Now I know what you're thinking, and no this isn't a joke. No I'm not going to review literally every game at once or anything like that.
But I am, however, going to review Everything, an interesting entry on the PS4 list that's also available on the PC.
First off: This isn't going to be a normal review with the regular structure, because this game doesn't fit a normal game's criteria. For example, Everything doesn't have any story to it whatsoever, so it wouldn't make sense to critique it for such.
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Idea:
Alright, so we'll start off with where the game absolutely shines: the idea, the concept, pretty much everything that makes the game what it is. So as I said there's no story or no real narrative, so there's nothing to spoil here. The idea of the game is that you start off as a sheep (or other type of animal), but you can change your perspective and be anything from a tree, to a rock, to a car, building, galaxy, or something beyond microscopic. But you're not just seeing things from that perspective...you can also move around, interact with other objects via singing, group objects/beings like you together and move as a group (as well as dance), and continuously shift your perspective. It's a game that touts the idea of you being...well everything, and it definitely lives up to its name.
Graphics:
Okay, this is a hit or miss area, but you'll need to understand some things going into this. First off, the walking animations are...odd. There are no leg movements except for the bugs; four legged animals like deer or cows don't walk, they...roll. No, really, they roll:
And it's not even a fluid fast type of roll, it's like walking movement speed, but rolling. Likewise, things like frogs move like puppets in the aspect that they don't move their legs. All of them just hop in one big motion without any part of them actually moving.
So you might be put off a bit by the odd movement, or like me you'll find it amusing for no given reason except that it just looks odd enough to be charming.
But here's another side to this whole game: It's one continuous gigantic world. Actually, if anything Everything is the only true "open" world game in existence that I can think of.
Now you're probably scratching your heads and thinking of what on earth I mean:
*Once the game is loaded, there are no loading screens.
*Every environment is looped, meaning if you go too far, you'll just eventually come back to where you were.
*You can go from animal environment, to bug perspective environment, to microscopic environment, to beyond microscopic environment...and likewise from animal environment, to large animal environment, to landmass sized, to world sized, to galaxy sized. The most interesting part is that even the sizes go in an infinite loop: You can go from galaxy sized to beyond microscopic sized and work back up to animal-sized...and vice versa. This means that you can start off as a sheep, work your way down to the size of the 3D/2D plane, and then when you descend smaller, you're the size of a galaxy. For a game that plays with perspective, it's quite a unique perspective in its own to use that kind of infinite loop. Not to mention, in areas such as the microscopic or bug-sized environments, the game really appreciates showing you the scale of it all. I went from being a Butterfly at one point, to being a thing of pollen from a flower, and the game easily switched perspectives while giving you a clear view of the now massive butterfly still nearby.
*When in the Galaxy perspective, you can descend on that specific galaxy, giving you different worlds than the last galaxy. Likewise, you can descend on each of the different worlds, and get different objects/areas that you may not have gotten. Some worlds may be full of deserts, others may be lush and full of different plants and animals, and some may be bustling with factories and other modern types of decor. And likewise, in all of those different worlds you can increase your size, or decrease it in the touch of a button to find new objects/creatures in the different environments.
Given all of that, I'm actually pretty quick to forgive the fact that the graphics aren't "Wow!" but I mean even then, the graphics aren't terrible either. But it does, however, look pretty in a way. No, the graphics aren't the most amazing thing ever, but the point is that it does still look pretty...and all of the different environments do look really nice.
Sounds/Music:
Alright, let's be honest, you're going to be more into the fact that you're switching objects constantly to pay attention to any music (I actually can't recall at the moment if there is any...). The sounds, however, are pretty decent. Every type of object has its own..."voice" when you choose to sing. The different sounds to let you know when your current choice of object is cataloged is pleasant sounding. Unlike graphics, this isn't the most major part of the game, so it has little impact.
Gameplay:
Now we come to one of the most important parts. So, as I said this isn't a normal game with a clear objective. This is a game that was made for when you want to kill time exploring things. So naturally, the gameplay is going to reflect this. As I mentioned, there are little things like being able to group together like-objects, and being able to sing and dance. These have absolutely no impact on gameplay whatsoever, as they're just fun little side things. If anything, the main objective of the game is to find and become every single object that it lists. When you change your perspective to a new object, it'll appear as "? ? ?" and will be cataloged when you move around as that object for a bit. As of writing this, I've jumped around to about 325 objects...and that's only %23 percent of the total. That means there's roughly 1413 total objects (and you're jumping from one to another a time), and I've still barely dented it being 2 hours into the game.
To say the least, it definitely prides on being time consuming. If i kept up at that pace, we're talking 10+ hours that would be spent trying to find every object. But as games tend to prove (especially procedural generated ones), once you hit around 70%, the objects that you haven't found become 10X harder to find. So that 10+ hours could easily double.
But it's not really...boring, either. Sure, it's not exciting, but I still have been enjoying it. Even when not actually trying to find objects, it's nice being able to take control of a bird or even butterfly and fly around. Likewise, it can be fun grouping together with scorpions and singing while watching smaller animals like ants flee in terror (complete with a skull icon because they know scorpions would kill them).
Likewise, throughout the game you'll find different objects that will just say random thoughts, access to moves that weren't open to you before, as well as interesting audio logs from British philosopher Alan Watts. He's basically there to explain the philosophical components of...well, everything, and his logs can be found randomly from certain objects. They're nothing about the game specifically, if anything they're more like tidbits from lectures that he's given centered around a specific area...such as universe-related lecture logs found when you're the size of a galaxy. And they're actually pretty decent and fun to listen to while you're traversing the endless world of Everything.
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Overall, is it amazing in the same way as The Witcher? No, because it's not priding itself on being in that sort of scale. Now compared to a game like Flower, definitely. It's not a game that you're playing because it has a goal, or because it has a story or interesting characters or levels or anything like that. It's a game you're playing to kill time, and because you appreciate the concept that it's going for. If you're going into it for pure excitement like you would Uncharted, then this is definitely not the game for you. However, if you like games that pride on different types of exploration and don't have an "endgame," then I recommend that you try Everything.
