"Now say 'nuclear wessels'!" "No!"

"Lukewarm," I guess, is my general feeling about Vessel. Good ideas let down by lackluster execution.

So much of it seems half-baked and unpolished: the distracting void when the player character interacts with the game's water physics; inappropriate bits of collision with seams in the game's map; janky movement and environmental hit detection, complemented by equally janky animations; and even in my brief time with it, an overall awkward pacing of puzzles and mechanics. Puzzles feel like they take too long to navigate for how simple they are to "solve," and yet the game doesn't hesitate to throw around new features - like a water gun and an upgrade system - more often than really seems necessary.

Basically -- none of my problems with Vessel are game-breaking, or unforgivable. But in aggregate, they bring the game down into mediocrity. Despite its clever high-concept, Vessel fails to do any one thing well enough to be meaningfully good.

Progress: Got to the upgrade machine.