Valley

If you own an Xbox One, you need to experience Valley. Despite the blurry visuals, it’s an unforgettable game which you’ll love.

Valley is a fun and enjoyable game that will keep you engaged for the majority of the five to six hour journey.

For a game that centers on life and death, it’s odd that there’s virtually no life within its world that you actually care about. Because of this it’s hard to become truly invested in it, and the constant ‘stop and go’ doesn’t help when you’re trying to keep momentum and fluidity constant. While there are some reasons for some to play through more than once, and find all of the secrets, I found that I was content after seeing the credits roll. Regardless of all its shortcomings though, I’m glad I experienced Valley and got to explore its intriguing world.

When it embraces the full weight of its gameplay mechanics, it’s an enchanting experience. It hits speed bumps often and comes dangerously close to losing its way, but concludes with two strong acts. Valley is one of those gaming oddities with unique highs unlike almost anything else, which makes the lows worth tolerating.

Valley feels like a good first act. Despite obstacles that tend to abruptly kill your momentum, running and bounding through wilderness remained exciting.

Lasting only 3-4 hours, $20 is a steep price for an experience that leaves you bored and frustrated as often as it proves to be an enjoyable experience.

It starts very promising. But eventually Blue Isle lost a grip on the direction this had to go. And at the latest when you experience that the life-and-death mechanics are superficial all that is left is to experience the interesting story and the sometimes beautiful visuals.

Worse than the sum of its parts. Valley is a game that tries to do a lot of things, but doesn't does anything specially right albeit offers some fun moments while exploring.

There is nothing inherently broken in the game, but there is plenty that could be fixed. Valley is fun (at times), but is simply not polished enough to maintain consistent amounts of said fun.