- Tested on ultra-wide 4K PC with RTX 4070
- Code transmitted by the publisher
- Home Screenshots
- Finished in four hours and wheelbarrows.
- Practical climbing in real life...
- ...will have to train to dethrone this little man!
The juicer is the descending tide but also this delicate moment when the boats fail to capsize during docking, a perilous exercise due to the ocean refluxs that are known to be indomitable. Designed as a climbing game by the French studio Dont Exchanges At Gamescom, Justant embarks us on the crazy Alpine adventure of a young man at sea foot. Does the mountain marry with drunkenness of the depths?
Go higher
With its elegant introduction and artistic paw all in contrasts, difficult not to fall under the charm of the graphics of the title. In the middle of the desert, our character walks without bending under the heat with one goal: to reach the tops of a summit that seems endless. No dialogues or voices in this sleek game. We will only have the right to our protagonist (as talkative as Link) and his curious acolyte, a small blue creature that rises at times on our head to interact with the elements of the game. Between two valiant ascents, we will meet here and there some riddles of cryptic texts that reveal a certain ecological sensitivity, especially on the rarity of Blue Gold.
With these breathtaking panoramas and some sense of staging carried by vertiginous camera angles, one immediately feels the evil Sea mountains. The light effects are magnificent, just like the heat effect that slightly blurs the vision, like the glamours perceived by the Dupondts in the middle of the desert. Our cyberpunks are probably looking at the futuristic side and prepocalyptic of our anthropocene era. While flat in textures, this Cartoonesque style at the crossroads of animation film and cel shading is simply splendid. The passages inside are not left behind, and we savor the incursions into the crevices, where the light of the sun gives way to the tingling of gems and jewels that adorn the surrounding walls.
When the wind blows
In order to give a little body to the whole, dont Nod gives life to this universe with convincing physical effects. You need to see the muddy vegetation as our character in the last world to appreciate the care taken to the work. Small strange and cute creatures also spread this dreamlike world out of a watercolor. And in the middle of this granite tower: wrecks and residuals of a past but not so distant life that give a nostalgic aspect intriguing though a little too much surface perhaps. As if the call of the sea was inseparable from mountaineering. An original marriage that will be declined with poetry until the end, where the artistic direction manages to take its full flight. Despite a successful epilogue, one remains a hair on its end, given the generosity of the title on these few hours that are worth a thousand times the platitude of a service game without flavor.
In addition to these aesthetic qualities, Leaning adopts an original gameplay. If you, too, have always liked Lara Croft's climbing and cabrioles on PSone but you hate the teleguided gameplay of Ubisoft's hit franchise assassins, no doubt you should hang on to the proposal of Dons Nod. Everything is based on a system of endurance like a certain Breath of The Wild which would have been coupled with Heeve Ho. To crack on the rock walls, you must press the two triggers to control each of your paluches. Pressing the action button finally allows you to place up to three relay points.
Security requires, the rope will know as much your Ariane thread as your burden when you have exhausted its length. Without ever being a stick push, the game forbids any game over. Without endurance, our character will let go and fall to his relay. Curiously, the game sometimes recalls the feeling proper to the excellent Heart of Darkness in a solar version where death was conjured and the experience planed.
An ICOnique game
Despite this absence of ludo-punition, Dons Nod succeeds in making us feel the merit of ascension, the adrenaline of a successful cabrio jump as of apprehension of the fall. The gameplay, far from being automated like that of contemporary productions, plays with some inertia coupled with gravity. By also basing the experience largely on exploration, we are in the light years of this unfortunate tendency of barioling the cornices and elements of the decor with which to interact. Gamedesign heresy! Here the progression is made in a natural way in good intelligence with the cognitive abilities of the player.
A cruel flaw which, with the suction side of modern heroes, made the escalation of God Of War insipid and meaningless (read our critical disillusioned). Moreover, it was difficult to remember the last opus as much as possible. In Leaning, if the animations are flexible, the game still suffers from a few catch points and fanciful jumps that make our little man at times seem to hit obstacles in an original way like a headless chicken that would make jump rope.
Since mortal fall is forbidden, in the last chapter partly horizontal, the unfortunate may seem upset by a mere stone with invisible citadel airs. If these few dots stick a little bit together, it remains anecdotal and in general, the physics and flexibility of the game are not lacking. Designed as a few hours' escape to tame the tops, Jusant probably picks up in the legacy of Team Ico while bringing his seed. The most determined can also seek to find all the secrets of the title as well as magnificent frescoes to reveal by our little azure blue companion.
The French of Don的t Nod have been able to give us a taste of the cabrioles, where a whole section of the video industry had managed to disgust us by contenting itself with the strict minimum play to the benefit of the great show, even sabotaging any gameplay proposal. With its shimmering DA, it is impossible not to crack under the charm of Justant. Same for his intelligent gameplay that never sinks into push-stick or frustration. Certainly we would have liked a few more hours to surprise us again and push the gameplay to exhaustion. And yet, Justant has enough qualities to make it forget its relatively weak lifespan and its some annoying collisions. Certainly one of the most beautiful indecent discoveries of 2023.
For
- Impressive physics...
- DA and beautiful lighting!
- Original vertical gamedesign
- Gameplay that trusts the player
- Discreet but elegant OST
- No loading time
- No invasive HUD
- Very very discreet tutorial
- A game not talkative but sincere!
- The little blue ball!
- The pleasure of climbing, its successes and failures
Against
- ...but sometimes capricious!
- Narration a superficial strand
- Collisions (sometimes) grotesque
- Low lifetime
Come on, you tried. 🙂
You're good, that's great! To the antipodes of talkative games like God of War, what does it make good a character who closes his mouth!