The first time through, I was impressed listening to McAvoy and Ridley play off of one another as a married couple - one half of which was seemingly stuck in an impossible situation. The hard part comes after that, when you have to listen to the same voice lines over, and over, and over again to reach the right moment in the loop. Thankfully, getting back to the beginning of the loop is as easy as walking out of the apartment. Since the game loops, when you miss a window or perform an incorrect action, that’s it, it’s time to restart. The downside is that when you get stuck, it’s not just one area you have to search around. That’s counting the few times that I ended up getting stuck and had to search around for the next clue in the puzzle. That doesn’t sound too bad, but consider that the whole of 12 Minutes took me around five and a half hours to beat. Since the game loops, when you miss your window or perform an incorrect action, that’s it, you have to restart. I found it out of dumb luck, but anyone else may be stuck for much longer looking for it. That’s the case for one of 12 Minutes‘ key items, a pivotal trinket that can change the course of the game. There are times where you’ll be looking for something, unaware that it’s hidden under another object, or that you need to look at another object to see something else. Your apartment isn’t that big, but once you can see it from an eagle-eye perspective, you realize how small it is, lending to that sense of claustrophobia.Īnd while that’s an impressive use of a top-down perspective, in practice it makes the game somewhat harder. The top-down perspective is jarring and makes the feeling of being trapped in a time loop more constraining.
It’s the first instance of the game’s style clashing with its function. It’s a point-and-click game with an almost entirely top-down camera angle. The goal of the game seemingly is to escape this loop.īut 12 Minutes‘ style isn’t like most games. Then you’re back in your apartment, minutes before the cop shows up. However, an officer shows up, puts the two of you in handcuffs, and kills you. You have a wife who loves you, and she surprises you with news that she’s pregnant. You’re a man, some nameless schmuck who’s seemingly living a charmed life. A night at the moviesġ2 Minutes isn’t complicated at first. However, it’s a departure from the norm, and while it fails in some cases, it exceeds in others. To put it plainly, 12 Minutes doesn’t execute everything a video game should have with perfection. I was overjoyed listening to the performances of James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe (especially Willem Dafoe), but because of 12 Minutes‘ core loop mechanic, they stopped being a source of immersion and became one of irritation. It’s experimental and quickly sucks you into its mystery. While 12 Minutes has all the appearance of a movie, it’s not one - and its traits as a game are what ends up letting it down.
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