Maize – Review
Follow Genre: First Person Point-And-Click
Developer: Finish Line Games
Publisher: Finish Line Games
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC

Maize – Review

Site Score
9.0
Good: Amazingly funny, beautiful graphics, uncanny storyline
Bad: Demands way more of your pc than it should, Vladdy gets annoying after a while
User Score
9.0
(2 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 9.0/10 (2 votes cast)

The game industry has become a seriously big industry. Most games these days became very mature and serious too. But not Maize. It’s a game about sentient corn. What else to say about it? Even the developers, Finish Line Games, call it ridiculous. So be prepared for a silly and corny [pun absolutely intended] adventure!

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Story

You wake up somewhere in the middle of a cornfield. Once you follow the path you will find a mysterious door that needs 3 certain items to open, and a farm. The farm seems peaceful, but abandoned. Very early on in the game you will learn that the farm is a fraud. It’s all about what’s under the farm where it gets interesting. Certain experiments are done there which caused everybody to die.

To get under this farm you have to find the right items to open that mysterious door though. Once you are at that point in the game is when it gets weird. When you want to enter that door suddenly corn pops up. Now isn’t corn in a cornfield that surprising, but these corn stalks are sentient. They can talk, they can move, they can think! Now this group corn is a jolly bunch that spends more time arguing about riddles than anything else. However, they also come with a dark warning. While almost all the corn is friendly they have 1 brother who isn’t. Apparently this grumpy, evil brother is the reason why everybody before you died.

Once inside this underground facility you quickly learn the creation of this sentient corn is caused by 2 scientists. Bob and Ted. While you don’t really meet Bob and Ted you still learn quite a lot about them and even get attached. How, you would ask. Through post-it notes. The whole facility is filled with post-it notes. The majority of these post-it notes is Bob and Ted arguing about a tour that may or may not come and stupid, expensive, useless stuff that was bought.

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Now it’s not just you on your own. Eventually you will build your own sidekick, who isn’t your average sidekick. It’s Vladdy the grumpy, Russian, teddybear. At some moments he can be usefull, but most of the time he spends insulting you. In the beginning this is absolutely hilarious, but unfortunately it gets repetitive after a while.There are only so many ways to tell someone that they’re stupid in the English language.

Graphics

The game looks beautiful. These are graphics you would expect in an AAA title. Actually there are AAA titles that came out this year and don’t look close to how pretty Maize does. The game does however demand a lot of your PC. Way more than it should, even with those graphics. Especially when you enter a new area your FPS will drop immensely or at some points the game will actually freeze. This is a real annoyance, especially because all the areas are quite small and you will walk through a couple different ones quite often.

The style of the game is really uncanny. While at first it all looks normal and seemingly realistic, it gets rather bizarre in the character design. The corn could’ve come straight out of Alice in Wonderland. You will also see a lot of paintings of Ted and especially Bob (Bob even has the whole area filled with random statues of himself). They look like Tim Burton has drawn them.

The level design is smartly done. You spend most of your times in hallways and confined spaces, but they are all well connected and because of that it feels like the gameworld is bigger than it actually is. Even the outside areas are like that because of the Corn mazes. There is also always a lot to see and the game will reward you with clever jokes (or bad puns) if you pay attention to your surroundings.

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Sound

The background music is what you would expect from an 80’s B-horror movie. It’s just this constant creepy tune in the background. Even though there isn’t any real variation in the music, it’s all so much on the background that it never gets bothersome or boring. It never makes any impact either, after a while you don’t even hear the music anymore.

The voice actor however is tremendous. The corn has hilarious English accents. Most of the time they are rambling on about riddles and other random stuff. The conversations between the corn stalks are something you would expect from a Simon Pegg movie. Vladdy of course has an over the top Russian accent. Again something you would expect straight out of a B-movie. It does really add to the charm, because he looks just so adorable.

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Gameplay

The gameplay is rather simple. The game is a first person point-and-click adventure. You have to find the right items that you have to put in the right places to progress the game. It’s all fairly simple and not too deep. However, because the game is first person and because the gameworld is designed so good, it feels like the point-and-click genre is almost reinvented. The smart designed maps make you forget you’re playing a point-and-click game at moments even. And of course you’re not doing it all alone! You have your loyal, but mean Vladdy of too. He is able to hack computers, crawl through small spaces, and more. He will do these tasks with a lot of protest and insults of course.

The game is really short though. Really short! You’re probably done in less than 4 hours, which at first would seem like a shame, but it sort of helps the game. The puzzles themselves are never really that hard, but you will smack yourself in the head from time to time because you overlooked one small item while it was laying there in plain sight. If the game would be longer then those easy puzzles would probably become really repetitive, something that is now avoided. The game lasts a bit longer if you really read every note and every item description you can find. Doing that also gives you more insights in the story.

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Conclusion

Maize has some issues, but none of these issues are ever really gamebreaking. It’s never a real challenging game and you will probably have finished it in a relaxing Sunday afternoon, but it’s gonna be a wonderful Sunday afternoon. The game is really amaizing. The humor is great and the storyline is over the top silly in the best possible way. It’s also a great thing that in these fast and almost stressful days we have a game that is just relaxing and gives you no pressure.

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Rating: 9.0/10 (2 votes cast)
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Maize – Review, 9.0 out of 10 based on 2 ratings
Peppi


Comic and sci-fi nerd waiting for the Doctor to pick him up!

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