WeView: Stacking

Usually, when Kris picks a game for WeView, he chooses something that he thinks was experienced by a lot of people. It’s usually something that was a good seller or got plenty of publicity. He looks for something with a TSA review to act as a reference point. But Kris is away and I’m not so considered in my approach to picking WeView titles. I picked the one that got the most enthusiastic plea for its selection.

[drop2]Stacking was a reasonably big deal, at least in the marketplace it resides. Few downloadable titles got as much publicity around their launch from so many different places. It’s odd that we didn’t review it at the time and I’ll be perfectly honest and own up to not knowing why we skipped it. Sometimes we just don’t have time.

I know a number of TheSixthAxis staff members played it though, and it was very much enjoyed by most people I’ve seen talk about it. Personally, I found it a little too heavy on tutorials and a little too slow to get going. I didn’t press on and uncover the delights that many talked about and to my limited knowledge, it looked like a quirky, repetitive puzzle game with too much walking around and not enough focus on that stacking mechanic.

The idea was to stack matryoshka dolls inside each other to assimilate and utilise special abilities and it led to puzzles which had multiple approaches. It was a smart idea and, by most accounts, it was implemented well by Double Fine. Coming from that studio, of course, you can expect a sense of humour to be present and Stacking didn’t disappoint on this front. It was written well, as you’d expect, with some amusing dialogue popping up throughout.

So, with no TSA review to quote, and limited personal knowledge of the game, it’s all the more important that I throw the floor open to you guys and get your assessment of Double Fine’s quirky puzzler – Stacking.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and don’t forget to leave a rating of Buy It, Bargain Bin It, Rent It or Avoid It. We’ll collect the choice quotes for next Monday’s verdict.