Big Walk Review (Friendship or Friendslop?)
Is Big Walk just another sheep in the friendslop herd?
With the recent onslaught of friendslop games like PEAK or RV There Yet, it would be easy to label Big Walk just another sheep or an attempt to cash in on this co-op craze because it can resemble that at a quick glance. Big Walk, however, is something very different.
Although Big Walk might look like another sheep, Big Walk is a wolf that more closely resembles 2016’s The Witness. An open world game about exploration, solving puzzles without any tutorials and slowly understanding the world around you. Big Walk is layered experience chocked full of aha moments, but the major contrast to The Witness is that it all happens with friends.
The criticisms largely parallel the ones that people had for The Witness, but with a few new critiques. The game is largely absent of narrative, the experience can be obtuse, but at least in Big Walk you’re not alone and although the puzzles are very unique, the gameplay loop is simple and repetitive: Find puzzle, solve puzzle and take reward. However, the island evolves and since every puzzle was unique with its own challenges and not just versions of lines on a grid, Big Walk is far from monotonous.
What you do in the beginning hours is what you will do in the final hours. It might sound cliche, but this is actually an instance where it was more about the friends you made along the way than the destination.
Unlike the rest of the friendslop genre, the fun in Big Walk isn’t derived from unscripted chaos or lowbrow humor, It’s from a meticulously designed world, intelligent gameplay and extremely well engineered puzzles. Big Walk is proof that a lot of little details can make a big difference
