Always Sometimes Monsters

 PlayStation 4
User Score
4.0

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 5 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 5
  3. Negative: 3 out of 5
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  1. Glamazon
    Nov 25, 2017
    4
    Always Sometimes Monsters left me feeling uneasy, but only some of the unease was intentional. If you try to weigh the risks and rewards of your decisions, you’re going to have a horrible time. No matter what you choose, you’re made to feel less than, perhaps living up to its title.

    You’re presented with a cruel and cynical world throughout, with far too few moments of true altruism in    Always Sometimes Monsters left me feeling uneasy, but only some of the unease was intentional. If you try to weigh the risks and rewards of your decisions, you’re going to have a horrible time. No matter what you choose, you’re made to feel less than, perhaps living up to its title.

    You’re presented with a cruel and cynical world throughout, with far too few moments of true altruism in a narrative preaching some objective impossibility of a selfless act. And then, at least with the ending my choices led to, they pull a twist that throws the entire take into a pointless waste of your time and emotional energy.

    Always Sometimes Monsters succeeds most of all at being emotionally draining, but the fascinating first day is let down by the days that follow. On the outset, AWS presents a few progressive and refreshing ideas, betraying them in its cynical simulation of reality. It’s worth playing exclusively as an interesting narrative experience, but try to take it slowly less you feel too awful and its cynicism starts rubbing off.    … Expand
  2. SuperkenGaming
    Oct 13, 2017
    7
    Always sometimes monsters
    Not always the hero
    Always sometimes monsters is a bit of a life simulator where you play as a writer... the game starts with you choosing a character and then choosing that characters boyfriend or girlfriend… And then it smacks you with life you lose your job as writer your partner leaves you you’re evicted from your apartment and you getting a wedding    Always sometimes monsters
    Not always the hero
    Always sometimes monsters is a bit of a life simulator where you play as a writer...
    the game starts with you choosing a character and then choosing that characters boyfriend or girlfriend…
    And then it smacks you with life
    you lose your job as writer
    your partner leaves you
    you’re evicted from your apartment and you getting a wedding invite to guess who’s wedding?
    And you spend the 9 and a half hours of this game trying to get to your exes wedding
    Being broke and now homeless, doing this is no easy feat, so it’s up to you to get from city to city by helping out characters around the world, or you could straight up just buy a bus ticket..
    Either way it’s a day in and day out grind of hustling…
    You can get a job chopping up animals or tofu...
    Do odd jobs around the city for a few dollars or invest in sandwich stocks at the bacon shop... but there’s more fun to be had in solving the problems of the town and its inhabitants
    The game does a great job of making the day to day grind feel real, of finally thinking you almost have enough to pay rent and then realizing, right.. I have to eat… spending my days’ worth of work money on some food so I can fall asleep...
    And while sleeping you’ll occasionally have a dream about your ex... Indicating you may not quite be over them... and your intentions for arriving to this wedding might not be so pure... or maybe they are... it’s up to you... the game is full of choice
    from writing about your day before you go to sleep to making choices around the world to get on peoples good sides so that they’ll scratch you’re back later on… while at the same time making sure a choice you make for one person doesn’t affect another..
    The game isn’t in your face about choices mattering, but every once in a while I got smacked with the realization that if I made a different choice earlier... this solution to get to the next town probably wouldn’t have worked…
    this cycle of rise and grind continues through all 9 and a half hrs. just with different towns and different jobs.. Jobs that feel as tedious as they would in real life…
    So the game does a great job at immersing you into its world…
    however I feel the game overstays its welcome a bit... there’s a section in the middle where the game wants you to get involved in politics for a town I had no connection to and I didn’t care for…
    This town is when I really started to get bored with the grind of getting through the day to day with this game and just saved up for a bus tickets as fast as I could ignored its problems and left to the next town…
    A town a little more interesting but still… I was over the gameplay and grind so I rushed through getting out of this section as well, trying to get to this wedding as fast as I could…
    Performance wise, I did run into a crash every couple of hrs, and the game would freeze up for a few seconds every now and then, but nothing too annoying to deal with
    Despite overstaying its welcome, Always sometimes monsters does a great job at feeling alive..
    The world feels lived in, immerses you and makes you think about yourself in ways that few video games do…
    It’s worth picking up and playing through, but I don’t believe its best played in one sitting or even 2 like I tried to do
    I give Always sometimes monsters
    a 7/10    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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No score yet - based on 1 Critic Review

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. Digitally Downloaded
    Oct 31, 2017
    80
    Get past the crashes and the tonal inconsistency, and Always Sometimes Monsters has a moving and thought-provoking story to tell. It’s rough and unpleasant, but empathetic and human at the same time. It’s a game about surviving under a capitalist system that doesn’t care about you, and about what happens when people fall through the cracks.
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