Hue

Hue is another randomly selected backlog game that I must have added to my game collection during a sale of some kind using my wish list. My lasting impression is that it was a really good game that offered a lot of enjoyment over the short play time.

Hue follows the story of... Hue. He is a boy that appears to go looking for his mother or something and gains the ability to use colours to make stuff disappear and reappear. I will confess to not paying much attention to the story and while I think it is a good game, fuck me some of the dialogue is horrendously pretentious. I’m not sure if it’s one of those moralistic pieces about the fabric of society or one of those pieces that is designed to make us question our existence but when a mother writes the line, ‘perhaps everyone in this world only sees shades of grey’ they certainly aren’t trying to be to the point. There are more pretentious lines than this one but I would have to go through all of the game on play back to find them.

The game wins all its points for the solvable and not ridiculous puzzles that, upon completion, offer a sense of reward to the gamer. As you go through various areas of the game you gain more colours. You can switch the background colours in order to make objects that are blocking your path disappear. As you get more colours, the puzzles become more complex. I managed to get right to the end before having to look at a guide and that was only for one of the puzzles. For other gamers, this may indicate that the puzzles are easy but for me, they were the right level of challenging.

Musically and graphically is does what it has to do for a puzzle game. Not irritate and be clear and easy to see what’s going on. It ticks both these boxes too so it’s just the story that can do one. It adds nothing to the game.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 13 Achievements

It’s a really straightforward list where 10 of the 13 achievements can be gained by getting to the end. That only leaves another three.

There is another for watching the credits which role automatically when you get to the end and another for making 5,000 objects disappear via colour changes. I got this one so early on that you will most likely get this through normal game play anyway.

The last one and the one that is the most frustrating is for finding all of the secret beakers that are hidden in the various areas you visit. Each area has a counter which shows how many beakers you need to find and you can revisit any area at any point. The biggest pain about getting these though is that you can’t do in one run through as you need to advance through the game to get certain colours and then backtrack. It’s annoying because you have to go through the same puzzle rooms again to get to where the beaker is located. It’s the only frustrating thing about the achievement list.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Hue is a solid puzzle game that offers a few solid hours of enjoyment. It took me less than 5 hours to complete and it retails at £11.99 when full price so I would recommend getting in a sale.