PlayStation 4 Critic Reviews

A sincere and genuine attempt to tell a story about the impact of depression, Anamorphine as a delivery vehicle for addressing mental illness is constantly undermined by its engine troubles.

Anamorphine is a beautiful narrative similar to a movie. Despite it being a game, it is not necessarily entertaining or fun, and I don’t think it chooses to be.

Anamorphine has a lot of technical and performance problems, but the outlying narrative finds its way through, delivering a poignant, deep exploration into loss and depression. The game's performance issues can't be ignored, but Elena's story will stick with you for a long, long time.

Although the game sadly doesn’t use mechanics to tell its story, it represents both the good and bad extremes of what only gaming can do: imbue an emotional tale through interactivity and be technically busted. While Anamorphine’s story is still worth seeing through, it’s a shame that its shoddy optimization tries to actively thwart its touching message at every turn.

Anamorphine makes an important distinction by not only exploring the mental illness, but exploring the impacts that it has on those around you.

Anamorphine is a very unique walking simulator which explores very mature themes and has a very well presented intriguing story that successfully raises awareness of depression and the impact it can have on people’s lives. Although Anamorphine’s story is interesting, it ultimately fails to be a truly entertaining and fun experience due to the overwhelming amount of performance issues throughout. If you’re looking for a new walking simulator to enjoy, we’d recommend hopping on your bike and cycling the other way.

In better hands, from better storytellers and more accomplished developers, I have no doubt that Anamorphine could have been something interesting. The core idea, as I said, is promising. But when you botch everything around it so thoroughly, then — as we see here — the end result is something that no one should have to endure.