I’ve gone cold on The Messenger. The first half is a really good platformer, I love the 8-bit and 16-bit visuals, the music, and the move set is great, it’s a joy to play and make progress. But the second half is increasingly cryptic fetch quests, which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the lack of direction in where to go in the huge levels that take a long time to traverse. The fast travel is limited, and even the hint system can be really vague, in one case telling me where to go to solve the clue but not where to get the previous two things needed to develop the ability to do so. It’s been Six hours of amazing platformer followed by six hours of wandering around. Which is a shame, as the increase in difficulty is still fun for me, it’s just not when I’m repeating the same stuff over and over with no idea what to do or where to go.