Now Playing: GRIS

GRIS is an indie platform adventure game. You play as a mysterious girl who must traverse a mysterious world in search of four mysterious lights that will restore colour to the world and banish a mysterious foe. GRIS, at its heart, is about the journey to overcome grief and depression. The foe you face throughout the game symbolises the despair that seeks to drag you back down into the dark, away from the light.

Visually, GRIS is fantastic. It’s one of the most beautiful games you’ll ever play. And it’s a timeless beauty – you’ll always be able to play and admire the visuals of GRIS. It’s the kind of game where you’re always reaching for the screen shot key. The audio in GRIS is also fantastic. Purely in terms of visuals and sound, GRIS really knocks it out of the park.

The problem with GRIS, unfortunately, is that as incredible as it looks and sounds, I found it kind of boring to actually play. The ‘gameplay’ of GRIS primarily consists of holding down the analogue stick to the left or the right. At times, my thumb began to ache. I also kept hitting the jump button – not because I needed to, but in the futile hope it would speed my progress.

 

There’s a lot of long sections of GRIS where all you do is run from one side of the screen to the other. The backgrounds may be absolutely gorgeous but that doesn’t change the fact that all you’re doing is pushing in one direction on a control stick. I’ve written before about how video games are an interactive medium – and that interactivity is the key strength of the medium. How we interact with the experience – the gameplay – is always going to be key.

As beautiful as GRIS may be, the gameplay – the way we interact with its world and story – isn’t particularly engaging. At times, the game transitions into non-playable scenes where all you can do is sit back and watch. As a player, you don’t really feel involved in the experience. GRIS would be so much more effective – at least to me – if I was an active participant in the struggle.

That’s the strength of this interactive medium. I’m a part of the journey. I’m the one guiding this character through this world and helping them overcome this challenge. I feel like I’ve helped them reach their goal. But in GRIS, most the time, I just felt like like a passive observer.

 

The levels are all very linear – there’s typically only a single path to follow. There’s no real puzzles to think through in order to progress. The platform segments aren’t challenging. There’s no combat. There’s no real sense of danger. It’s impossible to fail. GRIS, by design, is a very sedate, relaxed experience.

And that’s fine – I’m not saying it needed boss battles or difficulty settings – but it did need to engage the player through its gameplay, and that’s where GRIS sadly stumbles. Reaching the end of GRIS – overcoming this foe – would have felt so much more meaningful and satisfying if I’d felt as if I’d played my part in the experience. It I felt like I’d been tested. But I never did. All I did was hold down a stick and jump on occasion.

To be fair, GRIS does attempt to inject a little more variety into its gameplay with some abilities you unlock as you progress – but they don’t do much more than change the way you move from left to right. They don’t increase the complexity of the level design, forcing you to combine these abilities to traverse tricky platforms or solve clever puzzles. They save GRIS from being a total bore to play, but that’s about all they do.

 

I feel kind of bad writing this review because I really do like GRIS. I love the style, its visuals and sound. I love the way it incorporates its themes into its design. I love how universal it is – anyone can sit and play GRIS and understand what it means.

But what GRIS seemed to forget is that the strength of this medium is how we can connect the player to the experience. By limiting player interaction, by frequently removing player interaction and by not testing the player to any degree, GRIS is, overall, a very beautiful but also a very disconnected experience. On sale, I’d still recommend GRIS just for the visuals and audio alone. And maybe you’ll get more out of it than I did. But as a game, I think GRIS is sadly lacking.

6/10