Even The Ocean Review (PlayStation 4)

Even the Ocean is a narrative action platformer about balancing the Light and Dark energies that hold the world together. From the creators of Anodyne comes a grand story about Aliph, a lowly power plant technician for Whiteforge City, who finds her world turned upside-down after a routine maintenance trip goes awry. Now, working directly with Whiteforge’s Mayor Biggs to face an unknown menace, Aliph must navigate her newfound power and influence to save the city.

Pros:

• Chunky pixel art graphics.
• 455.4mb download size.
• Platinum trophy.
• Game settings-no screen flashes, no screen shakes, float movement, no dying, pass through gates, sound fx captions, helper blocks, milder energy, no hold shield lock, cloud indicator, disable 3D overworld and disable dialogue sounds.
• Speed run settings-fast dialogue) act and area cards, skip screen fades, skip death animation, turn off save point autosave and press down to fall off a wall.
• Five save slots.
• Four games modes-Full game, story (skip dexterity based levels), gauntlet (only do the dexterity based levels), and warp (start anywhere in the game at any time).
• 16 areas to play through.
• How to the playbook.
• Journal-keeps track of everything you discover.
• Puzzle platformer gameplay.
• Save points in the game that autosave or you can press a button and choose which save the file to use.
• Tutorials will occasionally pop up.
• The whole game is told via a storyteller who will pop up and give context or weight to a moment.
• Played in a 2D world.
• Alignment-light and dark alignments. When you touch light or dark object your alignment will change and going strong dark means you move faster but strong light means you jump higher.
• Question marks-they appear in the world and can give stories or descriptions of the location.
• Actions- you can wall jump, jump, slide, and use your shield to block projectiles.
• Constant save points that also act as respawn points.
• Death-when you go full light or full dark it’s game over. Your bar goes up and down as explained but it would also go down when taking damage.
• 3D overworld where you can freely investigate and uncover the world.
• In-game pixel art cutscenes.

Cons:

• Real slow starter.
• Can’t just skip conversations.
• Stop-start action.
• No waypoints or markers.
• Basic puzzle solving.
• Cutscenes can go on for ages.
• Forgettable story.
• Doesn’t play out in fullscreen which is fine but the border art is bland.
• A lot of cases where you are fenced in until you do a particular action or speak to a certain person.
• All the ways you can travel around a level has been done many times before.
• Not that engaging.