Oct 26

Oct 26 Review | Paper Beast: Folded Edition

You probably haven’t heard of Pixel Reef before, its new French studio set up in 2016. However you might feel like you know the name of its founder, Éirc Chahi, especially if you are fond of the oft-forgotten genre of the cinematic platformer, that was all the rage for a hot minute in the early-to-mid-90s.

That’s some damn fine 1991 rotoscoping .

After the success of Prince of Persia, other games decided to take a swing at rotoscoping actors for video game animation, with one of the most well-known results being Chahi’ and Delphine Software’s Another World (Out of This World in the US) usually seen as the most important. Another World was thought of as quite the landmark in video game animation, especially on the Amiga and Atari ST in ‘91, the same year as the likes of Battletoads, Street Fighter II and Link to The Past. However, after the success of Another World, Delphine went and made Flashback, while Éric spent seven years creating the divisive Heart of Darkness for Interplay, after which he went quiet until 2011 with Ubisoft’s god game, From Dust. What I’m getting at here is one; Chahi likes to play in less popular genres, and two; he is a bit of an auteur creator, only putting his name to a sparse few projects he believes in.

But even for Chahi, Paper Beast is a bit of an oddity. Originally a PSVR exclusive, it has since migrated to PC based headsets where it garnered generally favourable reviews from a niche market, hungry for polished experiences. Now, Paper Beast: Folded Edition seeks to try to replicate that success without its home field advantage, that of being able to transport you to a virtual world that fully encompasses you.

This has always been an issue for VR games, the best ones design themselves around only being used with a headset (and oftentimes knuckle controllers or PSMoves), while games that proclaim they are playable in either virtual reality or on your screen tend to have to make concessions for both to work. I am happy to say though, Paper Beast: Folded Edition overcomes most of the problems associated with the migration away from VR to create a peaceful and contemplative interactive walk through the other-worldly-park.

The game is very straightforward in the back of the box list of features, sort of way. You walk through a distant land full of paper mache looking creatures, solving simple puzzles, and coming across strange objects while you slowly fill in a light story. But, there is a tone and an atmosphere that makes Paper Beast feel just a little special.

These creatures move and react like real animals in the wild while also looking distantly not of this planet. Water flows over sand realistically and sand piles high before being swept up in the wind, both of which you can control in the late game. The sound of a desert storm, caves filled with life just out of sight, and the odd J-pop inspired bop on a cassette player all have a physicality to them (something I’m guessing is very much so needed to place you in a different world when you are wearing a headset) that makes this place feel distantly real. As far as “walking-simulators” go this one has a sense of place right up there with the best of them.

However, this is also where some of the game’s issues begin to arise. Without getting into spoilers for the light plot that there is, there are reality-bending elements that were clearly written around a player wearing a headset that just doesn’t have the same impact they would if you were enveloped in the virtual space. These remnants of VR make themselves known in a couple of other places too; most noticeable is in the starting menu, which is literally a 3D space you look around, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but it serves as a strong reminder every time you load up the game that you are playing a lesser version. This is the version of the game that has been adapted and compromised, where objects no longer retain their weight. That might sound harsh, but after playing through the opening sequence in VR at Gamescom last year it feels pretty fair. The opening sequence makes the first beast you interact with feel like a towering goliath, that slowly warms to you, guiding you to shelter as a horrific sandstorm begins to envelop the desert. This sequence, and the moment I realised the sand flying past me was made up of numbers, were probably the first moments VR ever really clicked for me. While in Folded Edition it is a neat sequence that didn’t stay with me at all in the same way. It is a real shame that something that once got such a visceral reaction from me had me feeling so little second time around.

My biggest issue with the game is the controls. Most first-person narratives where you walk around a location have you pick up objects and examine them, it's the same case here. However, a lot of the VR-ness of it all has been left intact. This means that instead of objects moving directly in front of the centre of your screen for you to inspect, they instead have a bright line drawn to them where you can then bring them closer and move them around. It’s disappointing that the rotation afforded by motion controls was translated in some from, but the much bigger problem is while you move the items around your screen with your right-stick/mouse you are also still moving your head like a traditional first person game. This led to situations where I had picked up an item that came to the left of my screen and I moved my analogue stick right to try to centre it only for my character to look off to the right and leave the item even further in my peripheral view.It doesn’t happen too often but everytime I did I found myself cursing my setup. Again, this wouldn’t be a problem if I were wearing a headset and could just look to the left or move my hand closer to my face; it’s a shame a new control scheme wasn’t found to compensate for this change in medium/player perspective.
However, at the end of it all, as you watch the credits roll and read the last little message the dev team has for you, you realise there’s a certain magic in what Paper Beast does. Even without a VR headset, it wraps you up in this adventure out of this world and takes you on a beautiful, contemplative journey on another world, before gently bringing you back home to Earth.