A neat little open world game with a simple, but worthwhile goal, and a lot of stuff to do in between.
Open world games are something I haven’t really interacted with that much.
My oldest memories go back to playing a bit of GTA San Andreas and just being a troublemaker for 10 or so minutes before I got bored.
I also recall having a lot of fun in GTA Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories on my PSP, the world there was quite big for the tiny console it’s on, and I usually just went mission after mission, maybe saving places that had cool cars and stuff like that. The world was fun to run around in when escaping the police or trying to jump from ramps, maybe finding some collectible, that’s about it.
Breath of the Wild completely changes this, but I won’t talk much about that one like until I’m done with it!
In the case of A Short Hike, the goal is simple, you are going to get a phone call, but you’ll need to get to the mountain’s peak to have signal!
A Short Hike
Mechanically, you can move, glide in the air and interact with a variety of things in the map.
The Island is rather small, but it still feels like it expands the more you play, I liked that. Also there are a lot of side quests to discover! When you interact with people they will ask for your help, teach you how to fish, or want to play Beachstickball with you.
There were times where I felt a bit weird, I wanted to get to the mountain top already, but I also had the itch to keep exploring, I had my doubts that those deviations actually mattered that much. And yeah, they are simple extra things to do, but in the end, that’s what the game’s about, it’s about the journey and the friends you make along the way!
The dialogues are simple, witty and funny, I kept talking and looking for NPCs, and almost everytime it would pay off, I would get a hat, or a shovel!
There really is no rush, no big plot or grandiose scale, you are on vacation after all, and you can take your time to explore as much as you want, or to go to the mountain top as soon as you collect the required golden feathers, which work as your stamina to climb or fly higher in the game.
The game has a wonderful artstyle, reminiscent of the Nintendo DS or late GBA titles, and the music is wonderfully done too, changing as you hike the mountain or discover new places. I will probably use these for my ringtones or something, they’re quite nice.
A Short Hike is a short game, I only played it for little more than 2 hours, but it was a worthwhile experience for me and I still had some stuff to find, maybe later, there’s no rush.
These past few months, the amount of posts in this website reviewing books or videogames and things has risen quite a bit, so I just wrote a bit about that.
