Unravel’s idyllic opening locations soon give way to much darker, sinister settings, where nature is overrun by litter, toxic chemicals, and heaps of rusted machinery. It’s a shame, as the idea of challenge is well incorporated thematically. I eventually reached the top, but it wasn’t at all satisfying I felt like I got there through perseverance, not platforming ability. For instance, in one particular section, you must scale a steep hill while avoiding falling rocks – a pretty standard platforming scenario, but here there aren’t enough tells for where the next rock was going to land that I felt I had a chance to avoid it without memorizing the pattern.
UNRAVEL TWO REVIEW IGN TRIAL
I’m totally fine when this is related to puzzles that must be solved in order for Yarny to survive, but it sometimes feels like pure trial and error.
In contrast to Unravel’s huggable appearance, there are sections where it’s almost impossible to avoid dying on your first attempt, no matter how sharp your reactions. Relative to the strong puzzles, the pure platforming sections are more mixed in quality. Sadly this mechanic isn’t used nearly often enough, despite its obvious potential for more challenging puzzles. These are much more difficult since Yarny is composed of a limited amount of wool, so if you perform unnecessary actions there’s a real danger of him unravelling before the puzzle is solved – if this happens, you must retrace Yarny’s steps and devise a more straightforward, less yarn-intensive solution. The best puzzles come when the camera zooms out, and you must assess a much larger puzzle with multiple stages. The sheer variety of Yarny’s skillset ensures that every solution is enjoyable to enact, even if they’re not perhaps the most challenging to figure out. To survive these situations, instead, he must hide or craftily find alternate routes around such dangers. While there are a few creatures capable of hurting Yarny, such as crabs and cockroaches, he possesses no combat moves, remaining a passive little guy throughout and maintaining his cuddly personality.
Like many whip-wielding platforming heroes, he can swing across gaps, but being entirely made from wool, he can also rappel down walls, lasso distant objects, anchor platforms in place, tether objects to himself and each other, not to mention create high-wires, pulleys, and trampolines. Unravel features some fantastic environmental puzzles, which really come to life through Yarny’s wide range of special abilities. So much of what I love about Unravel is related to the emotional journey it took me on, but there’s also a strong gameplay experience to be found. It all sounds rather grand, maybe a bit pretentious, yet in practice it’s a subtle and quietly effective device. While he has no facial features apart from two eyes, and his body is made up entirely of convincingly textured wool, he’s animated with such skill that he’s able to convey more of his inner joy and pain than many fully human characters.īut Yarny’s more than just expressive and cute – as a child’s homemade toy come to life, he’s the means by which I was able to return to a more innocent state of wonder, and more fully appreciate the natural world he explores. Whether he’s gaping at the beauty of the world around him or quietly shivering during a thunderstorm, Yarny’s adorable and relatable. Playing Unravel feels like you’re looking at the world through a magnifying glass, and it’s wonderful to explore. And by restricting the camera’s focus to the immediate foreground, it forces you to pay attention to the small details – tiny rocks, blades of grass, bright red berries, all of which are highly realistic and richly detailed. Unravel creates the illusion of exploring each stage from the diminutive perspective of Yarny, our diminutive but charming protagonist. Every single level of this five- to six-hour adventure looks fantastic.
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