Capsule Review: The Gunk
A beautifully-animated platform adventure without much depth.
The Gunk is an action adventure with 3D platformer and puzzle platformer elements. Explore a quasi-post-apocalyptic alien world and gradually learn what happened there by cleaning up the gunk, solving environmental puzzles, and engaging in light combat.
Your main tool is a vacuum gun; it’s used for cleaning up the titular gunk as well as solving puzzles by pulling some things and picking up and throwing others. You also get a simple projectile mostly used to hit switches; there are optional upgrades to make it useful in combat and to provide a defensive decoy for combat as well.
None of the mechanics are especially strenuous. The platforming and combat are simple and the punishment for death is extremely gentle. The puzzles are also mostly trivial until the lead-up to the final boss. There is optional exploration for hidden collectibles; this is not necessary in order to finish the game but it is necessary to get all the upgrades and all the achievements. (Unfortunately, exploring the environments thoroughly will often lead to getting stuck on the geometry; thankfully I never ended up having to reload.)
While the game is strong on atmosphere, there isn’t a lot to recommend about the story. The writing is shallow, the plot and backstory are thin, the relationship between the player character and the main supporting character is weak, and their voice acting isn’t great, so I found it hard to like these characters or get invested in any of their situations.
Fortunately, both the soundtrack and the visuals are beautiful. The gunk in particular is well-animated, which I’m sure was challenging. So even though the rest of the game never really rose beyond just okay, I didn’t mind spending several hours in this world, and the mechanics were low-friction enough that I never got particularly frustrated.
I Stopped Playing When: I finished the game with all achievements.
Three Stars: Good. I liked the game enough to finish it (or just play it a bunch, for games that don't end). I recommend it to most genre fans.