Pneuma: Breath of Life (Xbox ONE)

This was another offering from Games with Gold that also turned out to be a really quick completion. The game itself is supposed to be some kind of metaphor for the gamer within a game who has issues. I found the game to be underdeveloped, up its own ass and frankly annoying, all of which I will cover in the following paragraphs.

The game is undeveloped. There are six chapters in total which see you solve puzzles to progress. I’m citing ‘undeveloped’ as the key here because clearly their concept only gave them a few hours of casual content. And that’s without a guide to solve said puzzles. It’s short, too short even for my standards which is a shame because some of the puzzles were quite good. Others were fucktarded though so even 50% of the content they have isn’t worth the time it took to develop.

Up its own ass refers to the concept. I’ll all for innovative and original storytelling but to play a game as the subconscious of a gamer talking to itself about the world around it with the awareness of the fact the avatar is being controlled was just a step too far for my tastes. There’s breaking the fourth wall and then there is what Pneuma does – smashes the wall into little pieces and rams it down our throats.

On to the last subject – frankly annoying. As I’ve said, the ‘story’ is dictated to you by some guy who I can only imagine is the most annoying human being in existence. The narrative – and the content of the narrative for that that matter – is so chirpily delivered, that I found myself reaching towards the mute button after less than an hour of play time. The adjectives to really describe how irritating this narrative is have not been created yet so I won’t try and think of any new ones.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 11 Achievements

There’s not much here to do either which is good I suppose considering the narrative comments I’ve made. Eight out of Eleven are obtained by completing the game – a task in itself.

Aside from completing the game, there are three additional puzzles to solve each with their own achievement. The most frustrating of these is the one which requires you to look at five paintings in order. This is annoying because it required you to replay chapters to do so. It feels like it’s only in the game to get you to play the game a little bit more than if you just set out to complete it. But can you really blame them when they have such little content to begin with?

Downloadable Content – N/A

As you can tell, I’m not a fan of Pneuma but I have seen some favourable reviews so it might be down to personal taste. Also I’ve seen some people describe the narrative as funny. To each their own I guess but I’m assuming they must have been able to enable subtitles to stick it out.