Review: Fragments of Him (Xbox One)

There’s no real notion of how to handle death. Some people handle death through celebration of passed loved ones. Others tend to just phase it away like it never happened. For many others, search for a temporary fix is desperatly wanted in order to cope a permanent ending. In Sassybot Studio’s indie title Fragments of Him which released May 3rd for PC and June 7th for Xbox One, you learn to cope with death within three different character perspectives throughout the game. Having played emotionally charged games with heavy stories and grander messages throughout the entirety of their campaigns, Fragments of Him offers some originality.

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Graphics

If there’s one thing you’ll notice about Fragments of Him  it’s the graphics. Something instantly noticeable about the graphics of the game is that it isn’t the most beautiful or stimulating style of graphics. In fact, Fragments of Him goes for a particular minimalist style. Instead of giving the characters you play with some stand out visual development like most games this generation would, they purely focus on making the world and landscape around you beautiful. In a certain perspective it does in fact give the game a gorgeous look when looking at the stylized detailing.

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Story

The story of Fragments of Him is where the game truly tends to shine. You begin the game as the main character Will. You don’t know much about him straight out of the bat. You start by saying words of endearment to someone you love, closing the door to your apartment, and then heading to your car to start the adventure that Fragments of Him holds for you. Doing some introspective speaking upon a stop light, your suddenly rear ended by another car thus beginning the multiple character arcs that Fragments of Him takes you on. Learning not only about Will and his past, but also learning how Will’s decisions will be affecting other characters around him. It takes a page out of games like Life is Strange, Three/Fourths Home and other heavy narration based titles while still giving you its own identity. The only true downside about the actual story of Fragments of Him is how quickly this game can be beaten.

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Gameplay

The gameplay of Fragments of Him is point and click based. Fragments of Him will have you play in a mixture of 2nd & 3rd person camera movements. You click around the room to have whichever character you play as interact with items that usually glow gold, green, or blue. It’s basically the standard gameplay of most point and click titles ala Sam & Max, Adventures of Monkey Island, and more just in a more broader perspective of what you can interact with. It’s pretty simple to play and nothing even remotely challenging happens throughout Fragments of Him gameplay wise.

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Audio

The audio in this game is pretty well done. From the car sounds, neighborhood noises you hear in the hallway of your apartment, and the club interactions on certain characters, it all invokes a well received auditory response. The one major key downside about the audio in Fragments of Him is that the voice acting on certain characters isn’t that good. Some characters sound so energetic when talking about Will and how he affected him in their past while others just sound their line from the script.

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Verdict

Fragments of Him has a great story behind it once you see how every character is affected in some way by Will. You grow with the characters in the game. You feel with these characters and you certainly begin to get empathetic with them as the story continuously progresses. It’s like a small indie film you watch. As you struggle for the first time to complete it, it finally clicks even though you’ve watched a good 30 minutes of it. I enjoyed this game for what it presented itself to be and wish that there could be more games like this in the current console generation.

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