Viewfinder Melted My Mind within the Identical Approach That Portal Did
Viewfinder is the newest first-person puzzle recreation to slowly soften my mind and have me rethinking the way in which I see the world round me, even after I’ve walked away from the tv. It follows within the lineage of brain-scramblers like Maquette, Superliminal, Manifold Backyard, and The Witness. However the one it’s jogged my memory most of is 2007’s Portal, and any comparability to Valve’s masterpiece is just about the best reward I can provide a recreation.
To dig into something too particular relating to Viewfinder can be a disservice to anybody who intends on enjoying it. A lot of the enjoyment I received from it stemmed from seeing what new form the builders would mould utilizing the clay of the core mechanics. Each new revelation and “aha!” second introduced with it a brand new, wider understanding of what was attainable in any given puzzle.
Very early on within the recreation, you’re launched to a magical Polaroid digicam. With it, you’ll be able to take snapshots of something within the surroundings, maintain up that flat picture in entrance of you, after which out of the blue manifest its contents into the 3D world. This may have you ever creating bridges, replicating batteries, and discovering methods round impenetrable partitions very quickly.
This was all proven off within the demo just a few months again, and I truthfully thought that this was the place the boundaries of Viewfinder’s puzzles would stretch. However as I inched ahead all through its five-hour marketing campaign, I used to be in fixed awe of how the crew saved bringing recent concepts to the core idea of perspective. And whereas that runtime may appear quick to a few of you, I for one was thrilled at Viewfinder’s brevity. In an period the place so many video games really feel padded out and peak far too early, Viewfinder by no means ran out of momentum, which is one other factor it has in widespread with the unique Portal.
Whereas I used to be offered on the sport after its aforementioned demo just a few months again, that small slice not noted the core framing gadget during which all of those puzzles exist. With out spoilers, I actually dug this general construction, and it offered a pleasant anchor to the brain-teasers in the identical means that GLaDOS did in Portal or the arc of the connection did in Maquette. That framing gadget can also be much more prescient in 2023 than the builders had in all probability meant, so kudos to them for that. Hideo Kojima can be proud.
Including to Viewfinder’s fixed psychological stimuli are its charming visuals and colourful palette. The sport’s disparate phases floating in an ethereal void deliver with them a serene calm. They really feel like they exist within a late-‘90s screensaver in the identical means Neon White’s Toonami-fueled depiction of the afterlife did, which is an aesthetic that I’ll all the time be on board for. That is additionally toyed with in neat methods, like the way you’ll stumble throughout sure images with a very totally different visible type, and seamlessly traversing between them shows an identical degree of creativity to one thing like on this yr’s Spider-Man: Throughout the Spider-Verse.
However the ultimate factor about Viewfinder that basically tied the entire recreation collectively was its great rewind characteristic. At any level in any puzzle, you’ll be able to maintain down a button to rewind every thing you’ve accomplished because the begin, stopping and resuming at any second you want. You may also double-tap the button to immediately return to the final time you both took {a photograph} or positioned one within the surroundings, making it a breeze to undo any dangerous selections you may need made. This characteristic helps encourage experimentation and makes certain that the sport doesn’t punish you for making an attempt out one thing extraordinarily dumb, which I actually did on many events. This rewind characteristic, together with Ultimate Fantasy XVI’s Energetic Time Lore, are two of 2023’s mechanics that I’d like to see develop into commonplace amongst their respective genres.
By this level, you in all probability know if Viewfinder is a recreation for you. In case you discovered your self getting misplaced within the 3D puzzle-scapes of any of the video games I’ve talked about on this piece, notably Portal, I can’t advocate this one sufficient. Go in blind, and put together to have your mind scrambled in the very best means.
