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The great ghost
ship mystery

> ‘Return of the Obra Dinn’ game review

Duncan Fingarson
Senior Columnist

 

Re of the Obra Dinn is one of
the finest puzzle games I have ever
played. If all you're looking for is the
recommendation, there it is.

The game is great and everyone who
likes mysteries, deductive reasoning, or
the Golden Age of Sail should try it. The
question of why it's so good, however,
deserves further explanation. In the
interest of preserving the experience, this
review will remain spoiler-free.

Return of the Obra Dinn is the most
recent game from the mind of Lucas Pope,
whom you may recall as the person who
brought us Papers, Please. This game has
a similar low-resolution graphical style,
based on the early computers that only
had two colours for any given pixel so each
pixel was one or the other. It's an artistic
style of stark contrasts, of light and dark,
and it works quite well. The game also has a
similar concept in that the protagonist has
a perfectly ordinary profession (in this case,
an insurance adjuster), which is used as a
vehicle for an extraordinary story.

The game kicks off with the
protagonist travelling by boat to the Obra
Dinn, the merchant vessel of the titular
return. Every member of the crew is
presumed dead and only corpses are on
board. The protagonist's job is to find out
what happened to everybody so that the
East India Company can file an accurate
insurance claim.

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Naomi Ambrose
Staff Writer

kek YY

ariah Carey's latest 10-track album
Caution (released on November 16)
takes listeners on a music trip with stops to
old and new R&B, rap, and, hip-hop towns.
With a song like “A No No,” Carey
reminds us of the 1997 hit by Lil’ Kim,
Lil Cease, and Notorious B.1.G., “Crush
on You.” “A No No” mostly has the same
general beat of “Crush on You” and also
includes some lines from the chorus sung

 

 

 

Here's where things
get a little strange: The
player is armed witha
magical pocket watch
that can return them toa
person's moment of death.
You get a brief sound bite,
encompassing what that
person heard in the last few
seconds before they died,
and are then given a freeze-
frame, three-dimensional
environment to wander
around in. You also get
a book that contains a
crew manifest, a handful
of sketches, and a short
glossary of terms explaining
such things as what, exactly,
a midshipman does.

There's very little
hand-holding. You're
expected to work out
everyone's identities and
fates based entirely on
contextual clues from the
scenes and dialogue. Most
aren't obvious, with the
four Chinese topmen standing out as a
particularly difficult challenge. You can't
just brute-force the answer by guessing,
either; the game won't tell you if you're
right or not until you've gotten three people
entirely correct.

This challenge is what makes Return
of the Obra Dinn so compelling. It makes
the player feel clever in a way that few

 

Have an idea for a story?
M arts@theotherpress.ca

other games can manage. When you get
something right, it's because you figured
it out—without any help from the game.
Everything is there, to be sure, but you
must put it together yourself, and usually
doing that is just hard enough to avoid
being frustrating.

There are a small number of things
that could be improved. One particularly
vital clue is very easy to miss if you don't

* Rezz at the PNE Forum
e ‘Yellow Fever’ at Red Gate Arts Society
e ‘Um, Actually’ review

..and more!

 

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know what to look for. The book page for a
given memory takes a short time to activate
on your first visit to that memory, forcing
the player to wait before they can look at

it. These are minor things, though, and

the game's writing and attention to detail
are more than adequate compensation. If
there's anything truly unfortunate about
Return of the Obra Dinn, it's that you can
only play it for the first time once.

Mariah Carey's latest album 1s
an okay mix of old and new

» Caution’ album review

by Notorious B.L.G. in the latter song.

Then there’s “The Distance” with Ty
Dolla gign. Although the song features Ty
Dolla sign—a popular, current rapper—
“The Distance’ is slightly reminiscent of
Tevin Campbell's 1989 hit “Tomorrow (A
Better You, Better Me).” The bass synth
from “The Distance” sounds like a slightly
faster version of the bass synth from
Campbell’s song.

Caution’s tribute to the early days of
hip hop is also evident in “Giving Me Life.”
Veteran rapper Slick Rick mostly lends
his vocals to the track in the third verse.
“Reminisce, wannabe, huh?” raps Slick
Rick in a line that could be interpreted as
an attempt to remember R&B, rap, and,
hip-hop music from the late 1980s to the
early 2000s.

Apart from taking listeners and fans
back to the early days of music, some songs

from Caution join the long list of songs
with a finger snap beat. Take a listen to
“With You” and “One Mo’ Gen’ to hear it.

And of course, what’s a Mariah Carey
album without hearing her hitting her
famous whistle register? “8th Grade”
incorporates a unique version of Carey’s
high notes. Close to three minutes and 55
seconds into the song, you can hear Carey’s
subtle yet powerful whistles. Carey also
uses her whistles in “With You” close to the
end of the song.

Caution is Carey’s attempt to remind
us that she’s still cool. Stereotypes often
tell us that cool people use swear words,
modern day slang words, and acronyms.
“GTFO”, the first track on Caution, sets the
tone to introduce Carey’s coolness and her
clever use of acronyms and profanity. Carey
quietly sings the definition of “GTFO” in
the chorus. Listeners will have to listen to

the lines very closely to hear the meaning
of the acronym.

Later in the album, listeners can tune
in to the innuendo-filled “One Mo’ Gen.”
Perhaps Carey felt that the phrase “one
more time” was too cliché. I imagine she
thought her fans were yearning for a cool
way to tell their partner or partners that
they want some more love and intimacy
once again.

For those who'd love an album with
a mix of old and new R&B and hip-hop
hooks, Caution will be a musical delight.
Caution will also a be a treat if you're a fan
of Carey’s vocals. Otherwise, if you desire
to be taken on a musical and emotional
journey by an artist who sings about the
different emotions we often experience
when we'e in relationships and when we're
just trying to be human, Caution would be
worth a listen.