A Story About My Uncle is a beautiful game in all respects. The indie gaming scene is truly where the art of game design is flourishing. It’s incredible how such a small team is doing things that the big studios can only hope to accomplish. I can’t remember the last time a AAA title stayed with and made me want to keep coming back; not only for the rich story, but for the devilishly clever gameplay.
The game feels like a cross between a slower paced adventure game and the Tribes series of games. I know, you are questioning how two gameplay style that are so utterly different work in a single game. Firstly, let me assure you that they do, and do so beautifully. The game is told told from the perspective of the protagonist some several years in the future. He is now a grown man and is asked to recount a story for his young daughter and in doing so takes us on the titular adventure about a story about his uncle.
While the game is set in the unreal engine and played from a first-person perspective, it is by no means a shooter, or action game of any kind. This is an adventure game at its core, one that rewards your curiosity and doesn’t penalize you for trying new and inventive way to progress.
You play the hero, as a young boy, on a search for his missing uncle. Your only clue to his disappearance lies within a small closet in his home. Inside you find an adventure suit, one that is strangely tailored specifically to a boy your size and age. Parallels can be drawn to Half Life in the way that Gordon Freeman finds his Hazard Suit, allowing for the adventure to begin and giving the player a simple explanation for all the new abilities.
The action bits come into play very early on in the form of a variety of jumping puzzles. Well, puzzles may not be the right world to describe it. With your adventure suit, you are granted a number of fantastically abilities in the strange new world you find yourself in. Gravity is diminished allowing you to jump great heights, and the suits “power” ability, displayed as a glowing blue circle on the back of your palm, allows for even high heights when activated.
You will also be granted a grapple beam that you can use to target various glyphs that are strategically placed throughout the level. You won’t have unlimited use of this beam, as initially you can only activate it once per jump. As your progress within the game you will be able to unlock additional grapple uses while in air leading to some incredible acrobatic feats.
The game also rewards you for taking your time and exploring your surroundings, something that you will really want to do thanks to the games beautifully lit setting. There was a time early during the game where I just stopped to take in the sights and bringing in colleagues to take a look, not continuing on in my adventure for some time. You will also find various hidden collectables just off the beaten path, but unlike most collectables that serve little to no purpose, these really help to enrich the games story.
When you find a collectible or special item, the game rewards you by having additional voiced narration come up every so often in the guise of a question from your daughter about events, or from you further explaining certain bits of the story. It’s a masterful stroke that encourages players to find as many collectables as possible. Getting an actual reward that benefits the player from a story perspective is a welcome treat. Too much nowadays are arbitrary collectables placed just to give the player something to so. Sure, you have 200 random bits to collect, but if my only reward is an achievement or palette swap of a costume I’m not interested.
The games mechanics allow for some really impressive jumps, the grapple beam bring physics into play. You have to get an understanding of momentum and how it will relate to each jump. Timing your grapples with the moving platforms is not only a fun challenge, but a pretty thrilling experience when you nail a series of grapples across various stones. There were many times where I ended up someplace I hadn’t intended, leading me to a collectible or times where a jump goes horribly awry and I managed to somehow save it. Moments like these keep the game not only engaging, but offer a unique bit of fun. With your grapple fully powered you earn the ability to grapple onto most any rock face your heart desires. I can daily see these abilities leading to many a speed run video popping up on YouTube.
It really is evocative of an age where you can see the passion just underneath all the bits of code, where you could see the path the developers wanted you to take and then say, “to hell with it” and find your own way. Too much nowadays do big studio games feel dull and lifeless. Great care was taken to keep the game feeling fresh throughout the course of play with the grapple beam not just some gimmick, but a useful tools with a multitude of purposes.
All the good bits aside, everything isn’t perfect. Most notable would have to be from the audio department. While the music is fine, the voice acting leaves a great deal to be desired. Even at its best the voice acting comes of as amateurish and a little lifeless. There were times when the emotion indicated from the subtitles clearly didn’t match what was spoken. I know that hiring professional english voice actors is no easy feat, especially on what I can assume is a small budget, but it really would have elevated the game to a much higher level if they did.
Also, when the game introduces the inhabitants of the other world is when the visuals begin to take a dip. While having them be non-human helps to hide some of the graphical limitations, it does little to help the unnatural deadness that is in their eyes. There is just something about them that just makes them feel cold and lifeless. Perhaps it’s the low poly count of the models or those creepy dead eyes, but it does mar an otherwise gorgeous game.
When A Story About My Uncle is focused solely on its gameplay, it’s bloody fantastic. The only time it losses a bit of steam is when it brings characters into the mix as they just don’t quite look as great as the rest of the world. But, if you can get past a few little quirks you will find an amazing game underneath, one that truly needs to be played to appreciated. When you find yourself saying “Wow!” right alongside the in-game characters, you know you’re experiencing something special.
You are going to have fun, a lot of fun playing A Story About My Uncle.
About Author
