{"id":2031,"date":"2017-10-10T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-10T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/oxenfree"},"modified":"2017-10-10T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-10T10:00:00","slug":"review-oxenfree-switch-eshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/10\/10\/review-oxenfree-switch-eshop\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Oxenfree (Switch eShop)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"\">\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 1 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85195\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85195\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch DS Oxenfree 03 Mediaplayer Large\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/oxenfree\">Oxenfree<\/a><\/strong> is one of gaming\u2019s greatest ghost stories. Granted, they\u2019re a rare breed, the genuinely spooky video game, experiences that aren\u2019t so much played as permitted to crawl across your skin, cooling the blood and yet quickening its flow. But Californian indie studio Night School\u2019s debut production, originally released in 2016, is deserving of investigation by anyone delighting in disquiet. It\u2019s mesmerising while it plays, and memorable long after it\u2019s finished.<\/p>\n<p>Not that you\u2019ll see the <em>real<\/em> ending if you go around Oxenfree\u2019s relatively brief running time of about five hours only the once. The game\u2019s uncommonly palpable eeriness is filtered through a story of possessed teens and glitches in time, loops in reality that see a group of high-schoolers try to survive a night stranded on an island that isn\u2019t quite as deserted as they believed. To dive into the particulars is to spoil a wealth of surprises, a raft of compelling beats that resonate with genre originality, that keep coming on a second playthrough \u2013 and even then, you might meet the credits with unanswered questions.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 2 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85193\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85193\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch DS Oxenfree 06 Mediaplayer Large\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>The mystery of Edwards Island \u2013 home to a decommissioned military installation and, until recently, a sole elderly recluse \u2013 can be unpicked to some extent by simply following the main story. This takes in a series of branches, directed by an excellent dialogue system that allows for player interruptions and very natural-feeling exchanges (and is made all the better by impressive voice acting), permitting the player\u2019s character, Alex, a pronounced sense of agency in proceedings. Ultimately, the divergent plot narrows to a linear path for a high-stakes subterranean climax, at which point your earlier choices are going to have consequences. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Greater detail as to the island\u2019s past, and how that\u2019s impacting the night\u2019s events, can be gleaned from discovering letters, scattered around the island during the game\u2019s later stages \u2013 they go some way to describing a pertinent disaster that occurred not far from the island\u2019s shores. There are also a number of photographs taken across the course of the night, by different characters, that contain clues; and audio anomalies, snatches of conversations from a time before now, that can be tuned into. Look, listen and learn carefully enough, and it all might just come together \u2013 but probably not on a single playthrough.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 3 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85194\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85194\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch DS Oxenfree 02 Mediaplayer Large\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>It\u2019s through the use of a handheld radio that Alex \u2013 and by extension the friends, family and associates that accompany her to the island \u2013 can listen to strange signals. Some of these are songs, crackling and creaking as if weighted down by decades of dust. There are voices, some acting lines, others just groaning, screaming almost, in the static. Turn the dial slowly, and there\u2019s often something that\u2019ll stand out, like a lighthouse in the blackest night \u2013 except the feeling here is that the beacon is only ever drawing you closer to the rocks, and destruction.<\/p>\n<p>The radio \u2013 which is later upgraded to one able to pick up many more frequencies \u2013 gives Alex and company a way to communicate with whatever else is on the island alongside them, a force that\u2019s apparently all around them at all times, and yet unseen. A very clear malevolence can be <em>felt<\/em>, however, as the game delights in showing us, great detail and personality rippling through the diminutive avatars of the affair as their bodies are tested in ways that daren\u2019t be spoiled. Nobody who took the last ferry the night before will return to the mainland quite the same.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s not the visuals that really shake the player up \u2013 it\u2019s the sound, and the music. The work of Andrew Rohrmann, aka scntfc, the Oxenfree OST is a cornucopia of uneasy avant-ambience, constantly getting under the skin of the player and forcing the hairs atop it to stand to attention. There\u2019s a worn fuzziness to much of it, like its edges have blurred, its seams frayed; but there\u2019s no warmth, even the more bucolic passages undercut by a distinct vein of dread. The resulting atmosphere is thick and sticky, then, and impossible to shake once you\u2019ve set your Switch down to sleep. The compulsion to return, again and again, to the trials of these five souls is great indeed.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 4 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85197\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85197\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch DS Oxenfree 04 Mediaplayer Large\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>And you really should take a <em>second<\/em> trip to Edwards Island, to see those trials find a semblance of finality \u2013 and what with Oxenfree now on Switch, you can do that <em>anywhere<\/em>. It\u2019s a game that neatly divides itself into explorable scrolling screens and set-piece situations, (admittedly somewhat lengthy) loading screens acting as markers between chapters. Portability is a great plus for a game that operates splendidly as a short-sessions experience \u2013 which isn\u2019t to say you can\u2019t binge on it, like the latest must-see Netflix show. The Switch lets you play it either way \u2013 and you can even use touchscreen controls, changing stick control for a point-and-click system, if you really\u00a0must grease up your console like that.<\/p>\n<p>Any Switch owners seeking supernatural encounters of the interactive kind should look no further that this otherworldly adventure. It\u2019s not one you can \u201close\u201d at, whatever your decisions, and wherever the characters end up \u2013 but to miss out on it is to do your Switch a disservice.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>A genuinely creepy creation, Oxenfree combines a clever story and smart dialogue mechanics with superbly sinister music to leave a deep and lasting impression on the player, one that should encourage an all-important second playthrough. Fans of <strong>Stranger Things<\/strong> and <strong>Poltergeist<\/strong> will love the direction this game takes \u2013 if not to hell and back, exactly, then absolutely to some other place where horrors abound, just waiting for an invitation into our world. It\u2019s yet another Switch essential.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oxenfree is one of gaming\u2019s greatest ghost stories. Granted, they\u2019re a rare breed, the genuinely spooky video game, experiences that aren\u2019t so much played as permitted to crawl across your skin, cooling the blood and yet quickening its flow. But Californian indie studio Night School\u2019s debut production, originally released in 2016, is deserving of investigation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}