Valley Review

"LEAF Jumps"

Campaign

In Valley you play as an explorer that has finally come across a location of where the legendary lifeseed might be located. This sends him or her as there's a choice out to the Rocky Mountains of Canada. I'm from that area so it isn't quite authentic in environmental design, but I suppose that has little to do with what's happening. Things take a bad turn when your canoe crashes and you end up moving through a cave area which is where the journey begins. After some travel you make your way into this glorious valley filled with these delightful entities and come across an old crate containing a LEAF suit. This LEAF suit enables its user to achieve super human feats such as faster movement, higher jumping and the ability to be revived.

There are also many other special attachments for the suit, but those are unlocked over the course of the experience. You also have an audio recording playing in the suit that provides perfect context for the environments and tells a tale of what happened when humans first re-entered this place. The Valley plays as a bit of a found experience where you're attempting to discover what happened and the location of the prized Lifeseed. This takes you on a fairly lengthy story that features a variety of areas to explore and a number of movement challenges. There was never anything particularly hard to do, but if you do need to be respawned it takes life from the Valley so you can watch it die a bit. Aside from core exploration there are also side doors and a special pyramid so you'll need to collect Acorns and Medallions to access those.

Gameplay

Valley is played in a first person perspective where you have legs even and just gain special abilities to do things more easily over the course of the game. You do also have a shoot ability of sorts where you can take life and this comes into play when meeting certain entities. It really is sort of a running and jumping simulator where exploration along with story takes the main point here. The environments did have a nice look to them though even with the wow moments the graphics were about average. There were great bits of detail, it just didn't quite have that awe which I was looking for.

The Conclusion

Valley is a game that packs a solid story and a good amount of gameplay length. The story is a bit typical for these days, but it still did present good tension and wonder to keep me playing the entire time. I was quite curious of where things were headed and I liked the alternate take on some historical elements. The LEAF suit was also a blast to use as it felt great running quickly through environments or jumping high in the air. It was also a bit too easy as times with most entities being a brief distraction instead of any threat. I'm sure the story will keep players entertained throughout a playthrough though I'm unsure many will come back for another go unless they're grabbing collectibles, yet still a worthwhile time.

Valley Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by Reverb

Rating Overall: 7.8