Vane Reviews
Vane is beautiful in its expression. Players will find themselves stunned by the world the game depicts, but, unfortunately, the title seems to be an expression of style over substance. Vane looks and often sounds amazing, but the developer has pursued making a work of art at the expense of something that is fun to play. Overall, Vane could certainly be considered a work of art. Nevertheless, though it was clearly aiming to be the next Shadow of the Colossus, it hits wide of the mark, as Vane lacks the depth and impact of that classic title.
Vane’s arresting visual design, inventive mechanics, compelling environmental storytelling, and tense, viscous atmosphere converge to create a truly exceptional experience and PS4’s first essential exclusive of the year.
Like the pearlescent shimmer across its desert surface, Vane is difficult to observe and define with precise clarity. Its world presents either an invitation to wonder or a provocation to explore and it's often seized by the tension pulling in opposing directions. Vane can be brilliant and subversive or confusing and frustrating and it's impossible to separate its intentions from its misfortunes.
Given this game's artistry, the child is a surprisingly ugly thing. It moves like a mole through molasses. Traversal is a major part of the game's puzzle landscape, but the child never feels entirely connected to the ground, dragging its feet through rocks, or floating weirdly over perches.
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.
There's only so much to say about Vane, an exploratory experience one can get through in a single sitting, without veering into spoiler territory. Vane is a game that feels like it wears its thematic elements on its sleeve, all without a single spoken or written word. Those themes include “instinct” and “exploration” at the ground level, and from there are likely up to how the individual player perceives the story as it develops. In its refusal to hold your hand or even guide you a little, Vane feels like it stands out among its peers as a vehicle to deliver narrative agency for players, not because they have a list of choices to sift through, but because they are presented with an environment and scenario that is so freely open to interpretation. With Vane, you get out what you put in, and while you may not come back to it multiple times, that first one is a doozy.
Vane follows in the footsteps of many arty puzzle-platformers before it, but a lack of a strong voice and purpose keep it from being great.
Vane comes across as an interesting concept, yet a light one that lacks polish.
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.
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.
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.
The new PlayStation 4 exclusive third-person adventure Vane is broken, ploddingly slow, and completely confused about what it's trying to do.
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.
Whether you’re a big indie fan or a newbie like me, Vane is well worth your time.
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
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.
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
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 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