As far as “walking sim” games go Firewatch has been the undisputed king in my eyes for a while and still is. At it’s core it is dependant on the dialogue and interaction between Henry and Delilah and both voice actors blow it out of the water and are fantastic. If this key part were poor it would ruin a lot of the game in my opinion. The music is also well done, especially in that the developers knew when to use it and when to keep things silent. The game play itself is actually very fun. It is very linear and there isn’t much difficulty but there is some openness to it. For instance where you go is linear but how you get there is all up to you for the most part. If you want to explore the park feel free, and you really should as there is no time limit on any of the missions. The game is the epitome of “comfy”. I love the outdoors and this game includes great vistas; lots of nature; hiking, climbing; just a great time to be had. The one part that was a bit suspect was going down hills because sometimes just by walking up to a small drop it would just climb down the stone while other times it would force me to press a button. The story itself is also well done. There are times where it can get a bit of horror vibes, a bit of sci-fi vibes, and in the end choose a different approach all together. It kept me guessing in a good way.
I played Firewatch on Linux. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any bugs. There are 6 graphics settings and a v-sync toggle. You can manually save whenever you want and there are also auto saves. There is only one save slot though so you keep overwriting the same file regardless. Alt-Tab didn’t work. The performance was great overall. Like many Unity games that use OpenGL though the GPU usage was all over the map and there were a few drops here and there but they didn’t last more than a few seconds each.
Game Engine: Unity
Graphics API: OpenGL
Disk Space Used: 4.2 GB
Game Version Played: 1.09
Graphics Settings: all highest; motion blur off; v-sync on; 1920x1080
GPU Usage: 1-100 %
VRAM Usage: 1301-2720 MB
CPU Usage: 11-31 %
RAM Usage: 2.3-2.9 GB
Frame Rate: 53-144 FPS
I really enjoyed my time with Firewatch. I wish more walking sim type games would have as high of presentation values; as good of a story and as good of voice acting. It’s few issues were very small and nowhere near hindered my enjoyment. I paid $24.99 CAD for it and that is easily a steal for the fun I had. I finished the game in 3 hours and 53 minutes proving that quality is greater than quantity. It didn’t feel rushed or dragged out.
My Score: 9.5/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.2.3 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 21.1.6 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 5.14.10-1-MANJARO | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz