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Vane

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http://www.vg247.com/2014/09/25/vane-is-a-new-adventure-game-from-former-the-last-guardian-developers/

 

Vane is a single-player game in the works from Friend & Foe, a studio made up of former The Last Guardian developers.

 

Originally announced in June, the games tells the story of a child with “an odd ability stuck in a strange land,” which contains a “dangerous natural environment inhabited by a strange civilization.”

 

The open world adventure game makes use of mystery and exploration gameplay elements. Puzzle-solving and other features yet to be revealed will also play a role.

 

The game will be released “when it is ready” on PC. Other platforms are to be announced.

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Resurrecting this from the depths as this game is finally seeing a release this coming Tuesday (15th January) on PS4.

It's been a long time coming and from the bits and pieces of info that trickled out over the years, it seems as though the game went through many iterations before Friend & Foe managed to nail down where they wanted to go with the title.

It's looking like it'll fall into the same sort of category as Journey and, more on the nose with this one, Aer: Memories of Old. So narrative focused with little to no spoken words and envirnomental puzzles as both the crow and the boy. At least that's what I take away from it from the gameplay demo at PSX from 2017.

I'm intrigued with it anyway, enough to give it a go as I've got it pre-ordered. I suspect it may not hit all the right notes but it looks interesting and I'm always up for supporting solid indie titles.

Anyone else interested or is it something that many have forgotten about? I know I had till I saw the release trailer back in December.

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I had forgotten about it until they showed the new trailer (not sure if it was at The Game Awards or the Kinds Funny showcase) but I added it to my list during Sony's E3 conference years ago, looks like my sort of game. Might not pick it up on launch but I'll definitely pick it up before the year is out. 

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So I've played about 2 hours of this so far this morning and my initial thoughts are:

• The controls are awful as both the crow and the boy. Flying is fiddly; you'll either find it hard to get get to where you want to and to get moving even with constantly tapping the X button (something you'll have to do a lot) or you'll end up turning on a dime and going off in a direction you weren't intending. The former is what you're more likely to encounter though and it really makes getting about the open environments a pain, though it's not just the controls that are troublesome when it comes to this. As the boy, it feels like you're controlling the boy from The Last Guardian.

• The camera is similarly awful. As the crow, it's either too far away or stupidly close up. When you've got some speed, the camera tucks in just above the crow's wing and so a large portion of your field of view is obscured because of the crow. As the boy, the camera is constantly snagging on the environment and freaking out in tight spaces. Trying to reposition the camera feels like it takes an age as it's so slow as well.

• It all feels very obscure, more so than the games that this has taken inspiration from (I've seen comparisons to Journey but it feels more like Rime but without any of the standout moments so far). I can't get any grasp of what's happening in the story and the moment to moment gameplay just feels a little flat so far.

• Saving relies solely on the auto save feature which would be fine if it kicked in after things happen but it only saves after each section so if you encounter a glitch (as I have twice) or you come off of the game for whatever reason, you'll have to restart that section from scratch again.

So far it's not been a particularly amazing experience. It all just feels a little hollow and I'm not sure if that'll change as I go through the last hour or so that's left (I'm presuming that there isn't a huge amount left on my play through). Not something I'd say for people to jump on straight away, especially at £17.99. Disappointing really, but after 4 years and several iterations I guess it was to be expected.

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