Umurangi Generation

“As I played the first few levels, I kept thinking, 'gee, all it's missing is some Jet Set Radio-esque music!' because it was just sort of inoffensive, generic background music.”

“Play if you like taking hideous pictures of an ugly world while listening to repetitive music, I guess.”

“A couple of songs have already been in other albums of the composer and sometimes don’t seem to fit well with the scenario of the level, giving it rather more of a playlist-feeling than adding to the atmosphere.”

“The graphics are god awful.”

“The performance isn't great, even though everything is low poly and low res, on top of an awful forced graphics shader that lowers your internal resolution to god-knows-what making everything incredibly jaggy and consequentially seeing anything beyond a few meters is a nightmare, so good luck finding those collectible film rolls without crawling on the floor like you're looking for your lenses!”

“I sometimes like low-fi aesthetics, but in this case it goes directly against the core of the game - text becomes insanely aliased when it is very important for the political message, the platforming is very buggy (with the character getting stuck whenever it collides with something, the double jump being finicky and momentum based, some things look like platforming but turn out to have no collider, etc.) and even the photo mechanic, when it's about capturing specific objects is too permissive and you can easily take a picture of a special objective by mistake - sometimes while the object is obscured by something else.”

“Great art style, cool concept, but sadly the gameplay is quite boring.”

“The gameplay is sadly the worst part of this game.”

“It's an absolute shame seeing how much love was clearly put into the aesthetics of this title but the literal mechanics trying to glue it all falls apart from the molasses levels of clunky movement speed and bugginess.”

“However, the hamfisted and forced down one's throat message of 'government bad, all cops are bastards', let alone an entire location (the final one in the DLC) devoted to protests, forcing you to look at the poorly made parodies of already existing memes, but with leftist political messages, personally really destroyed the immersion and the atmosphere the game strived for.”

“It's experimental art style coupled with the atmosphere of despair and useless struggle in the face of a nearing end creates a chilly experience.”

“Even though I knew it was optional, I still had a hard time ignoring the timer and found myself rushing through the levels instead of soaking in the atmosphere and the story.”

“I sometimes like low-fi aesthetics, but in this case it goes directly against the core of the game - text becomes insanely aliased when it is very important for the political message, the platforming is very buggy (with the character getting stuck whenever it collides with something, the double jump being finicky and momentum-based, some things look like platforming but turn out to have no collider, etc.) and even the photo mechanic, when it's about capturing specific objects, is too permissive and you can easily take a picture of a special objective by mistake - sometimes while the object is obscured by something else.”

“There are a few glitches that I experienced that hindered my enjoyment slightly; the detection on some of the objectives was really janky. Sometimes I would take a photo miles away from the objective and it would mark that off the checklist, and sometimes I'd be right in front of it and it wouldn't count at all. Occasionally, I would walk into an object and get sent flying 100 meters in the air, which was cool occasionally, but most of the time would send me off the map and respawn me at the beginning with a 2-second time penalty, which was less cool.”

“The movement is clunky and occasionally glitches out (things like having gravity affect you while still having 0 y movement, causing the moment you get to move downwards to make the character shoot down with far too much y velocity).”

“I have submitted my request for a refund as it has no replay value.”

“It's incredible how heavily the narrative of 'for a game about observation the timer is really polluting the entire experience' as if the timer isn't only a necessity in the pursuit of a perfect file and as if the levels aren't designed with the intention of replayability.”

“If you factor in replayability, o.s.t.”

“But even if you do like the vibe, hunting for the objectives in each level is very tedious.”

“If you're struggling to do everything in 10 minutes, this will become very tedious.”

“Personally, I found the bounty aspect of the game rather tedious, and the timer even more so.”

“Technically awful, janky physics, terrible performance, unobtainable achievement that requires downgrading the game version to get it, multiple game-breaking bugs like clipping through surfaces, some objects not spawning properly, or an infinite black screen that prevents me from finishing the DLC... for a moment I had hope, seeing dev posts about fixing everything—but that was 3 years ago now.”

“The performance isn't great, even though everything is low poly and low res, on top of an awful forced graphics shader that lowers your internal resolution to god-knows-what, making everything incredibly jaggy. Consequently, seeing anything beyond a few meters is a nightmare, so good luck finding those collectible film rolls without crawling on the floor like you're looking for your lenses!”

“Sadly, the game isn’t optimized very well.”

“I must stop this review here as I have started to physically shake with rage at the lack of sensitivity displayed by this obvious cash grab.”

“You cannot photograph the subway crowded with face-masked citizens corralled by automatic rifle-toting soldiers without the neon billboards advertising escapism via end-of-the-world movies and military enlistment propaganda.”

“I recorded every moment I could--pictures of the blood-soaked survivors gathered 'round over some American-style fast food, under an advertisement that advised them to 'unleash your inner child!'.”