Review for Arise: A Simple Story. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 03/12/2019
Sometimes it is difficult to find the right words to objectively describe your experience with a video game. The sensations perceived in living certain works follow one another very strong and there is the feeling that no combination of grammatical elements can best express what one has tried. Arise: A Simple Story is an extraordinary video game that tells an ordinary story, in which simplicity is a cue to rise upwards, in a chain of truly special emotions to be preserved with care. You may imagine (or know) what will happen from the start, yet Arise will always hit you with the same force, caressing you with love and then hitting you hard, leaving you astonished and ecstatic.
As already mentioned at the beginning, the story that Arise tells us: a simple story lives up to the title, and is in effect a simple story told with a memorable sweetness and delicacy: the curtain opens with the death and cremation of the protagonist, a one-sided way to the unknown.
Yet what is unknown in front of us is not and, in the face of an afterlife, aesthetically painted as a snowy mountain bathed by soft winds and white flakes of snow, you will find yourself reliving the most important moments of life that has just come to an end, closely linked to sharing with another person, the sweet half of our protagonist, a bulwark of his experience since childhood and part of his nest in adulthood.
To make what is in effect a less banal Platform in three dimensions comes the particular ability of the protagonist, who while retracing the most important events of his earthly life can control the passage of time to your liking, moving it forward and backward both for a few seconds and for entire seasons, significantly modifying the environmental structure from an aesthetic point of view, but above all facilitating the various possibilities of exploration, opening otherwise closed paths and illustrating new possibilities in apparent dead ends.
The time control skill will come to our aid at every level, helping us solve environmental puzzles - made up of interesting, but never excessively demanding - that we will have to overcome to advance: in a snowstorm it may be useful to advance over time to increase the layer of white mantle present on the ground, allowing us to reach otherwise inaccessible places, in other cases it will be possible to jump from one sunflower to another by modifying the position of the Sun and the consequent position of the flowers that will follow its path, and so on. It could also be useful to completely block the passage of time at a precise moment, an action that can be easily performed (on PlayStation 4) with the pressure of the right trigger.
In each level, Arise: a simple story uses in an original way the mechanics of the time control that fits perfectly with the structure of the level design providing new experiences for the whole adventure, lasting about 4-5 hours. Precisely because the level of challenge is set downwards and goes hand in hand with what is a story that does not lengthen and does not compromise in its unraveling, never watering down and keeping the player glued to what results in an experience that can be lived and enjoyed all in one breath, the inclusion of some collectable scattered around the levels helps to increase - albeit slightly - the overall longevity: these will be nothing but memories of the life spent together by the two characters, who will show some drawings related to some background on the story told in a wise way by the boys of Piccolo Study.
Arise: a simple story also allows you to experience the story also in modality local cooperative together with another player. Unfortunately, this feature does not add anything new, but simply divides the keys with which to operate between the two players: one of the two, therefore, will take care of moving the character, the other instead will control the passage of time and can block it. pleasure. A result that translates into something equally enjoyable but much more cumbersome than the basic idea referred to the single player.
The artistic component of the work deserves a separate chapter, visually majestic and superb in the soundtracks: Arise is able to lull the player in the most delicate and sweet moments, and then overwhelm him in the crudest moments; the countless emotions experienced by the main character will be represented on the screen - according to the various sections - in a masterly way: levels full of colors, bright lights, flowering trees in moments of idyll, while the pain will be clearly manifested with rainy nights punctuated by the rumble of thunder, in which i pains, dark figures that represent the afflictions of the protagonist from which we will have to escape.
The whole is then accompanied by a truly amazing soundtrack, able to overwhelm even the most imperturbable of gamers, stirring his soul and leading him - on several occasions - to shed copious tears. As already mentioned at the beginning of our article, you will be accompanied by the hand in reliving all the main events passed by the protagonist together with his life partner and the musical tracks will perfectly underline every single moment proposed. Precisely for this reason a story like that of Arise: a simple story can be lived and appreciated not for the twists, but thanks to a story with perfect timing and impeccable style.
The experience of Arise, basically, is all between these lines present above, but what the title is able to unleash is really special, touching in an unexpected way, painful in a harsh and childish way like a fairy tale that is only expected. that happy ending that closes the circle and allows us to sleep peacefully, aware that we have been part of a wonderful love story capable of proving to be stronger than anything and also conquering the inexorable passage of time.
Certain emotions have no language and, after several hours of play and countless tears shed, we can say with certainty that Arise: a simple story is an exceptional work, one of those experiences that everyone should try, which we will carry with us for a long time and which we will think with melancholy, mindful of the incredible whirlwind of feelings experienced throughout its duration. Works like this make - if it were needed - our passion for the medium even more solid, raising it and making us proud and proud to be gamers. Arise is all this and much more: an experience that is simply incredible.
► Arise: A Simple Story is an Adventure type game developed and published by Techland for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 03/12/2019
