The Beginner's Guide is not a typical video game that's loaded with rules, objectives, goals and mechanics. It's a narrative game that wraps up in just one hour and a half, and yet the player still finds himself struggling to understand everything that he has done while in the game.
Released on Oct. 1, the game is the latest interactive title from Davey Wreden, the co-creator of The Stanley Parable. It's the type of game that easily creates quite a stir among seasoned players and yet it keeps them hushed to talk about it at the same time.
Let's take a look at how the game fared according to some popular review sites.
Ars Technica. "Here is a prime example of a story-driven game that in no way benefits from interactivity. Each demo is slow and rough-looking with nothing to be gained from taking a closer, longer look at any of its content. Only in a few rare instances are players presented with question-and-answer choices, or a specific, repeating puzzle. Those choices evoke issues of loneliness and depression, but they land with neither context nor slow build to epiphany."
Destructoid. "Wreden is selling The Beginner's Guide for 10 dollars. He took a collection of somebody else's games, which include a game about not sharing his games, and is selling it for profit. That's just unthinkable. Suddenly, the illusion popped. I had been taken for a ride. Coda is not real. He never was. Herein lies the paradox. As a complete narrative package, The Beginner's Guide had me fooled. I was so emotionally invested in the history and events because it felt so real."
Los Angeles Times. "The Beginner's Guide, says the game's official description, 'tells the story of a person struggling to deal with something they do not understand.' This something is another human being, and the game leaves us wondering if we can ever truly know anyone. Twenty-four hours after finishing Wreden's follow-up to The Stanley Parable, a game in which a ho-hum cubicle life is thrown upside down, The Beginner's Guide continues to confuse, confront and fascinate."
CINEMABLEND. "The game is about Coda's struggles with creativity, depression and isolation. It's an ode to the tortured artist. While playing through these games, it feels like we're crawling through the troubled mind of its creator. Beginner's Guide is worth playing just to see the different ways that this mental anguish is expressed through in-game mechanics. This journey is bound to strike a chord with anyone's who's ever tried to do something artistic."
PCWorld. "The thing about The Beginner's Guide - what makes it interesting - is how many different readings it supports. Where Stanley Parable was a deconstruction of video games, The Beginner's Guide is one step further removed - a deconstruction of the discussion around video games."
