Jett: The Far Shoreis known as “2021’s dreamiest existential crisis.” It’s elegantly confusing, visually fascinating, and an overall captivating game. Even so, theopen-world gameplayis limited and the story doesn’t offer a satisfying conclusion, leaving it up to the player to figure out what happened.
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ThoughJett: The Far Shoreis a raging success overall, it still receives some critiques aiming at the gameplay and overall writing of the story. Some of these issues can be sorted out with upcoming updates and patch notes, so players are eager to see how the game will reach its full potential over time.
8Missions Lack Direction & Purpose
Jett: The Far Shoreoften feels like the creators themselves didn’t know what kind of game they wanted to make. It’s not an open world, and has no combat. It’shighly story-driven, but its narratice lacks conclusion. This confusion boils down to one of the main issues of the game: missions lack direction.
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Whenever a player is entering a mission, they’re not motivated or guided. They’re not given a purpose, and they can’tempathize with the character. After a while, due to the heavy and often forced narrative, players even feel hostile towards friendly side characters. Although the story can be captivating and the open-world aspect is jaw-dropping, it would be nice to create a balance between the two. Slowing down the gameplay when important details are mentioned, and creating a faster-paced sequence during missions would create a more likable environment.
7Stiff Movement
Although problems with movement are somewhat normal in new games, it seems like the challenging movement of Mei inJett: The Far Shorewas a somewhat intentional creative choice. Whichever the case, players are having a hard time getting used to these unique movements, making the game infuriating at times.
Combining the weird movement with dull missions and frustrating enemies, players areleft wanting more. Hopefully, developers will solve this issue soon enough, allowing players to submerge into the alien world with Mei.
6Unsatisfying Conclusion
With a game that heavilyrelies on its storytelling, players expected something that kept them on the edge of their seats. They were anticipating mystery, details to figure out, cliffhangers, and plot twists. It can be said, thatJett: The Far Shoreoffers all of the above, but is missing a crucial factor: an ending. As mentioned before,Jetthas underwhelming controls and boring missions. This can lead to players thinking of the game more like an interactive sci-fi movie.
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At a base level, the issue isn’t necessarily thatJettrelies solely on narration. The issue is with the conclusion of the story, as it has none. At the end of the game, players are left with endless hours of puzzle-solving behind them, and nothing else. Hopefully, developers will add to the story in one way or another, asLittle Nightmaresdoes with DLCs, orOverwatchdoes with short films and comics.
5Unresponsive Controls
Almost every newly released game has some issues with the controls at first, which developers fix over time with a series of updates. While it’s understandable, it’scertainly not pleasantfor players to suffer through. Oftentimes players have to deal with unresponsive controls, which can turn a simple and dull activity into an exhausting struggle.
This is mostly experienced while in challenging missions. Players have to deal with the stiff movement of the game, sometimes unresponsive controls, weird camera movements, and intrusive mechanics in order to get to the end of a mission. There seems to be little balance between the story aspect of the game and the gameplay itself. The mechanics can’t match the ambition of the narrative, which results in the narrative overpowering the experience. The ideally challenging mission sequences become frustrating.
4It’s Hard To Keep Up With The Narrative & Instructions
In the world ofJett: The Far Shore, players are left alone in a vast and alien environment. There’s something satisfying about a game that doesn’t spoon-feed the controls or the directions of the game to players.A lot of games have gotten creativewith this, teaching players through combat scenes, or intense chase scenes. Unfortunately,Jettdoesn’t do any of these.
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Some missions are even given in a cryptic way (for example, players sometimes have to do the opposite of what they are told). In theory, this is another creative idea, but in practice, it causes issues, especially when combined with the frustrating controls, and the alien language of the game. More often than not, players end up trying to carefully maneuver an uncontrollable vehicle, while trying to read short-lived subtitles. Ultimately, this leads to players missing crucial information that is never mentioned again.
3Some Features Are Unnessecarily Restrictive
The advertising ofJett: The Far Shoreled players to believe that it would be anopen-world adventurewith plenty of time to explore. However, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The game puts serious restrictions on exploring the environment, and while it’s possible, it has a “time limit” most of the time. This wouldn’t be a problem, except thatthe combat elementis completely missing and the story is sometimes quite boring, leaving the game underwhelming.
Jettalso restricts movement in the form of a limited booster. This restriction cannot be explained by anything, except an effort from the developers to make some scenes more challenging. Overall, it just makes enjoyable travel sequences frustrating. And because this added challenge is easy to get used to, it just halts the story and makes most travel sequences unsatisfying.
2The Slow (Yet Constant) Narrative
While it’s clear that the main attraction of the game was intended to be the story and therefore narrative, developers didn’t do a stellar job balancing the themes and factors.Players get frustrated with the constant banter that goes on in the background. The lack of exciting gameplay to balance out the narrative results in an experience that becomes boring in a short amount of time if the player isn’t fully gripped by the story.
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Often times the narrative is so unnecessarily slow, that players can finish complete objectives by the time the game finishes telling them what to do. This again can be highly frustrating for more experienced players.Jett: The Far Shorealso slows time and resting the camera control during monologues, forcing the complete attention of gamers. Ultimately this leads to players growing to dislike otherwise decent characters, even ones like Mei’s supposed best friend and co-pilot. Increasing action gameplay would go a long way towards breaking up the narrative and making the game more enjoyable
1Glitches & Bugs
Glitches and bugs are nothing new n the gaming world and are almost always fixed over time by the developers. Players hope that this will come sooner rather than later, as some of these glitches interfere with the game in a major way. Those who have purchased the game know thatJett: The Far Shorehas a strict structure when it comes to gameplay.
The story is divided into chapters, and there’s no manual save within those chapters. Players have to be fully committed to whatever time frame is given one segment, as they can’t simply put down the game when they want to. However, in a game like this, bugs and glitches can be a horrible issue, because they force players to restart a game that doesn’t always recognize an objective being met. And when the chapter players have to restart is a 4-hour long one, that can bemore than infuriating.
Jett: The Far Shoreis available now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Microsoft Windows.
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