Vane

Vane follows in the footsteps of many arty puzzle-platformers before it, but a lack of a strong voice and purpose keep it from being great.

An ungainly but hypnotic exploration of worlds in the making and unmaking, and a fresh spin on the ethos of Team Ico's games and Journey.

Given this game's artistry, the child is a surprisingly ugly thing. It moves like a mole through molasses. Traversal is a major part of the game's puzzle landscape, but the child never feels entirely connected to the ground, dragging its feet through rocks, or floating weirdly over perches.

Vane's atmosphere, music, world, and abstract story are affecting and strange, but the bugs and design lead to unnecessary frustration

Whether you’re a big indie fan or a newbie like me, Vane is well worth your time.

Video games have really changed as a storytelling medium. what was once a casual dash from left-to-right, dropping baddies and collecting shiny objects, opened up into new realms of drama, narrative and even philosophical messages. Of course, that doesn't make these games immediately any better than the goofy platformers and shmups of gaming's formative years, but it has been amazing to see the many different ways gaming has been adapted by talented designers to tell all manner of dark, abstract and inquisitive tales.Into a busy market of chin-stroking titles such as The Missing, Gris and Gone Home comes Vane, a new PS4 adventure from Tokyo outfit Friend or Foe. Vane, like its brethren, eschews typical action gameplay to present a mood-piece adventure, not dissimilar from the work done by Team ICO. Vane wants to put freedom back in the hands of the player, letting them engage in a strange, mystical journey - without hand-holding - and with player-led discovery being the ultimate prize.

Vane is exhausting, ponderous, bewildering, endlessly frustrating, needlessly obtuse, narratively unsatisfying, mechanically clumsy, and technically shoddy, all shot through a camera so ill-equipped to deal with the rudimentary task of showing you what's happening on screen that you might as well pop a blindfold on and try using The Force.

Despite its deceptively intriguing prologue, Vane quickly goes from a journey of discovery to a laborious chore, mainly due to the abundance of technical issues and a lack of a decent save system.

There is nothing about Vane that redeems it. This review reads like a list of complaints instead of constructive criticism because there isn't even anything to be constructive about. It's a game that's a challenge to play simply because it challenges your patience.

It's clear what sort of tone or manner of presentation Vane is going for despite its short run-time and undeniable vacancy of explanation.