![]() Set your expectations so they are more aligned with a trip to a gallery than a video game, though, and Cuccchi will often dazzle. In many cases, as was the case with a visually impressive level that took us through a town, factory and railway, it’s a slow roller coaster without the ability to take a branching path. As we’ve mentioned, the mazes are a dip in quality, while plodding through the environment can feel slow and without any real agency. There’s also no getting around the limpness of some of the gameplay. If you are interested in Cucchi, it’s probably best to consider this as a trailer for his true work. There are good reasons for that, considering that the characters here have to flex and bend to dance around you, but it’s a shame that you can’t stop and look at the artwork in its high-fidelity glory. It doesn’t feel as crisp and loses a lot of its vibrancy. If you look at Cucchi’s work side-by-side with Cuccchi’s, the game pixelates and smudges so much of it. As an experiment, Cuccchi has moments where it truly works. In a desert that tumbles like waves, it feels disorienting. In a dark forest diorama, it feels oppressive. You are wandering through a world that’s been curated by Cucchi himself, and you feel more than you do in a stuffy gallery. A walk through a gallery is more inconvenient, more expensive and doesn’t steep you in the ideology of the artist anywhere near as much as Cuccchi does. Even with the chasing of achievements, you are looking at an hour, and that’ll be too stingy for some.įor us, it was well worth the time, but we’re a pretentious sort. But it’s worth keeping in mind if you have an eye to £-per-hour of gameplay. Any more than that and Cuccchi would be spread too thin, as the levels are a barrage of artwork. It’s credit to Cuccchi that these sections felt the least enjoyable: their simple gamey-ness was disappointing when compared to the more surreal exploration levels, there’s little in the way of Cucchi’s work being shown, and they add a tension that’s at odds with the feelings of awe that come from wandering around abstract paintings.Ĭuccchi is over and done in half an hour. In the vein of dungeon crawlers like Operencia: The Stolen Sun, you are moving first-person through labyrinths, avoiding floating skulls that nick an eye from you (and any chance of unlocking that achievement), while you occasionally spot and nab an eye for your collection. We don’t often come away from a game with an artist and a musician noted down to check out later.Ĭuccchi even resembles a conventional game in a few maze levels. The music is as brilliant as the artwork it’s a pulsing synth soundtrack that matches the abstract nature of the visuals, and it’s great. Cuccchi is soundtracked by Skinless Lizard, who contribute much of their album, Heart Propeller. They’re not the only talented artists on display. For the most part, this is an ‘experience’, as you’re watching paintings pass you by and enjoying the imagination of this obviously talented painter. Pigs fly above you, skyscrapers twerk, and half-sketched Vincent Van Goghs lie prostrate on the floor. You’re scooting past sketches and scraps of Enzo Cucchi’s paintings, and they warp, walk and loom in various different ways. Thank god it wasn’t in VR, as we’d be throwing up everywhere. It’s a disorienting and distorted experience, as the 3D space doesn’t quite play by conventional rules, and the game often progresses linearly regardless of which direction you move in. Then you’re moving in a direction and exploring, with the painting moving around and behind you, like you’re on a faked car journey with the scenery being cranked by a couple of grips. You stand in the middle of what feels like an expressionist painting, wrapped around your view like someone has taped a lampshade on your head. ![]() There are seven levels, and Fantastico have proclaimed that they are ‘dioramas’, which doesn’t quite cut it as an explanation. Cuccchi is not particularly easy to categorise.
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