Vane Reviews
Vane is a 2-hour atmospheric adventure game that due to its numerous technical problems and confusing language will take up to 5 hours to finish. It is a unique experience with stunning art design and music that unfortunately has been lost in a sea of bugs and gameplay problems
Review in Persian | Read full review
It is boring walking simulator with crow. As dry as desert in this journey.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Vane is a game that sticks to its ideals at the detriment of everything else. It's a noble idea to let players figure out everything on their own — until you realize that the large environments and the number of interactive but ultimately useless elements mean more time wasted in activities without a payoff.
Video games have really changed as a storytelling medium. what was once a casual dash from left-to-right, dropping baddies and collecting shiny objects, opened up into new realms of drama, narrative and even philosophical messages. Of course, that doesn't make these games immediately any better than the goofy platformers and shmups of gaming's formative years, but it has been amazing to see the many different ways gaming has been adapted by talented designers to tell all manner of dark, abstract and inquisitive tales.Into a busy market of chin-stroking titles such as The Missing, Gris and Gone Home comes Vane, a new PS4 adventure from Tokyo outfit Friend or Foe. Vane, like its brethren, eschews typical action gameplay to present a mood-piece adventure, not dissimilar from the work done by Team ICO. Vane wants to put freedom back in the hands of the player, letting them engage in a strange, mystical journey - without hand-holding - and with player-led discovery being the ultimate prize.
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.
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.
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
It can still look visually striking when viewed from a distance while its audio design, with a brooding electronic score, can also be wonderfully atmospheric. Sadly, it's not enough to salvage a wholly disappointing experience that never reaches the lofty heights it begins with.
Vane comes across as an interesting concept, yet a light one that lacks polish.
Vane may have strived to create an immersive experience for gamers, but its technical flaws leave it feeling disjointed and unpolished. It feels like a disappointment for what it could have been and it is hard to recommend the game in its current state.
Vane boasts some gorgeous visuals for an indie game but sadly suffers from a litany of bugs and strange design choices.
It seems like during the years of development, Friend & Foe has forgotten what it wanted to say with Vane.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Despite its deceptively intriguing prologue, Vane quickly goes from a journey of discovery to a laborious chore, mainly due to the abundance of technical issues and a lack of a decent save system.
There is nothing about Vane that redeems it. This review reads like a list of complaints instead of constructive criticism because there isn't even anything to be constructive about. It's a game that's a challenge to play simply because it challenges your patience.
The new PlayStation 4 exclusive third-person adventure Vane is broken, ploddingly slow, and completely confused about what it's trying to do.
It's clear what sort of tone or manner of presentation Vane is going for despite its short run-time and undeniable vacancy of explanation.
A beautiful world begging to be explored falls victim to unclear direction and clunky controls making for a disaster instead of a delight.
Though Vane did not hit any mark for it to be considered good, we can only wonder what’s next for Friend & Foe, and hope that the developers understand that gamers want to not only be challenged intellectually but to also attain an experience they will always remember.
Vane's first fifteen minutes are amazing. Then the game plummets in quality faster than a diving bird. Tons of glitches, obtuse puzzle, terrible controls, an awful camera, and stuttering frame rate keep Vane from being worth your time.
Unfortunately, Vane’s most interesting segment is overshadowed by how it manages to combine all of the game’s problems.