Review for déraciné. Game for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR, The release is scheduled: 2018
déraciné it's a game for a few. Although glazed by a melancholy air that does not hurt, the production of FromSoftware fails in the almost impossible attempt to represent for PlayStation VR what Demon's Souls had symbolized for PlayStation 3.
It might seem a truly original work, almost full of a rare epic, even if it were Shadow of Memories, instead the production generated by the software house led by Hidetaka Miyazaki is little more than a virtual reality experience which, while not representing the lowest point ever reached by the medium, does not even manage to rise above the skimpy sufficiency.
The story told, poised between dreamy atmospheres and dark nightmares, does not have the strength necessary to capture the player, perennially called to follow a path that runs on pre-established tracks, throwing herself here and there with PlayStation Move shots it wasn't even Carla Fracci.
It is not possible, in fact, to try to let go together with Déraciné with Dual Shock 4, it will be necessary to take two Sony-branded motion controllers to be able to carry out any action. Granting the possibility to freely explore the environment would surely have mitigated that feeling of constriction that undermines the whole narrated prosopopoeia. A real shame, considering the potential of VR.
And don't think the tracking system is so condescending: often the lines drawn by moving the arms are not slavishly converted to the video, resulting in playful fragments with a high bitter aftertaste. Having to analyze the scenes from various angles, acting on the Move as if it were a monkey in the throes of deviant convulsions only to be an inch closer to the point to be investigated than the previous shot to be able to obtain the clue useful to continue in the digital creature, makes you curse the day you were born anthropomorphic.
Everything is slow, static, terribly staid, and even the proposed puzzles do not shine for gross quality.
Yawns abound throughout FromSoftware's (short) adventure, with the player having little incentive to explore the environment as well due to a lack of hot spots to interact with. You run the risk of spending very long minutes probing the seabed just to find the right object to use at the right time. Often you get the feeling to wander randomly, moving some occasional furnishings to make the ectoplasmic human presence infesting Déraciné react.
Even on a technical level, Déraciné does not fully convince, limiting himself to carrying out the task without getting too enthusiastic. As mentioned, neither the backdrops nor the models of the characters are able to excite for details and overall gross quality, aspects that are absolutely understandable given the hardware limitations to which the development team had to submit. At the end of a not exactly flattering review and partially enriching the experience, the spoken dialogues present within the game intervene, entirely dubbed in Spanish and on average satisfactory.
Difficult to add more to a game that started from interesting bases, however undermined by a whole series of defects and imperfections capable of making it, in fact, a disappointment. Phlegmatic, unexciting, frustrating in the controls and technically weak, Déraciné is the classic point and click that, had it been released in 1995, would have already looked old.
► Déraciné is a Graphic Adventure-Adventure game developed by FromSoftware SCE Japan Studio and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR, Expected release: 2018
