It invites you to let your mind wander and be swept away by its aesthetics while making precious few demands of your conscious mind. If we have a counterpart to 'background music' in games, it is Abzu. Abzu asks so little of the player mechanically that it feels like we are more witness than participant. Your character does have a surprisingly affecting relationship with a great white shark, but it's not nearly enough to emotionally ground the game. There are hieroglyphs throughout the ocean that should fill in the blanks, but I'll have to rely on players smarter than me to fully explain their meaning. It's not buoyed much by the narrative, which is so abstract I've played the thing twice and still have only the vaguest idea of who the diver is or what she is doing. As I've said, the astounding presentation fills much of that gap, but not completely. Speaking from a purely mechanical perspective, Abzu is profoundly unengaging. There are a couple of switches to flip, though calling them puzzles would be a profound overstatement. There are mines that can be easily avoided, and only slow you down a bit if you fail to do so. You'll find small robots you can use to open doors. You'll swim through nearly the whole game, only stopping on land for a few brief moments. The threat of making a mistake provided an intensity and, by extension, emotional investment that Abzu never quite reaches.Д®ven when you're exploring freely, there's little going on mechanically. Journey was never hard, per se, but it required a bit of proficiency to keep the action moving.

No matter how visually or symphonically rich these sequences may be, they're robbed of a bit of intensity by the fact that they ask for little input from the player. The combination of Wintory's soaring yet melancholically whimsical score and the lavishly colored groups of fish, dolphins and whales that swim by your side make for a thrilling spectacle that would seem at home in a Miyazaki film. The highlights of Abzu are several sequences where the diver is scooped up by a rushing current and sent careening through the ocean. (Did I mention you can grab a dolphin's fin and ride it? Because you totally can.) It's the main draw of the game, and frankly, just experiencing this world is enough to recommend Abzu.

There's not a square foot of this ocean that doesn't pulse with beautiful, colorful life. Manta rays glide lazily past the player massive schools of fish swim in dizzying cyclones dolphins play and flit circles around the solitary diver. Abzu, however, is literally teeming with life. The world of Journey was so solitary that the occasional presence of a second player felt like an oasis. There are, however, plenty of important divergences. just experiencing this world is enough to recommend Abzu The games also share a composer, Austin Wintory. Its creative director is Matt Nava, Journey's art director. The game's pedigree makes the comparison even more sound. Also like Journey, Abzu can be completed in a couple of hours.

Story isn't explicitly conveyed, but rather alluded to in the environment. In Abzu, you are an unspeaking protagonist who only interacts with the world via sonic pings.

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