Review: Firewatch

I managed to get some time this long Valentine's Day weekend to purchase and completely play through Firewatch. I'm going to try a new format for game reviews. For those of you who are wondering about the game without having to read everything I wrote...

Gameplay: 10
Soundtrack: 10
Graphics: 10
Replayability: Medium (for dialogue)

Should I buy this? My thinking is yes. I purchased it for 20 dollars on Steam after reading some reviews that suggested the PS4 version may have frame-rate issues that I didn't want to deal with. Jokes on me. I had to deal with them anyways.

The game is gorgeous, my MacBook Pro couldn't handle all the gorgeousness despite having a better graphics card than recommended and more memory than necessary. I turned the settings down to Low and the game was still beautiful but I think I may have been missing out.

In terms of plot (spoilers ahead), the game really reminds me of Gone Home, another gorgeous and interesting, story-driven game. Similar mechanics, except the critical difference between Gone Home and Firewatch is that in Firewatch, you're actually speaking to someone. Or at least, I'm pretty sure you are. You never actually meet Delilah in person, which was both an exciting choice and a little bit of a bummer.

The game had me in such suspense over my 4 hour play-through that I had knots in my stomach. Severe spoilers ahead:

You get your characters backstory, it's sad but realistic. It's refreshing how much it's a believable story. Due to the representation of Delilah, I also didn't mind playing a male protagonist. Both Henry and Delilah are human and as such they are flawed individuals. You start out easy, walking around, having some short conversations with Delilah who is your superior. Her tower is easily visible from yours but is one heck of a hike.

You make observations about this beautiful piece of land you're watching, you find a cave early on that is locked to entrance but plays an important role in the story. You see two teens skinny dipping in the lake. All you do is pick up their beer cans and tell them to stop setting off fireworks but they get irrationally mad at you and ransack your tower.

Later on, the game goes in a completely different direction and you're not sure who is messing with you but your dialogue is being recorded and documented and it's suspenseful and pretty scary (for me at least!).

The game took me about 4 hours to beat and I think I'll play at least once more with different dialogue choices simply to see what (if anything) changes.

I'm excited to take my time and breathe in the environment and the gorgeous music (which I desperately want to play).

Firewatch is a beautiful game, reminiscent of Gone Home's focus on environment and storytelling. There's a good reason for all the internet chatter that's been focused on this game!