After Us Reviews
After Us beats you over the head with paper-thin themes, but between the truly awful platforming and the frustrating level design, it'll be the least of your worries.
Overall, this leaves After Us as a flawed but intriguing 3D platformer. Its moments of brilliance are great to behold, such as its varied, dreadful locales and those moments where its platforming truly clicks. However, its lack of character and story development and its more frustrating sections do mean that it's not a perfect game - but at the very least its heart is in the right place.
This type of game has been done far better before.
After Us is not perfect but it is enjoyable and if you ever wondered what a Journey 2 would look like then check out After Us.
After Us manages to deliver an experience that is largely enjoyable despite its flaws. Loose gameplay mechanics, framerate hiccups, and superfluous combat encounters are mostly offset by solid environmental storytelling, a poignant message, fantastic soundtrack work, and almost rock-solid performance and visuals.
After Us is a game of contrasts. A game where the harsh grays and pollution of its desolate landscapes contrast with the gorgeous rays of light and greeneries summoned by its protagonist. Where its unwelcome setting contrasts with its easy-going gameplay loop. It’s also a game where the decent gameplay loop contrasts with its excessively on-the-nose story.
A chilling fever dream of dystopian hope, After Us takes the mechanics of an atmospheric puzzle-platformer and uses them to create a beautifully unsettling experience that feels a little too real. Its satisfying traversal challenges through gorgeously rendered wastelands provide plenty of engaging gameplay moments for platforming fans, though its relentlessly oppressive environments may prove too harsh for some. Haunting and immersive, but definitely not for the faint of heart.
After Us is an atmospheric platforming adventure that leaves you thinking about the beauty in extinction rather than the horrors. With slick controls, appealing environments to explore and a tranquil nonintrusive soundtrack, fans of titles like Journey will likely enjoy the exploration of a surreal and desolate world of post-human life.
After Us is a grim yet hopeful tale of what the future of humanity and our planet looks like, given our current actions. Within its dark moments shine a fantastic platformer that shouldn’t be missed. It not only carries a strong message, but it also shows what is possible for the platformer genre on modern consoles.
After Us may appear to be a game with a profound message at first play, but the deeper you get in, the more its grip lessens on the player between drawn out traversal sections, reptitive puzzling, clunky controls and a profound emptiness permeating throughout. While I appreciate what I think the game is trying to say, unfortunately, I don’t think it gets that message across as well as it would have liked.
Unreliable performance and some underdeveloped mechanics do hurt the impact and atmosphere of After Us, but its intriguing post-apocalyptic world and satisfying movement still make for a worthy adventure.
After Us has style to spare and its heart in absolutely the right place, yet the maddeningly finicky controls make traversal feel like a chore – a cardinal sin for any platformer.
After Us is a wonderful, dream-like journey through the evils of the world, an epic with a profound storyline and setting that makes us reflect on the path of humanity and everything around it. An excellent platformer, with a respectable duration and plenty of collectables to collect. A must-buy for fans of the genre.
Review in Italian | Read full review