Wide Ocean Big Jacket

Genre: Third-Person Walking Simulator

Players: 1

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Review:

Wide Ocean Big Jacket is a Third-Person Walking Simulator released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2020. It follows a young man, his wife, their teenage niece, and her teenage boyfriend, as they go on a camping trip in the woods, and focuses on the conversations they have, mostly with each other.

This game has a simple but fairly distinct presentation, with extremely low-poly and mostly untextured characters in an extremely low-poly and untextured environment. It looks primitive in a sorta’ quaint way, which isn’t terrible but certainly nothing impressive. This is backed by a mellow soundtrack that fits this game’s laid-back themes fairly well. However, while the game’s presentation isn’t terrible, it is extremely minimalist and basic, which has me wondering why the game needs over half a GB of memory for what amounts to a few hours’ worth of low-poly environments with untextured polygons.

In terms of story, Wide Ocean Big Jacket is mostly a sorta’ “slice of life” story that doesn’t seem especially interested in any big dramatic plot or grand messages, it’s just a look at these four people interacting. This is not a story you’re likely to get very deeply invested in, but it may be one that you can sit back and relax while it plays out.

However, this laid back nature is made a little more frustrating by issues with the gameplay, at least what little gameplay is actually here. Characters move slowly, and their conversations play out one small sentence at a time, which makes the pace of the game feel even more glacial than its laid-back themes would have done otherwise. What’s more, there are clearly places you’re meant to be going or things you’re meant to be interacting with in order to progress the story, but the game doesn’t often make it clear what these are, which means you’re plodding around the environment at a snail’s pace looking for whatever you need to just get on with it.

What’s more, it bears mention that this is an extraordinarily short game, easily completed within an hour or so, so even if you’re looking to get to know these game’s characters, you won’t be learning too much about them. Honestly, my takeaway after completing the game was “what was the point of that?”

I don’t dislike Walking Simulators, and I don’t have a problem with “Slice of Life” stories, but Wide Ocean Big Jacket tries my patience by pairing these two already slow-paced things with gameplay that slows things down even further. If you’re looking for a laid-back story told in a laid-back fashion, this game may interest you, but it’s just as likely to test your patience, and after an hour you’ll be done with it and wondering why you bothered.

tl;dr – Wide Ocean Big Jacket is a Third-Person Walking Simulator that has you playing through the story of four characters on a camping trip. It’s a slow-paced, low-key affair, which wouldn’t be horrible if the gameplay didn’t slow things down even more, to the point where this is a game that is at turns relaxing and frustrating, and it’s so short that you feel like you barely got to know the characters anyway.

Grade: D+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2020 Game Awards:

Winner:

Most Overrated – While all of the nominees in this category earned a higher Metacritic score than I feel they deserved (well, and then there’s Carrion, which somehow got nominated for Best Indie Game and Best Debut Game at The Game Awards), only one of the highly-celebrated games on this list is one I actually think is a terrible game. However, more than that, I do not understand what anyone sees in Wide Ocean Big Jacket in the first place – the graphics are clearly ugly, the gameplay is tedious and frustrating, and the story is pedestrian and uninteresting. Yet despite this, the game scored a 79 on Metacritic. Nope, hard disagree. Don’t believe everything you see, this game is not worth it.

Runner-Up: The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award

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