Posted May 05, 2019
The following review would normally be written in the review section. Due to technical issues, it is being written here instead.
It is pretty at moments, and well animated. These are about all the positive aspects that can be thought of.
Maize is not a funny game. It has writing that feels like it was written in a foreign language first and then abysmally translated into English, but surprise: The game was made in Canada.
Many of the jokes land in the sort of way that make it seem they asked a robot to generate jokes. There's no understanding of comedic timing, punchline, or logical comedy. It attempts to be dadaist in some form, but fails to understand the concepts of absurdist, nonsense, and irrationality. I do not mean this in a snobbish way, I mean the game fails at this at a basic writing level. Not even "woohoo, cartoon zany!" way.
While some may call it rude to class this as a "Walking Simulator", that really is all it ends up being. You collect a clutter of absurdly pointless items, of which you are free to peruse the witless writing (which would have been better as kindling), the few inventory puzzles appear to be attempting to take the piss of things which may occur in Myst or other such beautiful voids; but unlike the puzzles in Myst which run on an internal logic and are well detailed in the why, how, and what they are, no puzzles are explained at even a base conceptual level in Maize.
Rather, you find corn oil, pour it in a previously plugged sink for no discernible reason, and then use that filth to get a severed hand out of a glove. A lot of the "puzzles" in the game add up to inane inventory sandwiches which seem to only exist to make the developers laugh while nobody is in on the joke.
While watching the game play out, one gets the feeling that the creators came up with names and then built concepts around them. For example, there's Bob the Slob and that's nearly his entire character. In fact, I feel the writer was having an off day, seeing as a large amount of the script can be summed up in two words: "Stupid" or "Idiot."
All in all, I'm finding my will to continue this review getting sapped by apathy, so I'll conclude like this: This game had potential which was entirely squandered by a massive wave of misunderstanding and the developers getting lost in their own concepts.
It is pretty at moments, and well animated. These are about all the positive aspects that can be thought of.
Maize is not a funny game. It has writing that feels like it was written in a foreign language first and then abysmally translated into English, but surprise: The game was made in Canada.
Many of the jokes land in the sort of way that make it seem they asked a robot to generate jokes. There's no understanding of comedic timing, punchline, or logical comedy. It attempts to be dadaist in some form, but fails to understand the concepts of absurdist, nonsense, and irrationality. I do not mean this in a snobbish way, I mean the game fails at this at a basic writing level. Not even "woohoo, cartoon zany!" way.
While some may call it rude to class this as a "Walking Simulator", that really is all it ends up being. You collect a clutter of absurdly pointless items, of which you are free to peruse the witless writing (which would have been better as kindling), the few inventory puzzles appear to be attempting to take the piss of things which may occur in Myst or other such beautiful voids; but unlike the puzzles in Myst which run on an internal logic and are well detailed in the why, how, and what they are, no puzzles are explained at even a base conceptual level in Maize.
Rather, you find corn oil, pour it in a previously plugged sink for no discernible reason, and then use that filth to get a severed hand out of a glove. A lot of the "puzzles" in the game add up to inane inventory sandwiches which seem to only exist to make the developers laugh while nobody is in on the joke.
While watching the game play out, one gets the feeling that the creators came up with names and then built concepts around them. For example, there's Bob the Slob and that's nearly his entire character. In fact, I feel the writer was having an off day, seeing as a large amount of the script can be summed up in two words: "Stupid" or "Idiot."
All in all, I'm finding my will to continue this review getting sapped by apathy, so I'll conclude like this: This game had potential which was entirely squandered by a massive wave of misunderstanding and the developers getting lost in their own concepts.
