Reviews:
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This is simply a nautical adventure that continues to surprise, somehow both placid and often tense, routine and yet full of nasty surprises
When I loaded up Dredge I really wasn’t sure what to expect aside from a game that obviously involved fishing and literally dredging the ocean in search of fortune. In the early going there are merely hints at what’s to come, but it isn’t until you begin pushing outside your initial boundaries and explore the unknown that the game fully comes into its own. Sure, you’ll spend a fair amount of time on the water simply catching fish (complete with their own often distinct mini-games to keep you involved) or pulling up bits of wreckage, but once the light fades and you find yourself in the open waters all kinds of nasty things can happen to you. What I think I appreciate most is that what you do is really quite open-ended. I ignored early guidance from some helpful people and started taking risks, thankfully finding a safe place to stop and rest most of the time, but struggling to get the upgrades I needed to compete in this new area. It turned out I’d stumbled into and then completed what apparently was the third major area of the game, but the intensity of some of those encounters helped the game gel for me far quicker. There’s simply nothing else quite like it out there, and that helped it to get a hold on me in a way that’s unusual these days. For a challenging but fair journey full of strange creatures, some truly “Oh $#!t” moments, and no major guardrails constraining your initiative this is a can’t-miss experience.
Justin Nation, Score:Hall-Of-Fame [9.5]