GRIS

I won’t say that GRIS is bad. It is not even remotely bad. What GRIS is is disappointing. It can’t decide whether or not it wants to be a fun platformer or art piece, and the reality is that it could have been both. There’s a lot of hyperbole out there right now about this being a must play and I have a feeling a lot of people that do will be disappointed by this title.

Gris is, at times, a meditative, affecting exploration of complex emotions that uses its levels as a canvas for some of the most beautiful visual design in any platformer, backed by a fantastic score. At others, it’s a maddeningly simple and confusing game that lets its artistic ambitions run roughshod over its gameplay.

It’s too self-conscious, and too wrapped up in being aesthetically pleasing. It’s too tied to the idea of a neat conclusion. It’s so caught up in the language of recurring motifs and visual continuity that it doesn’t seem to notice when the emotional arc loses clarity and continuity. The overall effect for me ends up being elegant but detached. A slightly muddled compendium of the picturesque sides of grief.