The journal the main character uses to help solve puzzles is very well-designed and clearly arranged. (+) I liked the island setting, archeology/explorer vibes, and narration. Posted: 19 April Not a bad game, but I wouldn’t recommend it. But it's a neat enough story and a screenshotter's dream with all its beautiful scenes. Overall, if it's puzzle quality that draws you to point-and-click adventures, take or leave Call of the Sea. At least the protagonist, Norah, is extremely thorough in taking notes and making diagrams of all the visual elements you'll need. There's also a fair amount of puzzles that challenge your spatial relationships or require setting a bunch of toggles correctly - the kinds of things that will be easy for some and an utter roadblock for others. You'll be doing a lot of trial-and-error trying to figure out what individual puzzle elements do, and the time running between them adds up. They can get pretty obtuse, and that makes a nasty combination with the large expanses the game sometimes expects you to trudge back and forth across. The puzzles, though, leave something to be desired. And it tells a pretty wild story, if a bit overnarrated. It captures the classic tropes of pulp adventure in exotic locales without falling into the trap of racist depictions of indigenous people so common to the genre. Call of the Sea runs at a solid 4K resolution and 60 frames per second on Xbox Series X (with some slight chugging at certain parts in the beginning and the end), and is one of the more graphically-impressive games in the early Xbox Series X library.Call of the Sea is an outlandishly pretty adventure. Players will want to spend some time taking in the sights, looking for hidden objects, and admiring the graphics. Call of the Sea opts to keep these moments subtle, and they are far more effective for it.Įvery one of Call of the Sea's six chapters has details like this for players to discover, which makes exploring the game world very rewarding. Other times, players can look out into the sea, and they may see the terrifying outline of something staring back at them. For instance, if players return to the beach in Chapter 1 where Norah's boat and belongings were, they will find the boat gone, having apparently been dragged back into the ocean by an unseen entity. There's a pervasive creepiness in Call of the Sea, with some small touches that go a long way in achieving this. The short length also ensures that the narrative maintains a pace that keeps things interesting from the start of the game to its conclusion, as the plot isn't weighed down with padding, instead focused entirely on having players discover one interesting revelation after another. A shorter experience lends itself well to a puzzle game like Call of the Sea, and is not unlike other great first-person puzzle games like Valve's Portal. Those that don't care about achievements may be put off by Call of the Sea's short length, but in this case, it's actually one of the game's strengths. There is some replay value, though, with secret objects to find and a journal to fill out, with players rewarded for achievements for completing these extra tasks. Depending on how quickly one figures out the solutions to its various puzzles, Call of the Sea can be completed in a few hours. Call of the Sea's drum puzzle can be frustrating due to how tedious it is and there are a couple of puzzles near the end of the game that will test one's patience, but otherwise the game is much more "doable" than many first-person puzzle games of the past.Ĭall of the Sea's puzzles are spread across six chapters, along with a short prologue and an epilogue, and so the game is fairly short. Those playing the game will also have fun solving Call of the Sea's puzzles, as most of them are challenging without being annoying, with logical solutions that players can reach without having to resort to a guide. While Call of the Sea's narrative tone gets grimmer, visually the game mostly sticks to bright, optimistic colors, with Norah rarely losing her cool and sounding like she is having fun solving the puzzles. Along the way, she finds evidence of her husband and his expedition team, piecing together exactly what happened to them, with things getting grislier as the game goes on. Norah is an endearing, likable character who narrates everything as players explore the island, examining objects, jotting down clues, and figuring out how to work all kinds of different contraptions. Call of the Sea is like a much simpler version of Myst, with fairer puzzles and a clearer narrative arc driving the whole thing.
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