Snappy Game Reviews - Hacker for a day
Access Denied is a no-frills puzzle game developed by Stately Snail and released by Ratalaika GamesSnappy Game Reviews - Hacker for a day
Access Denied is a no-frills puzzle game developed by Stately Snail and released by Ratalaika Games where your goal is to crack each of its 36 devices through logic and observation.
The game lets you choose each device from a menu in a very straightforward way and from there its just you and some sort of contraption. These start very easy with the first few serving as little tutorials on how to rotate the devices and interact with them but eventually, things get more tricky with some logic conundrums and mathematical problems for you to solve. While this might sound like a chore to some of you there's a lot of fun in working towards those 'A-ha!' moments after you've realized a solution. There's also plenty of variety in how you're meant to solve these puzzles but I'm afraid that by going into more detail I might spoil your experience.
Presentation-wise it looks great for what it is, the whole game is set in a workbench-type environment and the devices emerge from the centre of a table that's right in front of you. While you're working towards the solutions you'll constantly hear the sound of rain coming from the outside. I can't say that I'm a fan of ambient sounds and as such, I ended up turning the sound down and listened to music instead.
Speaking of things that are far from ideal in Access Denied, the controls. The controls are cumbersome, to say the least playing on PlayStation 4. Your only mean of interacting with the devices is by moving a pointer across the screen using the control stick. This is far from ideal and kind of baffling because of the DualShock 4 features motion controls AND a trackpad, both of which have been tremendously used in another PlayStation 4 puzzle game, Statik. I'd love to see a sequel to Access Denied made in VR with a more intuitive control scheme.
All things considered though, Access Denied still manages to offer a couple of hours worth of entertainment to fans of the genre at a budget price.… Expand