I had to push through my first real block with this game. I mentioned previously that this game had a slow start, and well, it kind of just kept going. I made it to chapter 3, but getting there was tough. I’m not talking about difficulty, I’m talking about the pacing. The game is holding my hand, laying the groundwork for the story. Which is fine, but it eventually turned into a on rails experience. There were sections where I’ve arrived in Hawaii, and the game, I can tell, wants to show off this new land, but I’m not in the driver’s seat.

There were a couple of sections that looked like I was back in control, but the game just had my character walking down a sidewalk and not in a cutscene. It felt a little odd, I get I need to see the new area, I get I need to talk to new characters. Just felt like it could have been a much shorter cutscene.

But thankfully, my frustrations were short-lived, and now I’ve been allowed to explore a bit more. I’ve had fun going through some of the sub-stories, like helping a kid run a lemonade stand. I still enjoy my time in the game, and I think this pacing issue for me is more about a choice developers made when it comes to storytelling than poor design. I think of Kojima games, where cutscenes can last hours, where it is literal storytelling, not immersing, you, just getting what they want to say out there. I think you have to be in the right mindset sometimes for this kind of storytelling. I’m sitting on my couch, playing on my PlayStation Portal, I think in instances like that, I might enjoy some actual gameplay compared to if I was seated at my computer or in front of a TV.