ShylockSimmonz's Review of A Story About My Uncle

Has Quirks But Solid Overall

User Rating: 7 | A Story About My Uncle LNX

By shylocksimmonz | Review Date: August 16, 2022

First person platformers can be hit and miss but A Story About My Uncle was highly enjoyable for the most part. It had some annoying bits near the end but this was a minor nuisance. My issue near the end was that it became difficult to determine what chunks of ground and rock one could grapple to. I didn’t seem to have this issue before the ice caves level for whatever reason but it meant a lot more deaths than normal. The windmills earlier were also quite finicky. Overall I liked the grappling system as it made me try to plan out a route before taking the first jump. There are also a decent amount of augments you get such as extra grapples; rocket boots; super jumps; and cores that recharge your grapple mid flight. All of this makes you strategize when to use them so you don’t run out mid flight. The story was at times basic but had some promise. You are searching for your missing uncle and need to explore this strange world to find him. My only complaint was that you don’t learn more about the frog people and their history. For instance you get a companion who deciphers glyphs for you but they don’t stick around long and there are plenty of glyphs after that point that I would have liked to know what they meant. The voice acting was very good. There wasn’t much music in the game to judge. The graphics were decent overall. It was never a stunner but had some good art direction. The only bits that I thought looked weak, even for 2014, was the fire; hair and the frog people’s feet. There were also some awkward transitions in the game where it loaded the next section of the game but only had a blank black screen. These transitions only took a couple seconds on my SSD but the first couple made me think maybe the game had frozen. I think adding a “loading” message would have been better. The ending seemed to be a bit flat and weak but I suggest waiting for after the credits when there is a post credits scene which ties things up nicer.

I played A Story About My Uncle on Linux. It never crashed and I didn’t notice any bugs. The game saves at checkpoints. Usually I don’t like this over manual saves but these were spaced out well for the most part and weren’t a big problem. The game has a v-sync toggle; an FOV slider that goes from 60-120; three graphics settings; and three AA settings. I left V-Sync off as the game picked up my 144Hz refresh rate without it. Alt-Tab worked. The performance was very good. There were a couple bits where the frame rate dropped to 58 and 59 but these accounted for a total of about two minutes of my overall play time which was next to nothing. Typically the frame rate was above 80 FPS and was even over 100 FPS for a large chunk as well. I found that a keyboard and mouse worked great for this game which was impressive as platformers can be a mixed bag with them.

Game Engine: Unreal 3

Graphics API: OpenGL

Game Version Played: Build 5188

Disk Space Used: 1.3 GB

Input Used: Keyboard and mouse

Graphics Settings Used: V-Sync off; FOV 100; all high; motion blur off; 8x AA

GPU Usage: 0-100 %

VRAM Usage: 737-915 MB

CPU Usage: 8-25 %

RAM Usage: 2.2-3.5 GB

Frame Rate: 58-144 FPS

Overall I think A Story About My Uncle was a solid platformer. If you like games like Valley you should like this. The story and presentation were good and the game play was more fun then nuisance. It had some areas to improve but was still enjoyable. I finished this play through in three hours and six minutes. I think it is worth it’s current price tag of $16.79 CAD.

My Score: 7.5/10

My System: