Where are my hands?
Static’s incipit is very simple, but intricate: as an unknown protagonist, we will find ourselves in a mysterious clinic where we will be tied to a chair with hands clasped in a box. Our only company will be the voice of an enigmatic doctor, such Dr. Ingen, whom we will not be able to see the face (which will always appear blurred), and that will guide us through the many puzzles that the box enclosing our hands carries with it .
Graphically, the game comes in good shape, with no lumps of sorts: everything is detailed and the omnipresent blur effect of VR games is virtually absent here.
The visual compartment therefore transpires more than satisfactorily from the TV screen to the viewer, guaranteeing an immersive experience without sacrificing the graphic detail. Speaking of the experience provided by the viewer, we must note that we did not find any feelings of malaise during the test. Surely the fact that in the game the body stays, moving only head and arms, helps in making the game more enjoyable even by those with the weakest stomach.
Sound is a particular topic, given the almost total lack of background music within the game. This choice can be supposed because many of the puzzles involve hearing, so you also need to focus on the sound effects coming from our surroundings.
Undoubtedly, this increases the sense of oppression that the game transmits: not only are we immobilized and with our hands closed in a box, but the silence that surrounds us, interrupted by the sporadic interventions of the doctor, still gives the feeling of being small and helpless laboratory mice.
Take this box off
In Static, everything revolves around the box where our hands are stuck. Here are the puzzles and the means by which to solve them: on each level, we have a different box with different buttons, which can interact with the environment differently. Here we find one of the shots of genius of developers: the game never explains the commands. At level level, we will have to find out which function has each dualshock button, without having to rely on any help. The same applies to puzzles: they are never explained, and even less, they are given clues as to how to solve them.
Here too, we will have to be ingenious and understand how what we see on our box is related to what we see around us. That is why we do not want to talk more in detail about the puzzles: even just describing them would ruin, in part, the gaming experience, which is designed to mislead each new level, making us feel disoriented and confused about what to do. And, believe us, in thisStatik succeeds very well: many times you will be wondering what to do, without the slightest idea of where to start.
What we can say about the puzzles is that they are quite different to be interesting for the duration of the game. But, above all, they are perfectly calibrated: complex, never discounted, but at the same time they are always logical. It’s easy to spend tens of minutes searching for an apparently impossible solution to find out that the answer was right in front of our eyes, and we would notice it before if we just thought out of the schemes.
This is not a game designed for those who do not have the patience to sit on the same jigsaw puzzle for a long time: the puzzle of the game is always a complex challenge, which asks us to squeeze the meningos in the long run and in often unexpected ways . If you manage to overcome this rock, the game can give you tremendous satisfaction: to come up with a puzzle is a real goal, and sometimes we really have to sweat the proverbial seven shirts to achieve our goal.
