Twelve Minuteswas recently released on the 19th of August, finally giving players the chance to try the unique adventure. The game’s trailers immediately raised eyebrows, thanks to its interesting concept of the player being stuck in a perpetual time loop.Twelve Minuteshas proven to be divisive with critics, though it has generally been well-received, exemplified by its currentXbox Series X Metascore of 78.
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The animations inTwelve Minutesaren’t the worst that players will ever see, but they’re still disappointing nonetheless. This is exacerbated by the fact that the game is constantly repeating, so players have to re-watch certain lackluster movements over and over again.
Most players will be able to tune the animations out by the time they’re engrossed in the story, but considering how few animations are in the game, it’s a shame that they couldn’t be ironed out.
9Loved: An Innovative Concept
With the enormous amount of new video games releasing every week, it’s difficult to find a new title that feels truly unique. Granted, there have been many games with time loops in the past, most famouslyThe Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask,butTwelve Minutesdoes just enough to make itself stand out.
Unlike some games with eye-catching concepts,Twelve Minutes' time loop isn’t just a gimmick; it affects everything that the player does in the game and constantly needs to be considered.
8Didn’t Love: The Time Loop Inherently Discourages Experimentation
Although the time loop concept is a welcome one, it does come with some inherent issues– the most frustrating one being how it discourages experimentation. By the time players are an hour or two intoTwelve Minutes, they will know certain patterns like the back of their hand and exactly how to trigger specific events. The issue with this is that it can take a good few minutes to get to these events, and repeating them can be tedious.
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So, when players reach a long-winded point for the fifth or sixth time in a row, they will be reluctant to experiment and try out-of-the-box ideas, as the idea of having to go through the whole chain of events again seems tedious.
7Loved: No Moon Logic
Moon logic is the bane of any puzzle fans' existence. Moon logic is the term given to a puzzle that is so convoluted, bizarre, or nonsensical that players don’t feel rewarded when they solve it; they instead think, “how on earth was I ever supposed to figure that out?” These types of puzzles have made some of the best games in the genre almostimpossible to beat without a guide, with famous examples being the Rumplestiltskin puzzle fromKing’s Quest I Quest for The Crownand the Goat Puzzle fromBroken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, which is so notorious that it hasan entire Wikipedia page dedicated to it.
Thankfully,Twelve Minutesdoesn’t have any ridiculous solutions. The game certainly isn’t easy, and there are a few convoluted puzzles that will have players scratching their heads, but there’s nothing that completely breaks the game’s rules orseems too illogical to reasonably solve.
6Didn’t Love: Tedious Repetition
Twelve Mintues' tedious repetition is possibly its biggest shortcoming, and it will put a lot of people off within the first few hours. Developer Luis Antonio predicted that the game would take those who are comfortable with adventure gamesaround eight hours to beat. This may seem like a decent length for astory-driven adventure game, but in one where time, animations, and dialogue or constantly repeating themselves after a few minutes, it can become grating having to listen to the same conversations and perform the same tasks over and over again.
Thankfully, there is an option to fast-forward dialogue, though this isn’t always a smart option as players can end up skipping key information.
5Loved: The Small, Compact Apartment
Any graphic adventure fans will have had occasions where they were completely lost as to what to do and where to go, forcing them to search all over the game’s huge world with numerous different areas, buildings, characters, and in the case ofDay of the Tentacle, time periods. Unsurprisingly, this can become infuriating, as players aren’t just struggling to solve puzzles, they’re struggling to work out which puzzles to solve.
Twelve Minutesdoesn’t have this issue, as almost the entire game takes place in the small apartment. This means that players aren’t able to wander off and get lost, and it also means that players are well aware of the most useable items within the first hour.
4Didn’t Love: Obvious Solutions Aren’t Always An Option
One of the most frustrating features of any video game is when the player can’t make their character perform a simple action that would definitely be possible in real life. The most common example of this is when a player comes across an inaccessible path that looks easily climbable; like inDark Souls 2,where a small pile of rubble blocks the way, so the player must defeat four of the most powerful beings in the entire universe to unlock a door, rather than climbing over it and possibly grazing a knee.
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There isn’t anything quite this bad inTwelve Minutes,but similar situations do occur. One example early on in the game is where the player must prove to his wife that he’s in a time loop, but he can’t simply tell her everything that he knows about that future, like that she’s pregnant. Instead, the only way that the player can tell her about the pregnancy is by finding some wrapped baby clothes that she hid and showing them to her.
3Loved: Great Voice Acting
In a game where players hear the same dialogue over and over again, it was imperative that the voice actors were well-cast and did stellar jobs. Thankfully, the voice acting doesn’t disappoint, as James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe all do fantastic jobs at conveying the rollercoaster of emotions that each of their characters experiences, without any overacting that would have become annoying after a few time loops.
2Didn’t Love: Frustrating Endgame
By the time players get to near the end ofTwelve Minutes, they will have a huge range of dialogue paths that they can go down and will know numerous different actions that trigger certain events. This is both a blessing and a curse, as although it gives them a lot to work with, it also makes the game bloated, convoluted, and ultimately frustrating.
With so many paths to explore, players can easily spend well over an hour down the wrong path trying to find a solution that isn’t there. This becomes infuriating due to the constantly repeating dialogue and tedious tasks that need to be performed again and again.
1Loved: An Engrossing Narrative
Like with the voice acting, it was essential thatTwelve Minutes’narrative was well-written, interesting, and engrossing. Thankfully, it doesn’t disappoint, as the engaging story encourages players to persist and solve puzzles in hopes of gaining new information to solve the mystery.
Granted, even a great story loses its edge after a while, so players who struggle with the game’s puzzles will likely grow tired of the ever-repeating narrative. For those who consistently progress, however,Twelve Minutes’will keep to a nice pace and give players a great sense of reward when new dialogue plays out.
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