Cocoon and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate 3 are about as different as games get. The only similarity I can think of is that the indie puzzler from Geometric Interactive and the robust triple-A role-playing game from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Larian Studios share a similar camera perspective, I guess? But that isometric viꦍewpoint is where the similarities begi🦂n and end.
But, as I continue my lengthy playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, I've found the succinct puzzle game to be a welcome antidote. It's not that it succeeds where Baldur's Gate 3 fails, or vice versa. No, it's that the two games are doing things so completely different from each other — and, in both cases, succeeding wildly — that it's refreshing to bounce back and forth between them. Baldur's Gate 3 and Cocoon are both excellent, but they exercise completely different parts of your brain.
Cocoon Is The Best Puzzle Game I've Played Since Inside
Geometric Interactive has craꦿfted one of the best puzzle games of the generaဣtion.
One obvious difference is in how the two games handle storytelling. Baldur's Gate 3 is positively drenched in text, loaded with words like a baked potato stuffed with sour cream and bacon bits. Cocoon takes its cue from Limbo and Inside, the modern classic puzzle-platformers that director Jeppe Carlsen worked on as a designer before leaving to form Geometric. Both of those games were wordless, telling their stories of children in peril entirely through silent cutscenes, environmental and level design. Cocoon is the same way. There are no tutorials or tooltips or dialogue. You're simply dropped into a mysterious world and begin exploring it.
When I play Baldur’s Gate 3, I’m constantly grasping to remember a hundred different story threads — who that minor character is and where I’m remembering them from, where exactly I am on the road to completing a companion’s quest, what exactly the relationship is between the various different races inhabiting Faerun. There is dialogue, and a quest log, and found books, and more, all teeming with information, some vital, some unimportant. Cocoon, though, is only ever asking you to hold space in your mind for what is right in front of you. That thing may be mind-bendin꧅g, but the game is careful to put clear lines of demarcation between the puzzle you need to solve and everything else. A wall often appears behind you when you enter a new area, and that’s indicative of the game’s broader approach. It doesn’t ask you to keep track of the tasks that need doing, it simply corrals you into an area where that quest is all you can do.
Cocoon and Baldur’s Gate 3 likewise offer completely different approaches to problem solving. In Cocoon, there is only ever one solution. To find it, you need to internalize the game's logic and, like Gandalf in Moria, sit with it until the way forward appears. Baldur's Gate 3, on the other hand, offers an endless number of potential ways to tackle an obstacle. You could reach that area by picking a lock, or burning a door down, or stacking boxes and jumping, or sweet talking a guard, or by killing everyone, or by pickpocketing the NPC with the key. It can be freeing, but also overwhelming. Cocoon, meanwhile, gives freedom through containment. It gives the freedom of not having to worry about anything else.
Last year, I had a similar sense of complementary play as I worked🃏 my way through God of War Ragnarok and Pent🃏iment, two games that were doing completely different things that I enjoyed in completely different ways. It's great that the games industry has room for both: for the small, quiet puzzlers and the audacious, complex RPGs. It’s remarkable how well dissimilar games can complement each other, and I can't wait to discover what kind of unexpected combos 2024 has in store.