Entertainment

Call of the Sea video game review: Strictly for hardcore puzzlers


Set during the closing months of 1934, “Call of the Sea” is a demanding puzzle game that follows Norah, a former art teacher, as she travels by ship to an island located east of Tahiti. Her journey from Denver to the South Pacific is occasioned by a package she received in the mail which contained a key, an ornamental knife and a picture of her husband Harry with the coordinates of the island written on the back. For the past few months Norah has fretted over the whereabouts of her husband who went missing after trying to find a cure for his wife’s mysterious illness.

On the trail of her husband, Norah discovers that the people of Tahiti and the seafaring folk who work in the area shun the unnamed neighboring island. But she finds the captain of a ship who is willing to drop her off in a paddle boat near the island and return to pick her up three days later. As she draws closer to the shoreline she is startled by the sight of a stone obelisk rising above a promontory near the center of the island. It matches a drawing she made that was inspired by a dream. Ashore, she discovers that the feelings of chronic fatigue associated with her illness are gone.

As Norah heads inland she will come across various symbols and ideograms on the surfaces of walls and objects which she’ll jot down in a notebook. One of the easier puzzles early in the game finds her needing to decipher the marking on a device that controls the directional orientation of a wooden bridge. By exploring the nearby area Norah will come across pillars containing symbols along with drawings of mountains, fish, and water. She can use her findings to figure out the proper sequence in which to arrange the dials on the device that controls the bridge.

The game’s story is a pastiche of genre cliches knitted together: an island that acts as a portal to another realm, an illness that brings with it a gift as well as a curse, madness, blood sacrifice, etc. Everything feels derived from something else. (Even Norah’s plucky spirit seems like it was cribbed from watching movies.) However, the game’s art direction and ingenious puzzles give “Call of the Sea” undeniable momentum.

I played “Call of the Sea” on an Xbox Series X hooked up to a Samsung 4K QLED TV after first trying it out on my computer. I couldn’t help but note how much better it looked with HDR lighting so I started the game over on the Xbox. Watching the color of the sky shade from yellow to green to violet depending on where Norah is standing made for its own pleasant diversion early on, while near the end there are underwater sections that I enjoyed solely for their aquatic beauty.

“Call of the Sea” is stuffed with puzzles that range from very clever to borderline maddening. To unlock the secrets of the island and her own latent abilities, Norah will have to play instruments, translate symbols, arrange constellations, manipulate water levels and press all sorts of levers at the right time or in a particular order. There is no way I could have completed the game in time to finish this review without consulting online resources. Truthfully, even if I’d had more time, I would not have had the patience to pour over some of the puzzles because I was indifferent to Norah’s fate. Still, the care that went into the game’s mechanics construction is evident. (Cue Zelda metaphor: imagine a game that feels like a big water temple.)

“Call of the Sea” will be welcomed by those who enjoy a challenging puzzle game with a matinee feel of familiarity and extravagance. For those of us with less patience, there are other ways to spend our time.

Christopher Byrd is a Brooklyn-based writer. His work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @Chris_Byrd.



Shared From Source link Entertainment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *