2/5 ★ – cha0sknightmare's review of Contrast.

The 1920s noir setting of Contrast is excellent, blending an atmospheric aesthetic with creative gameplay ideas. There’s something about its presentation that evokes the feel of Tim Burton’s works. The art style does a lot of heavy lifting, given the game’s mostly drab and unimpressive graphics. You play as Dawn, the imaginary friend of Didi, a young girl who serves as the game’s stand-in main character. As Dawn, you can only see Didi, all other characters are audible but only visible through the shadows they cast. Complusion Games have done well to animate these shadows so that their body language gets across the characters emotions whilst you listen to them converse. Dawn is a mute character and does not show any emotion whatsoever, so the story is really fed to you via Didi's chatter/commentary and her voice actor, whilst not the greatest, does a decent job here. Contrast's story revolves around Didi's parents and their relationship struggles. Didi's father has finiancial issues and has got himself into huge debt with the wrong people. Trying to keep his head above water he has taken out more loans and is now in a vicious circle that is coming back around on him. Didi creeps around the city listening in on conversations slowly unfolding deeper secrets and context to her families struggles. There is a plot twist at the end of the game that feels like it could be explored in a sequel, but it also works effectively as a "what the hell?" moment to leave the player with a headscratch moment that will play on their mind long after the game is beaten. In terms of gameplay, you'll navigate small hub worlds encountering unique puzzles that take place in both the 3D game world and on a 2D plane. You'll do this by entering the shadows cast by various light sources. The first time you experience this mechanic, it’s impressive and as the game progresses, the implementation becomes more creative. A personal favorite of mine was platforming across the moving shadows of a carousell. There are also collect-a-thon "illuminates" to find, and you'll often be hit by a progress gate that will require a small amount of these for you to continue. Usually the requirement is pretty modest so this doesn't slow down the games pacing to much. Unfortunately, whilst the puzzle platforming shows tons of potential, it regularly buckles under buggy implementation and finicky design choices. Often requiring you to take objects back and forth between the 3D game world and the 2D shadows, moving these is a slow and laborious process and it's all to common you'll be randomly knocked out of the shadows, requiring you to re-do multiple minuites of work. This could be forgiven once or twice but it happens far to often, combine this with the fact you'll be spending alot of time experimenting, and the puzzles quickly start to feel like more work that the payoff they provide. An optional hint button or some sort of commentary from Didi offering help may have helped to alleviate this issue. Contrast feels undercooked in terms of performance, frame drops occur frquently and the game has loading times between every area that feel like a relic from the Playstation 2 era. Both of these elements are just more things that bog the game down. Contrast feels like a game that I really want to love, and one could be so much more than it is, unfortunately the issues and downsides compound together in a way that drags the entire package down. It's never a good feeling when you want a game to end, and that's the feeling I had here, sadly I think that says it all considering the game is only about 6 hours long.