Harold Halibut (PC/PS5/XSX|S/Game Pass) - Handmade narrative game out now!! IGN 8.

Game needs a manual save feature, and while I realise it's a slow paced game, given how big this space station is, and that you seem to be spending a lot of time tracking back and forth down the same corridors, would it have killed them to add a run button? Harold's dawdling pace is something that I can see getting to annoy people.

On the positive side, the game looks lovely, the stylised claymation look really works. The setting so far feels enjoyable, and there's clearly a lot to be discovered about it. The tone of the writing is great too, strikes a good balance between being entertaining, satirical, and actually trying to convey exposition and story. It's funny in places, but no real laugh out loud moments for me so far.

There's some odd moments that feel like they should be control tutorials, when other characters speak to harold like "oh what an idiot you are, you should know how this works, but let me show you anyway," but then the only method of interaction you have is approaching a little interact icon and hitting A, so there's no need for a tutorial on any of it. I wonder how much revision the control scheme underwent in this decade long development.

There's a run button, it's x on Xbox.

What? I tried all the different face buttons on the Deck while moving, and none of them let me run. FFS. Will have to give it another go later.

Don't get too excited - I have read a few reviews critical of the run animation not being quick enough. That being said it will hopefully be faster than the walking one.

Got this downloading, will hopefully get chance to put a few hours into it on Friday/Saturday.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:Don't get too excited - I have read a few reviews critical of the run animation not being quick enough. That being said it will hopefully be faster than the walking one.

Yeah, it's not lightning fast, but it does feel better.

Spent a bit more time with this yesterday, and I'm really enjoying it. The setting is really interesting, the sets are fun to explore and examine, and the characters really feel substantial and characterful. The claymation models and physical sets they've built for this really add so much to the feel of the place, and it feels so unique for a video game.

I've skimmed a few reviews of this, and I think I have to agree with what appears to be the biggest point of criticism, but I don't think it bothers me honestly. There's not a lot of "game" here. You're really just moving from point A to B then back to A again to trigger conversations. There's not much in the way of puzzles or other activities, and it feels more like a visual novel than anything else. You might see people argue that this could have been a movie or TV series, but then you'd lose the immersion that comes with inhabiting this place yourself. The PDA feels diagetic too, even if it does take you out of the game world and seems to pause time while you look at it. It's neat that Harold's sketches of what you've been up to are also childishly bad cartoons, feeling like they fit the character, rather than the artistically competent efforts you would find in the journal in Red Dead 2, for instance. The menus in it also appear to be full of superfluous information that feels like nonsense, but presumably means something in universe.

It all feels like a full world, ready to be explored, and I'm sitting here at work just thinking about doing more of that. There's definitely shades of Rapture to the underwater space station you're on, only without the chaos of the plasmids, but there's the same hand of libertarian isolated capitalism pulling the strings. It's definitely a game more for the people who heard the pre-fall of Rapture audio diaries in Bioshock and thought they wanted to spend more time exploring that.

Knoyleo wrote:

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:Don't get too excited - I have read a few reviews critical of the run animation not being quick enough. That being said it will hopefully be faster than the walking one.

Yeah, it's not lightning fast, but it does feel better.

Spent a bit more time with this yesterday, and I'm really enjoying it. The setting is really interesting, the sets are fun to explore and examine, and the characters really feel substantial and characterful. The claymation models and physical sets they've built for this really add so much to the feel of the place, and it feels so unique for a video game.

I've skimmed a few reviews of this, and I think I have to agree with what appears to be the biggest point of criticism, but I don't think it bothers me honestly. There's not a lot of "game" here. You're really just moving from point A to B then back to A again to trigger conversations. There's not much in the way of puzzles or other activities, and it feels more like a visual novel than anything else. You might see people argue that this could have been a movie or TV series, but then you'd lose the immersion that comes with inhabiting this place yourself. The PDA feels diagetic too, even if it does take you out of the game world and seems to pause time while you look at it. It's neat that Harold's sketches of what you've been up to are also childishly bad cartoons, feeling like they fit the character, rather than the artistically competent efforts you would find in the journal in Red Dead 2, for instance. The menus in it also appear to be full of superfluous information that feels like nonsense, but presumably means something in universe.

It all feels like a full world, ready to be explored, and I'm sitting here at work just thinking about doing more of that. There's definitely shades of Rapture to the underwater space station you're on, only without the chaos of the plasmids, but there's the same hand of libertarian isolated capitalism pulling the strings. It's definitely a game more for the people who heard the pre-fall of Rapture audio diaries in Bioshock and thought they wanted to spend more time exploring that.

Sounds excellent, and exactly why I think that I too would enjoy it (i'm currently playing Open Roads and having a good time with it).
Thanks for sharing.

My biggest problem so far is Harold going to sleep with his tool belt on. Must be uncomfortable sleeping on a screwdriver.

Monkey Man wrote:My biggest problem so far is Harold going to sleep with his tool belt on. Must be uncomfortable sleeping on a screwdriver.

It's only plasticine

Knoyleo wrote:

Monkey Man wrote:My biggest problem so far is Harold going to sleep with his tool belt on. Must be uncomfortable sleeping on a screwdriver.

It's only plasticine

Anyone else fondly remember Dick Spanner?

Absolutely. I think I first found him through an advert that was ran around that time, but I then found the show. The only line I remember is "I must be the only cop on this block with magnetic nuts".

Made a brief start on this, just made it to the end of day 1. So far Harold seems to be an amazing character, it looks fantastic too, even at this early stage I would agree that it doesn't seem to be much of a game, but I think it'll be a very enjoyable story to see through.

How do you actually save this? Or is it all done via autosave?

Robbo-92 wrote:Made a brief start on this, just made it to the end of day 1. So far Harold seems to be an amazing character, it looks fantastic too, even at this early stage I would agree that it doesn't seem to be much of a game, but I think it'll be a very enjoyable story to see through.

How do you actually save this? Or is it all done via autosave?

I think it's just auto save. I'd love it to get a manual or quick save feature, as the auto save only seems to activate as you tick off a task on the to do list, or move in the tube system.

Knoyleo wrote:

Robbo-92 wrote:Made a brief start on this, just made it to the end of day 1. So far Harold seems to be an amazing character, it looks fantastic too, even at this early stage I would agree that it doesn't seem to be much of a game, but I think it'll be a very enjoyable story to see through.

How do you actually save this? Or is it all done via autosave?

I think it's just auto save. I'd love it to get a manual or quick save feature, as the auto save only seems to activate as you tick off a task on the to do list, or move in the tube system.

Not a fan of just auto save, doesn’t kick in often enough for the sole method.

Was that pun intentional? I very much enjoyed it anyway.

It was not, I had to read it again to look for the pun

Put about another hour into this tonight, the conversations you can have are brilliant

Does this change things up significantly after the first hour or is it likely just not for me? I’m really disliking pretty much everything about this and I’m hoping there’s at least a decent hook somewhere down the line story wise.

We have a "how long to beat", we need a "how long to like" lol.