Sable

• Genre: Adventure
• Time Played: ~ 10 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Technically you can end the game pretty early on I believe, but it also feels too long to do the majority of the content. I guess it's supposed to be a game where you just waste time doing stuff, but still.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Very disappointed, for a game that looks as cool as it does, it just doesn't live up to any expectation.
• Why I played: I had been meaning to check out Sable for awhile, but saw some comments in reviews that dissuaded me from checking it out in a hurry. I notice it was on PS Plus for the month and though I'd give it a shot.
• Recommend to others: Not at all. Unless your favorite part of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom was the climbing... and even then, maybe not.

Sable is an absolute mess hiding behind an artsy performance of a game. Did I say performance? Perfect segue into how TERRIBLY this game performed. I played it on PS5 and this has to be the longest I've ever endured such a glitchy bug riddled mess of a game that hitched and lagged and stuttered anytime you even looked at your bike. So they must be fast, right? Psssh. The bike in the image above is literally the best of all parts in game, almost max stats in all categories, and it's a slog. It is clunky to control, flips around and goes crazy if you touch literally anything, but even on the open sands where it's perfectly stable jets by at a blazing... uhhh... 20mph at my best guess. It's barely twice as fast as on foot running speed. These parts are literally called "Speedster". Riding the hoverbike is not fun at all and it's basically the main, or second main thing. I feel like it takes a serious effort to make riding a hoverbike in a dune covered desert unfun.

The jank would be forgivable if the game was fun. It's not. It's not just that there isn't necessarily a single clear objective, or any kind of real action, but just everything, even the best of puzzles, just feel like going through the motions. I understand the intent, it's about the journey, not the destination, the story writes it out for you, you're on a mission to experience different things to decide on your true calling. This would be awesome, if the different things were fun to do. The game is clearly inspired by Breath of the Wild, in the way it approaches traversing the world and many other elements.(It came out before Tears of the Kingdom) but even the things that are directly inspired are not as fun. Curling up into a throwaway glowing sphere of an asset makes for the least cool gliding possible... and it always feels very slow. Climbing, also doesn't give you the benefit of offering a "fast climb" or leap, or anything, at the increased cost of stamina or anything like that.

When not in motion, Sable is capable of being a beautiful game to look at. More then once did I just enjoy the landscape and backdrop. But not to listen to. It's sound design sucks almost as bad as it's performance. There is very little music and a lot of sound effects are either poorly mixed or just plain annoying. 

This is one of the worst games I have seen to the end.