12 Minutes Review (Xbox Game Pass)
12 Minutes Review (Xbox Game Pass)
Heading into 2021, one of our most anticipated games of the year was 12 Minutes. On the surface 12 Minutes appeared to be a point and click adventure blended with a time loop thriller. The anticipation level was high due to many things working in the favour of 12 Minutes including the signature isometric art style, plot, voice talents and many other things along with my enjoyment of point and click games from yesteryear.
The less you know about 12 Minutes, the better off you will be heading into the game. You play as a husband who is enjoying a special night with his wife when a cop comes knocking on the door looking for something and accusing your wife of murder. This is where the loop resets and the journey of the game is to figure out the truth of the situation without leaving the very small one bedroom apartment.
Loop! There it Is!
Early on in 12 Minutes, you are constantly learning something new that will help advance the story, but in the second half of the game that progress changes to frustration at times when you can’t quite figure out what needs to be done to move things forward. True to the point and click genre, you could have all the right ingredients you need to make the recipe but if they aren’t used in the exact proper order at the exact proper time it won’t work. This leads you to thinking that you have tried a solution that didn't work when in reality you had it right all along and just needed better timing or a different order of questioning. This gets amplified when you finally stumble backwards into the solution knowing that you had tried it many loops ago.
This frustration could be by design as going through a time loop would be incredibly frustrating by having to repeat the same things over and over again with no one believing you and knowing you only have a limited amount of time to attempt a fix. It’s hard to know if the developers have designed this game to be frustrating to truly immerse you alongside the character or if these are just game design flaws. Based on a few other issues with the game, it feels like an unintended feature.
The controls in 12 Minutes can be the difference between progressing the story forward and having to repeat the same loop over again. Simply put they are clunky at times and clearly more designed with keyboard and mouse in mind. They are serviceable on controller but there are times when you want to do one thing secretly but the controls force you to do something you don’t want to do not so secretly and you are forced to endure the unwanted consequences forcing you to have to repeat the exact same steps over again.
There are some lightbulb moments when you finally figure out what needed to be done to progress the time loop forward and there are some clever environmental elements that change with certain decisions that get made but more often but these small touches don’t keep the ship buoyant for the for whole journey.
Despite the graphical scope of the game seemingly being very limited to a small apartment, there are plenty of issues with clipping and character models. The models themselves don’t look overly great, including the wife who looks similar to an early character model from The Sims 1. The most jarring of the graphical issues is the constant clipping or no clipping to be more precise. Characters constantly float right through each other and right through parts of the apartment which can be immersion breaking when a heavy plot point is happening.
However the biggest culprit of breaking immersion is the tonal shifts between certain dialogue choices. I can’t even imagine how many different lines of audio needed to be written and recorded but sometimes the weight of the dialogue just doesn’t match up. At one minute your wife is giving you some earth shattering information and the response the husband gives is more of the hey is dessert ready yet tone. It’s hard to comprehend being told something that would change your life and responding nonchalantly.
Closing the Loop
12 Minutes felt reminiscent to Walking Dead from Telltale back in 2012. The Walking Dead was a very flawed game with many glaring issues including clunky controls, story filler and many technical problems. The thing is, at the end of The Walking Dead Season One I was speechless because of the impact the story and the characters made on me throughout the journey. Tough choices were made along the way that invested you deeper into the characters. Due to the similar feeling initially, it left me hopeful for how 12 Minutes would turn out. The Walking Dead (2012) was game of the year material, not just from myself but from many outlets.
Sometimes the heart of a game can compensate for shortcomings in other areas and that is what happened with The Walking Dead in 2012. Unfortunately, 12 Minutes didn’t resonate with me nearly on the same level that the first season did with Lee and Clem. This was a game that made me care deeply about the characters, but in 12 Minutes the game forces you to make a lot of choices that feel forced and reveals that have too much narrative dissonance. The story and the choices just feel off and cause a massive disconnect between the player and the character.
Loops are short enough, usually each loop you can make some small progress which can be applied in the next loop, if you don’t hit one of the many roadblocks in the game. The controls are simple enough that they don’t overly get in the way of what the game is trying to achieve, and the art style was a smart choice that minimizes important of graphics and puts maximum importance on story.
12 Minutes was a small, indie game that felt like it had a chance to be something special despite many of its technical shortcomings. Although, eventually even the story couldn't carry the whole load for the rest of the game. Sadly, 12 Minutes is not the game I was hoping that it would be but as a big fan of point and click adventure games, it was nice to see a modern take on the genre.
12 Minutes will be a very divisive game and your mileage may vary drastically depending on which of the many endings you possibly get and when you decide you have had enough. Sometimes less is more.