Yerba Buena – Game Review

Yerba Buena – Did you know that the magnificent city of San Francisco that we still see in countless Hollywood movies, in the past had a completely different name… Yerba Buena? (This Spanish name originally refers to a species of wild mint that grows abundantly on the peninsula, and it was not until 1847 that the small town was renamed the magnificent “San Francisco” we know today).

At first glance, this is just a small puzzle game, where you play the role of a girl struggling in the heart of the city. But the deeper you play, the more you will realize that San Francisco in this game… is not “normal” at all.

So, Yerba Buena Is it a puzzle game enough to make readers “scratch their brains” for a lifetime, or is it just a cool idea but half-heartedly implemented? Readers, please join Vietgame.asia to find out through the following review.

YOU WILL LIKE

The gun knows… “steals” momentum!

Heart of Yerba Buena fits inside a device called Oscillator – something that looks like a traffic police speed gun, and has a slot to… insert cassette tapes. Its task sounds ridiculously simple: “copy” momentum from one object, then “paste” it to another object.

When the Oscillator’s special viewing mode is turned on, the whole world will be recolored in two colors: yellow objects are objects that “carry” momentum, and blue objects are objects that can “absorb” that movement. You pull the trigger to extract force from a rolling vehicle, a rotating propeller, then release it onto a stationary platform, and the whole room begins to… move according to your intentions.

Reading up to this point, perhaps readers have gradually envisioned another classic game that also has a yellow-blue gun and forces players to rack their brains to think about “the path, the steps”, right? If the answer is “Portal“, that’s right, but instead of playing with space, you will have to think in terms of how to control the torques of objects.

There are many ways to interact with the world and surrounding objects, making the game very unique and interesting!

For example, you could copy the momentum of a table moving horizontally, and transmit that momentum to… an entire room (ignoring all the talk about energy conservation, it seems that this machine allows the object to move with the same force vector as the original object, regardless of its mass).

Of course, if that’s all there is, the gameplay will probably become boring quite quickly. Fortunately, the Oscillator will be upgraded, and can transform surrounding objects in many different ways, such as now being able to copy the properties of… steam to turn objects into… nothing, or make solid objects pass through. How to make steam? You can brew a cup of coffee, then copy its smoke and shoot it at a wall, making that wall… evaporate!

There are many ways to interact with the world and surrounding objects, making the game very unique and interesting!

Next, the way the levels are organized is also quite interesting, and there are a few levels that leave a pretty good impression on the writer, such as the fight in the basement in Chapter 8. However, there are some levels where the writer feels there are too many objects, but the game slightly limits the player in how to pass the level (remember, you can only copy yellow objects and paste them on blue objects), unlike Portal where players can “cook” doors and shoot them almost anywhere.

However, using the Oscillator with the interesting properties of objects to pass the level still brings a feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment. There are even a few “achievements” tied to how you solve a level, like finding all the items in a certain room, or getting to the “top of the world,” and these give “achievement hunters” plenty of reasons to immerse themselves in the game’s puzzles. Yerba Buena.

YOU WILL HATE

Sorry “rookies”, this game is picky about players!

It must be said again and again, the very “respect for the player’s intelligence” that the writer just praised above is a “double-edged sword”.

Yerba Buena There is almost no intention of “leading the hand of new people”. Accessibility options (settings that make it more accessible for new players or people with disabilities) are quite poor, and for a puzzle game that requires players to constantly juggle between many overlapping layers of mechanics, this is a rather unfortunate omission.

You imagine that you have just come home from work, your mind is exhausted, you sit down and just want some light entertainment – then Yerba Buena will straightforwardly “throw” you a room full of electricity, a coffee maker, and honey, then fill the room with wires, along with an implicit message: “Take care of yourself.”

Not to mention, the difficulty of the game increases in a “jerky” manner. There are passages where the writer believes that ordinary players can completely get “stuck” on a puzzle for a long time, not because the puzzle is good, but simply because the game doesn’t bother to suggest a single word, and the needed object is buried behind a billion other objects, with each class of objects requiring a very specific solution to untangle. This is not at the level of a “disaster”, but just a few “glitches” in terms of experience – but the kind of “glitches” that are enough to make a part of players give up midway.

If you remember about Portalremember that we always have the “poisonous” AI girl GlaDOS, although she is often “teasing”, she still always guides the player if the player is “checkmated”.

Ordinary players can completely get “stuck” on a puzzle for a long time, not because the puzzle is good, but simply because the game doesn’t bother to suggest a single word.

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Plot: “Sometimes it’s sunny, sometimes it’s rainy”

In Yerba Buenawe play as Barb, a fresh-faced girl who arrived in San Francisco but is unemployed and struggling to find a job in this sunny and windy city. She is having an unlucky day that cannot be ignored – a flat bike tire is enough to make her miss an important job interview. While being driven from a job interview by Russell – a taxi driver – Barb’s car was attacked by a thug – Bear – of the Bay Angels gangster gang, and Barb was kicked out of the taxi while Russell was kidnapped by Bear.

However, while escaping, the scoundrel abandoned the Oscillator gun that the writer mentioned above. And using that gun, Barb sets out to rescue Russell and discover the truth about this world, and why things keep “glitch” everywhere.

Of course, the writer will not reveal the content in advance, but although the game has a pretty good premise, the way the game’s storyline is led is not necessarily good. The opening can be said to be… extremely slow and sleepy, and although the game “accelerates” in the later part with many “plot twists”, these twists are relatively easy to predict and do not make the story line any more attractive.

Not only that, the game tries to install “meta references” into the game to point to the real world, but the writer feels they are quite forced.

However, the writer still praises this game because there are some quite humorous moments, and also partly reflects the current state of the real world.

Although the game has a pretty good premise, the way the game’s storyline is told isn’t necessarily good

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The voice acting is below average, sometimes with errors

Honestly, the quality of the voice acting Yerba Buena not up to standard. Knowing that this is an indie game, however, the voice actors should also give players a little… effort, right?

For example, there are some scenes where one character is in great danger, another “screams”: “Be careful!” But the writer thought it was like the other person hadn’t eaten for three days. The characters’ movements are also a bit rough but perhaps acceptable.

It’s strange that a game that talks about “errors” itself has errors, as the writer had the screen freeze a total of 5 times in just under 4 hours of playing the game, as well as some humorous cases of image and sound being out of sync!

It’s strange that a game about “bugs” has errors itself