Proteus Review

In Proteus you explore a randomly generated island, experiencing the various seasons until you finally reach the end, in a first-person exploration setting. It’s really a very simple concept.

On top of having a very simple concept, the entire game is very “simplistic.” The graphics look like something straight out of MS Paint and quite honestly started hurting my eyes midway through play. The sound effects well… Some of them are a bit annoying. Others are just fine, however. It is a nice little feature in the game in that the sounds will change as you wander around, based off of where you are.

There isn’t really much of a “story” to Proteus. As mentioned, you experience this island go through the four seasons, seeing how it changes along the way. You can fully explore it and each playthrough will bring you a different layout. There will always be certain key features present, but where they are will be different.

Somewhere during my playthrough, I think it was around when I got to the second season (Summer), I started getting tired of exploring. The basic island still remains the same, nothing new really appears. The only thing “different” you get to see is how the different colors and such appear. Spring and Summer are brighter, more cheerful. Autumn takes on more vibrant colors in the trees and “leaves” but there’s still a growing dreary look to it. Winter, everything is dead and snowed over. Granted, I’m not sure how that much snow got on an island in the middle of no where but let’s just go with it.

It’s hard to recommend Proteus. It took me several attempts to even get myself to just sit down and finish it. Really, the only reason I did was because I got it free through PlayStation Plus and wanted to finally say “okay I beat it.” I’m all for games that are “experiences” (Journey comes to mind), but not when they just start to annoy me in exploration and hurt my eyes from the graphics after awhile.

Proteus Review Score

2/5