Firewatch Review

Rating: 5.2
This game isn't going to make it on any must-play lists, but it was pretty fun for what it was. It gave me about 6 hours total of playtime, maybe a bit more if you include  all the time I spent wandering around lost in the forest. Basically the premise of it is that you are hired for the summer to work at a forest park in a lookout tower watching for fires, and managing the grounds. Of course you then stumble across various clues to a mystery of sorts, and even start to wonder if you yourself are going insane (mostly due to the isolation of the forest). It didn't leave my with any kind of big philosophical insights, but read on (spoilers!) for more detail about the story and my thoughts on it.

My name is henry.

No matter what I do, I can't help but think of her. Of why I am here. Her name is Julia - we met in college, and we fell in love instantly. We bought a dog together, and he would always tear the stuffing out of our throw pillows. We named him Mayhem. He cried the whole way when Julia took him up to Connecticut with her, when she got her dream job. That was just before the doctor told us the news. Julia had a rare case of early onset Alzheimer's disease. It started with little things, but it got to the point quickly when she could no longer be left alone and I moved in full time to care for her. I won't lie, it was hard, it hurt, and I know that it wasn't her fault but I resented her. Partly for seeming to leave me, slowly like water dripping out of your hands when you try your hardest to hold it in. This was all selfishness - I resented the life I left behind, the life I gave up. I started drinking. A lot. One night I left her at the house alone, but I put a chair in front of her bedroom so she would not get up and hurt herself. But it wasn't enough. I don't want to go into the details of what happened, but her aunt in Australia took Julia to live with her. She is my wife; so this stung (or, was - she is still alive, but she doesn't know or remember me, or the vows we took, so does it count?). I feel guilty to say I also felt relief.

You start the game with the preceding story as a prelude, and proceed to wander throughout the forest. You have a map, and a radio with which you can speak to a woman you do not seem to know or remember. The job is to stay in this tower and patrol the forest for fire and danger, and you will be staying there all summer.

Firewatch: 
 wandering   around   the   forest   with   a   map   and   rope

 The navigation is fun and the storyline is.... well, it is good, but leaves something to be desired. I like that I question whether I am going insane but I didn't like that they built up this big backstory in the beginning and didn't get back to it really except in my weird nightmares. I wasn't sure if I was having a love affair with the woman on the radio. It was a while ago that I played this but it really didn't stick anyway so that should tell you something. There were some teens leaving beer cans around and they started being rude to me and pranking me. Time started to slip away. Someone lit this guard camp on fire. We had to get out of there but I never did meet the woman from the radio.

Spoiler alert: you live, the kid's dad is the killer, the kid is dead in the cave.