so, in terms of life lessons. The voice acting was stellar all around. The worlds that you walk through are vibrant and majestic at times while more realistic at others but always interesting. You have to find objects from the artist’s life which give you a journal entry detailing some part of their life. Once you find them all it unlocks a puzzle you have to solve to progress. The puzzles are simple image puzzles where you just have to find the correct place for the pieces. The art for the puzzles is well done. The levels themselves are sometimes a bit small, such as one single room which makes finding the objects no effort at all usually. The graphics were pretty well done overall. The object detail; water; and wet surfaces were all great. The lighting and shadows were decent. The foliage and fire were poor. The use of colour was varied and always felt unique.
I played Zed on Linux. It never crashed on em but it did freeze once when I picked up a pair of glasses. The game was still running but I couldn’t put them down. I had to exit the game and reload the memory. The game saves each time you enter a new room/level. There is no notification for this though, I figured it out by trial and error. There were 5 AA settings; a V-Sync toggle; an FOV slider that went from 85-110 and 3 other graphics options. Alt-Tab worked.
Game Engine: Unreal
Save System: Auto
Disk Space Used: 10.9 GB
Graphics Settings Used: All highest, 100 FOV; V-Sync On; 1920x1080
GPU Usage: 15-81 %
VRAM Usage: 1382-3069 MB
CPU Usage: 1-26 %
RAM Usage: 2.4-3.2 GB
Frame Rate: Couldn’t monitor but felt no lag
I feel that Zed could have offered more interaction as well as more story depth regarding side characters but it did provide a very strong narrative and voice acting so it wasn’t without merit. I finished the game in 2 hours and 15 minutes. I paid $14.39 CAD for it which felt like a fair price although it’s current price tag of $20.49 feels a tad steep. If you enjoy walking sims such as Rise of Insanity; Layers of Fear; or Dear Esther then you will find enjoyment here. If you prefer games like Myst then you will be disappointed.
My Score: 7/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.1.2 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 21.0.7 | Mate 1.24.1 | Kernel 5.12.9-1-MANJARO… Expand
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