Harold Halibut Review (PS5)

There are stories that need plenty of time in order to get ripe enough to debut in front of the audiences. Sometimes the wait time proves to be too long compared to the end result, other times the creativity and flair justify the hype. Harold Halibut needed 10 years before it was presented to us. Let’s see if it was worth the wait!

And why did this production need a decade of development? While the story is touching and the characters are detailed, the main reason can be considered to be the stop motion animation technique. Although the end result has an unmistakable feel to it, this technique is seldom used in cinema due to its complexity, and it is even more of a rare occasion to see it in video games. While in a movie you are confined to the limits of a script, in videogames there are plenty of interactivity that the developers need to consider and animate.

Harold Halibut - just like the other few productions using this style - has that unquestionably unique atmosphere and visual style that speaks volumes in itself. Since the entire game relies solely on the narrative part, it was important to support this component to the max. And we have to admit the developers nailed it beautifully.

This peculiar visual style not only props up the story and the atmosphere, it also creates a slow paced vibe. Thus, just as the main character of the game and the pacing of the story, the visual style transmits the same idea: there is no rush, and you have all the time in the world to explore your surroundings.

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Harold Halibut focuses so much so on the story, that many fans of the adventure genre will feel like the gameplay mechanisms have been somewhat neglected. There are no challenging puzzles and no big scope tasks to finish. The entire game prioritizes exploring, and the minimalistic puzzles and minigames, that all serve to enrich the experience. Game mechanics actually have a secondary role, but that does not make Harold Halibut less memorable.

The main character is Harold, a handyman who cannot be by any means called the sharpest tool in the shed. Next to his relaxed attitude and limited set of skills compared to the other characters, he also gets in trouble when he tries to express himself.

While the dialogue choices throughout the entire game serve more as an extra flavor for the entire adventure, without any real consequence on how things turn out, you will notice that often the choice you see on the screen contains much more words than the reply that will actually be spoken by our hero.

This and every other gameplay element are means to slow the pace down. Altogether with the other colorful characters, Harold fits perfectly the melodramatic frame of the story. Each and every person you will meet are all the saviors turned into victims of a not very well thought out escape plan hatched in the ‘70s. When the world seemed to come to an end some scientists thought the best course of action to be the building of a huge spaceship, reminiscent of a small city.

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Humanity puts its faith in a small group of people who are meant to rebuild the civilizations on a new planet far from Earth. But things do not pan out exactly as planned and after a 200-year-long journey and a couple of generations down the line the last hopes of humanity find themselves stranded on a planet covered entirely by water. Trying to adapt to their surroundings they turn the spaceship into an underwater city in which they get stuck for over 50 years, slowly but surely depleting their energy resources.

The story unfolds at a deliberately slow pace showing our survivors going through their toughest period. Harold Halibut encourages players to take things slow, take in their surroundings and explore all the details the game has to offer.

This includes a satirized view of human society, old and current, ironizing stereotypes and extreme ideas, not just at individual, but also at a bigger picture level. And, of course, we also have a corporation that starts out as the benefactor of the human race but reveals its true corporate colors in no time.

The graphics are not bleeding edge, but the visual and animation style create a unique atmosphere. You can see and appreciate that all models were created by hand, resulting in 3D sculptures that combine digital and stop motion animation.

Unfortunately, the game also has many technical issues, Harold often walking into objects and crossing into walls being one of the most common bugs. The soundtrack is composed of original and licensed songs, that together with the voice acting give a high production value to the game.

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The Good

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