Out of all life on Earth, as far as we know, the human race carries the heaviest burden – we know we’re going to die. It may not be today, and maybe not tomorrow, but death is coming for all of us, and in most cases we have no way of fighting it. In gaming, it’s often taken as a joke, thanks to the ability to reload checkpoints or simply hit A to respawn, but Waking aspires to take the concept further by placing you, the player, on your death bed in a coma. You are tasked with exploring your mind through dreams and nightmares to find the necessary tools to escape and wake up.

The gameplay blends elements of guided meditation and your typical third-person action game. Throughout the experience, you’ll be asked to close your eyes (kind of a weird concept for a video game, but at least the screen goes black so you don’t miss out on anything important), and take a deep dive into your memories, as a soothing voice asks you to think back on specific events from your own history. The game asks you to provide a staggering amount of personal details as well as a lofty warning at the start that this can bring about strong emotions and should be avoided by those with certain mental issues.

This works hand in hand with the action elements, as most of your abilities are tied to your own memories, beliefs, knowledge, and feelings, some of which you just select from a pretty large bucket of options and others that you get to go deeper into designing, such as the name and appearance of the ability. Each new area brings about a new concept, ranging from personal traumas or struggles, your favorite pets, lost loved ones, and everything in between. Despite being completely honest with the questions, outside of getting to incorporate my favorite dog of all time (Mr. Beans, an elderly Boston Terrier) into the game as a companion that would help me run headfirst into battle, the game barely got a smile out of me, let alone some deep-seated emotions or feelings. I’d like to attribute this to me being dead inside, but it’s much more likely that it’s due to just how damn broken the rest of the game is.

In Waking the combat is primarily focused on telekinesis, where you pick up randomly placed items (legit garbage in most cases) and chuck them at enemy forces, and then follow up with melee or other ranged attacks. I loved this style of combat in classics such as Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Star Wars; The Force Unleashed; however, it misses the mark here by a long shot. Each and every attack you utilize uses an “ammo” of sorts (even melee), which requires you to pick up and absorb certain items that are usually dropped from enemies or simply found lying around in the world. All in all, the combat is cumbersome, repetitive, and a downright chore to play. Adding figurative salt to the wound, each and every time you wish to change out on of your abilities, you must go into the overly bland, clunky menus to do so.

There is a fair amount of platforming incorporated in addition to the action segments, but much like the combat, it’s broken as well. I’ve sampled this game on both my Xbox One X, as well as an S model, and each has some severe frame rate issues that come out of nowhere, leaving both consoles stuttering to catch up, oftentimes mid-jump, sending my avatar falling into nothingness. In some cases, this same issue occurred while running through areas, resulting in me falling through an invisible gap in the environment, leaving me staring at one of the game’s many loading screens that rival the timespan devoted to the guided meditation segments.

The game delivers a mish-mash of great ideas and lackluster execution. There are a number of hard-hitting images, such as angels hovering above your hospital bed looking down upon you, or the towering bosses that look down on you from their imposing, larger than life frames topped with animal masks. It’s almost like the game was a culmination of a few different projects the developer tried to duct tape together in an effort to complete multiple projects at once. When you look at the visual shortcomings, like the muddy, surrealistic environments, or the smaller scale enemies that look like random shapes made of light that hover in place, it drags down the desire to push through the broken combat to see out the ending.

Waking brings some interesting concepts to the table, but I can’t help but feel (or even believe I am writing this) that the game would’ve been better suited as a walking sim, removing the combat entirely. I really enjoyed how it attempted to get me to be fully vested in the game by incorporating loved ones from my life, but the combat and the staggering number of bugs make this a game that should’ve been left asleep.

4 out of 10

Pros

• Some Stunning, Deep Imagery
• Builds the Story Around the Player’s Hopes and Fears
• Mr. Beans

Cons

• Clunky, Repetitive Combat
• More Bugs Than You Can Fit Into a Hospital Bed
• Some Downright Ugly Visuals
• Horrendous Load Times

Waking was developed by Jason Oda and published by tinyBUILD. It was released on PC and X1. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Waking, check out the official website.

 

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