Firewatch

• Genre: Adventure
• Time Played: ~5 Hours
• Too Short/Long: A little on the shorter end. I wouldn't have minded them filling in some of the gaps in the map and giving you a few more reasons to explore.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Pretty neutral. It's been recommended to me many times. It didn't meet expectations, but I didn't really disappoint me either.
• Why I played: Like I said, it was recommended to me a bunch. I definitely remember it trending a bit and seeing various articles about it. I wrote it off initially but decided to play it on a friends recommendation. This year I plan to play at least a handful of games specifically recommended to me.
• Recommend to others: Not really. It's fine. I wouldn't recommend against it, if you're interested, but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it.

Firewatch is a game where you play as a man who is coping. It's mostly what some people call a "walking simulator". I don't really love the term because it implies there is very little to do other than to press forward, so I put it under the blanket of "PC Adventure" games, which are generally just narratives with interactions, maybe some dialog choices, maybe some puzzles, and that's what this has. You interact with the environment, you make a lot of dialog choices, and there are even some "puzzles" in the form of, what to do/where to go next.

It's fine. It's not particularly engaging, they could have offered me more reasons to explore around. I almost always learned that trying to stray off the beaten path was not worth it. There were maybe one or two easter eggs in "environmental" story telling off the beaten path, but really it wasn't worth just doing exactly what the game told me at all times. The characters aren't particularly likable. I understand they're supposed to maybe be flawed and human, but, both the main two characters partake in unreasonable emotional whiplash which really detracts from liking them or their relationship.

It does a good job at building intrigue and I felt like any moment "oh this game could turn around and make me love it" but it just kinda never followed through for me. I kept waiting and waiting for it to do the thing and it just kinda ended. I though it was going somewhere bigger, but it wasn't, it's exactly what it looks like and nothing more.