I could sit and go back and forth between the video walkthrough and my own gameplay. However, if I worked hard enough, I could push past it. There are no giant arrows pointing me in the right direction. There are no “ghost studs” like there are in my favorite LEGO games to lead me to where I need to go. Because the background is so natural (and looks amazing on the PS5), it is hard to distinguish if I am following the same route as the walkthrough. I booted the game back up later with the help of a walkthrough and was able to get a little bit further, but even then, it was incredibly difficult. I wasn’t able to track the movement of the ghost well enough to find it at its next location. I am able to track movement pretty well, but I have a very difficult time seeing static images and recognizing what I am seeing. Unless the ghost was moving, I couldn’t find it. Spirit of the North has you following a blue ghost, and the background is icy and blue.
I started playing the game on stream (feel free to follow me on Twitch) and less than ten minutes into the experience, I was unable to proceed. This is how I felt about Spirit of the North. Yet, having to criticize those games for review felt like it might detract from my excitement and inclusion.Ĭontrastingly, with some games that were less accessible, I felt like I needed to work harder to overcome access barriers to fully judge the game. It is incredibly empowering to be able to play a game that I wasn’t anticipating being able to play. Certainly, some of it was simple burnout, but also the sense of responsibility to review. Writing reviews became something that almost felt like an invasion of that personal experience.
It became a very personal experience for me to feel like I was part of the broader gaming community and not only the Nintendo community. Even though I’ve played Nintendo titles for years, games on PlayStation seemed to hold more cultural acceptance. For the first time, I was able to access the most popular, mainstream games. However, I quickly realized that some games were unexpectedly very accessible to me. I was excited to share this experience with CIPT readers. I originally set out to review EVERYTHING.
The PS5 opened up a whole catalog of PS4 games that I missed and offered up the launch lineup of brand new titles. For me, this was a particularly large leap as I had never personally owned a PlayStation or Xbox, as I primarily gamed on the Nintendo Switch. When I unboxed my PS5 shortly after launch, I was excited to experience next-gen gaming, especially Spirit of the North.