Vane Reviews
Vane is exhausting, ponderous, bewildering, endlessly frustrating, needlessly obtuse, narratively unsatisfying, mechanically clumsy, and technically shoddy, all shot through a camera so ill-equipped to deal with the rudimentary task of showing you what's happening on screen that you might as well pop a blindfold on and try using The Force.
Vane is the kind of game where you can see what the developers were going for. It has moments where the vision comes together and perhaps you've turned a corner, but all too quickly it goes back to its old, disappointing ways.
Vane is an intriguing game with a variety that encourages you to dig deep into its dubious world, but its sluggish controls hamper this peculiar experience.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
Vane is a unique experience and for that in itself Friend & Foe should be applauded. As an artwork, it’s compelling. But as a game, it’s recommended with strings attached: this is a harsh, uncompromising world and you’re going to need to struggle to survive.
An ungainly but hypnotic exploration of worlds in the making and unmaking, and a fresh spin on the ethos of Team Ico's games and Journey.
This game won't be for everyone. A short playtime and lack of instruction of what to do or where to go, coupled with a range of annoying little glitches, may cause many to get frustrated. However the overall look and atmosphere is incredible. You'll want to explore each location in order to enjoy the game because the pleasure we get from a journey is perhaps more dependent on the mind-set that we travel with, than on the destination we travel to.
Vane has a great premise, but it's overshadowed by glitches, bugs, graphics bugs, and a wild camera.
Review in German | Read full review
Like so much fine art, this piece loses its luster when you start to dissect and interpret it. So don't. Because it's fucking dope
An atmospheric and often perplexing exploration game that suffers from bugs, uneven level design, and an unwavering dedication to leaving you to your own devices.
Vane is an enigmatic game about the force of union and the silent sacrifice of living beings. It looks like an Early Access game, with bugs, glitches and an unnerving slow pace. Sometimes presents a wonderful world where the sense of solitude is the key to understand what Friends & Foe wanted to tell in their obscure and strange story.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Initially intriguing by his artistic direction, mysterious in its final, and even if it has the good idea to offer the happiness of being a bird, Vane goes from meditative to painful far too fast, served by a technique too much weak in regard to its size and a lack of sensation, which it does not manage to tie the bottom and the form of its experiment.
Review in French | Read full review
Vane is a different game. It does not present an interesting story, but it ends up delivering a unique experience of seeing the world from above through the view of a crow. Even though it has some serious technical problems and gets the player lost in some moments, Vane manages to make the player have some fun while solving some puzzles and trying to understand what happens to that world.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Vane is an experience filled with intrigue and mystery, but it’s held back by some technical issues. One can’t help but feel that it could’ve used some more time in the oven. That said, despite its issues, it’s better than the sum of its parts and worth checking out by fans of Team ICO’s past work.
Despite the magnificent aesthetic inspiration and the stunning overall atmosphere, Friend & Foe is unfortunately no Team ICO (especially concerning some of the key aspects that make a video game worth playing): as a result Vane is an imperfect, uneven and at times even excruciating adventure. But also one that, along with its lows, is still capable of memorable, evocative highs.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Whether you’re a big indie fan or a newbie like me, Vane is well worth your time.
Featuring deep puzzle solving mechanics, a unique graphical style, and a tale that will leave you guessing until the very end, it’s definitely a game worth experiencing at some point. The technical issues and bugs currently present at the time of release really do hold Vane back from being a good game to just being mediocre, and that’s unfortunate.
The new PlayStation 4 exclusive third-person adventure Vane is broken, ploddingly slow, and completely confused about what it's trying to do.
Vane lets players shift from the form of a bird to a child as they explore a strange, hallucinatory world set to a fantastic synth soundtrack. But what starts as a liberating flight through a vast desert eventually devolves into a linear trek through cramped corridors. Vane is a strange, haunting game that deserves attention, but it abandons its most interesting ideas too early on.
In the pursuit of crafting an indistinguishable game world and granting advanced levels of autonomy, the developers forgot to make Vane any fun to play.
Though it boasts a resoundingly striking aesthetic, a haphazard save system coupled with a raft of glitches and a misjudged waypoint system all manage to tarnish what should have been one of the first major indie darlings of the year. Vane is simply too frustrating to recommend in its current form.