12 minutes I would have liked to be back
12 minutes hooked me moment he took the scene At the Microsoft 2019 E3 Conference. A brief Teaser trailer set up the premise: you play as a man, stuck in a time loop. After your wife reveals that she is pregnant, you drop your own bomb – a cop is about to knock on the door. He came out for the blood, saying that the woman had murdered her own father. The wife professes his innocence, saying that her father died of a heart attack. According to the protagonist, the only way to get out of their situation is for him to get answers.
It is an exciting premise and a wonderful trailer. Too bad the game itself is a cacophony of half-cooked ideas and sons of tanned history. 12 minutes had the potential to be something special. Part of this potential always manages to shine, thanks to a distribution of actors from list A. But no amount of actor prowess can save a bad story and a terrible game.
In short in the long term? 12 minutes is a spectacular failure and a rare lack for the publisher Annapurna Interactive.
It is Marmot dayBut in hell
12 minutes Settles like a heartbreaking thriller that is part of the mystery novel, the action film in part, the game of puzzle in part. The loop takes place in the same way each time: you arrive at work house while your wife is in the bathroom. After a few seconds, she comes out of the bathroom, gives you a hug and tells you that the dessert is in the refrigerator.
For the next 10 minutes, what you do depends on you. You can adjust the table, have a dessert and dance on the radio. You can sit on the sofa while your wife reads a book. Or, you can go to the room and fall asleep. Finally, however, you will end up with a blow to the door, a heated meeting and death by strangulation.
On paper, it looks like a convincing concept. While you give meaning to your environment, you will probably start asking questions and designing thoughtful action plans. What information can I glean from my wife? Can I negotiate with the cop? There is a knife on the counter! Maybe I can hide in the closet and get the drop of our attacker.
Here is the thing: 12 minutes doesn’t care What you think. You can find an intelligent diagram, only so that the game rejects it humiliating (usually asphyxiation, but sometimes a knee on the face). Some “routes” have enough meaning – you will eat dessert, learn your baby for the first time, die and use new information to convince your wife that you are stuck in a loop. Once you TO DO Manage to convince her, however, good luck to do it to help you.
To want hand She knife? The game will stab you. Do you want her to hide in the closet? The bathroom? There are no dialogue options either.
If you design a game entirely based on logic, this logic has better meaning. Unfortunately, 12 minutes Throws the logic through the window, forcing you to force you raw with solutions, rather than discovering them in an organic way. It is much less a creative sandbox, and much more a obtuse tip puzzle that you keep on the coffee table for your parents-in-law in Thanksgiving.
It is also GlassBut in hell
I could write 300 other words complaining about the defective conception of 12 minutes. Instead, I will devote this real estate to the double -edged story at the heart of the experience.
One of the greatest forces in the game is its casting. It is a Lean crew – there are only three characters expressed – but it is A villain. James McAvoy embodies the husband, Daisy Ridley as the wife, and Willem Dafoe as a cop. Combined with a camera view from top to bottom and an intimate adjustment (all the action takes place in this bed, a bath apartment), 12 minutes is played as a dramatic stage. Say what you want on the game, but the aesthetics are a killer.
Annapurna is not unrelated to Hollywood (she doubles a movie and television studio), so the casting is not necessarily surprising. It is nevertheless impressive, however. I found myself smiling on the hoarse delivery of Dafoe, and I impressed the way McAvoy and Ridley can withdraw American accents with such ease.
It may therefore be that Mr. Night Shyamalan’s star Divide And Glass Leads his efforts to a story with little push, and hell of a bad end. Yes, the premise of 12 minutes is solid, if not downright impressive. But what you see in this 2019 E3 trailer E3 is 99% of what you get. The characters do not develop. There is no emotional investment in their fate. The only point of note is a touch of end of game which is not used to satisfy, but to shock. It is a lazy writing, and even Meryl Streep and Anthony Hopkins could not save it.
It’s hell (if you haven’t guessed yet)
12 minutes Does the crash of the car you make, but I can’t help growing the neck to look. The premise of the game was brilliant, the concept trailer was masterful and the cast could not have been better. But none of these components compensates for what is, in the end, a game based on artificial mechanics and the disappointing narration.
He does not lose me that this game is a work of love of a incredibly small studio. If anything, I applaud their ideas, congratulate their efforts and celebrate the interest they have built for this game in the past five years.
For those who have access to Xbox Game Pass (from the exit, the game is available on the service) or those who just want to take care of the small developers, I always recommend that you give 12 minutes A test. It is a five -hour experience, and even if I cannot say that I enjoyed these hours, I will certainly not forget them.
Score: 5.0 / 10
