GENIE Reprise Review

"Wandering About"

Campaign

February 23, 2024 at 8:56pm
By Jason Stettner

I don’t know why I do this to myself sometimes, play these mundane games where in the first few minutes you’re knowing it’s going to be a nightmare slog. Well, anyways I sat through whatever GENIE Reprise was supposed to be continuing to think some deeper edge was going to appear but alas that was far from the case. Look, I enjoy a walking sim game every now and then but there needs to be something of substance to it.

In this game you walk around on a small level gathering a few crystals. Then these platforms appear on the level one by one, you step on them. Once you step on them some poetry is recited. You continue to do this and then end up on another level. This continues for like a couple hours and then it’s over. That’s the game. It’s a story about fantasy and adventure through this destiny of sorts, how riveting.

Gameplay

While the game presents a tranquil world that comes across as a tech demo from a previous generation of gaming there isn’t much to it. You get some lovely music, some vibrant fantasy visuals and then you float towards them. You look into the light, listen to poetry and move on.

It doesn’t even really tell you what to do initially, which is fascinating. That’s it, seriously. The poetry is kind of nice I suppose, the voice was okay. I was playing on Xbox Series X so there is a 4k resolution at 60fps present. It does look nice enough visually all things considered.

The Conclusion

GENIE Reprise is a boring slog, it has some decent poetry anchored by insanely slow progression. It’s not even necessarily long for a game but it feels like an agonizing eternity that makes me descend further into madness. I don’t even know what that means, but it fits here. It fits. I guess the visuals are fine being neat fantasy worlds but there’s nothing to them.

The most interaction you do is clicking on two statues to open a gate. It’s just rinse and repeat. I guess the Xbox Achievements are somewhat easy to obtain, but I’m not sure that’s something of value for all. I actually would have preferred just reading the story as poetry.

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GENIE Reprise Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by ID@Xbox

Rating Overall: 2.5