Review | Adios

LifeisXbox’s Adios review | It is quite a situation to review this game from developer Mischief, which fits surprisingly well with the main story of the game. The protagonist, a farmer who has been feeding his pigs body parts brought by the mob, wants to call it a day. The mob hitman and long-time friend try to convince you to continue as he obviously doesn’t want to assassinate his friend. Apparently, there’s no such thing as quitting the mob. This brings me to my personal feeling about writing up a review for Adios, just like the mob hitman I have been tasked to do something unpleasant, I have to write a negative review for a game with huge potential and fantastic immersive dialogue. And all of that because the game elements are unfinished and broken. It doesn’t matter if the story is intriguing and the dialogue between the protagonist and his mob friend is genuinely interesting, we’re talking about a videogame and if the game aspects don’t deliver we have to be completely honest about it. So here’s our review for Adios, a game that’s simply not ready to be released.

We played Adios on Xbox Series X for two hours. This game is also available on pc.

What we liked!

• Do pigs know they are food? | This has to be my favorite line in Adios. I found every conversation, no matter the subject interesting to follow. About how beautiful or ugly a horse is, the history of chestnut trees or old bomber planes. Even ghosts or what you buy in your mid-life crisis. This game is gifted with a natural flow of storytelling, the narrative is done by Doc Burford (you can help him on Patreon) and he deserves big credit for his fantastic work. Slow but surely getting to know your protagonist is what makes Adios so special. Along the way you begin to feel the same empathy as the mob friend, you simply don’t want to see this person killed. After every chore or scene your love for the characters increases, it all remains a bit mysterious on purpose. You just get enough details to create your own backstory. That’s a powerful thing as Adios will have a different meaning for everyone who finished it.
• Strong voice-acting | This game needed a strong cast of voice-actors and that’s definitely the case. It is very clear that they understood the characters. It manages to make the already splendid dialogue even better, the right emotions, the right calmness in the voice, or convincing tone when it was required. This truly shows in the horse and chestnut tree scenes, the conversations here really felt real, this is a rare thing to nail in a videogame as only Tell Me Why accomplished the same thing for me. This all makes me a little sad and angry though, as the fantastic story, dialogue, and voice-actors delivered but when it comes down to game elements… it does the opposite.

Somewhere between

• Visually Adios is between good and disappointing | There’s a fishing lake in the game and I sat down to enjoy the view a few times, that’s all the proof you need to know that Adios can be a beautiful game. That’s not always the case though. For example, the pigs and goats look a bit weird as if they aren’t from our planet and some objects are of poor texture quality. I loved exploring the house and environment though, I wish Adios had some kind of collectibles that encouraged the player to do this more often. Items with meaning to tell a bit more backstory would have been a nice rewarding idea. One thing I found memorable was the scene with the chestnut tree, this is beautifully recreated with good attention to lighting details. It won’t win any awards for visual accomplishments (maybe the narrative will) but it gets the job done better than I originally expected!
• Few mixed feelings about the characters | I prefer to know how my playable character looks like, so I was a bit disappointed that I never had the chance to see him. You are basically just a moving camera as you don’t see a silhouette either, this becomes clear from the very first scene as you see nobody in the swing chair. More games do this and it is highly likely that nobody else cares about this detail. One thing that bothered me was the looks from the mob friend, he just doesn’t look how he is described in the dialogue. His avatar makes you think he is around his early thirties or old twenties but he’s actually much, much older. That got me a bit distracted but I learned to look past this.

What we disliked

• Completely broken elements that force a scene restart | In my hour and a half playtime I had to restart a scene six times. (excluding the cooking scene, more on that nightmare soon) Adios has the power to completely immerse the player but that fails completely when half of your scenes break down. This game is simply not ready, let me rephrase that. Adios is a gigantic waste of potential because they didn’t take the time it needed for it to be playable without issues. My first issues started while freely exploring the farmer’s house. I was excited to have some music options for my inner-audiophile, you can play vinyl records and tapes. A fine example of how the game tries to immerse you, you even get Achievements for it! But well as I said here the first issue happened. I dropped a vinyl in front of the door and it simply refuses to open. A few minutes later I open a goat shed and suddenly teleport to the van where I fed the pigs twenty minutes ago. Reason? It seems the mob hitman got stuck somewhere, resulting in the glitched experience. Reload the scene, I try to open the shed door again. this time it works but the two friends start to milk invisible goats. Important to know here though is that more stuff goes wrong, they don’t necessarily mean a forced restart. I might add luckily, else I had to do this over ten times. One frequent returning issue is items that vanish and fall through the ground. Anyway, some other examples that happened. Our friend got stuck for a second time while I tried to play a game of horseshoes, he was nowhere to be seen while I started this minigame, and the game was clearly waiting for him. One of the last issues I had before the ultimate nightmare with a cooking scene, was with a fishing mini-game. Here we are trying to catch The Admiral, in an otherwise brilliant executed way of fishing (Yes, actually a good gaming element!) things went wrong when we cached our second fish. When the camera zooms in, it just went bonkers and the camera got a life on its own. It is so frustrating to experience all these bugs and game-breaking glitches, especially because things are held together with exceptional story and dialogue. As a reviewer I simply can’t ignore this, Adios isn’t the longest game, and half of it goes wrong, I honestly can’t begin to understand that devs launch a game this way. And I’m aware that only two people worked on this game, but that’s no excuse. People pay money for this experience and that should be one with working game elements. No matter what you are, Adios, a Cyberpunk, or whatever. An indie-game or a high-budget game, the least buyers can expect is a game that doesn’t fail every 10 minutes.
• The cooking scene, the last one before credits is simply a nightmare to play | Nothing fits better than a what the fuck. I think I had to restart this damn scene over ten times before it actually progressed, not saying worked here as this never happened, there was always something that got stuck or disappeared. Why did they work with terrible physics to put food on the cutting board? Why not a simple press of a button to place the carrots, steak and onion on the cutting board? Now the ingredients fly all over the place, often freaking falling through the ground. And that DAMN timer, why doesn’t it work? Why can’t I start it? WHY DOESN’T THIS SCENE PROGRESS??! AND WHERE THE FUCK IS MY KNIFE? Oh right.. it bounced with the speed of light towards the living room or shifted through the ground like some kind of alien knife from FUCKING hell. As you can see I’m still angry and annoyed about this and it left an incredibly sour taste being the last playable scene.

CONCLUSION

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