GRIS Xbox Series X|S Review

There are games that carry the ‘Optimised for Series X|S’ label, and you wonder why anyone bothered. We couldn’t tell the difference, even if you put a gun to our heads. But then there are the games that were made for a Series X|S re-release. Not only are they due a reappraisal, but the high-fidelity sheen makes them sing. 

You can probably guess which camp GRIS (Xbox Series X|S) finds itself in. Released in 2018, it looked bloody gorgeous back then, and it somehow looks better now. If you’ve hesitated in buying GRIS before, now’s the time to do it. 

Full disclosure: we hadn’t played GRIS until this review. This is our first time with it in our hands, and we’re half-glad that we’ve come in clean. It feels like we’re playing it in its optimal state, which is nice. 

What surprised us most was how loose the storytelling was. We expected a deep, emotive story, but GRIS isn’t particularly interested in telling a story in the conventional sense. Everything seems to come through in silhouette rather than in solid, indisputable facts: you start the game in the palm of a large, ruined statue, which – over the course of several levels – begins to take the form of a woman. There’s a connection between the two of you, but it’s not immediately clear what it might be: we suspect that people come away from GRIS with completely different impressions. She could be a sister, daughter, mother or even GRIS herself. 

Then GRIS (we’re assuming that the tulip-haired main character is GRIS, just to have something to pinpoint with confidence) begins to get pestered, harried and then – eventually – attacked by a cloud of black butterflies. Those butterflies take the form of a sparrow, a moray eel and more, and it’s clear that it, too, represents something. We’ve got less doubt about this one: there’s some depression and grief in that black cloud.

Hints and whispers of GRIS’s themes come and go, and it could have been frustrating. Anyone looking for answers will need to collect every last secret and access a hidden room to get an unequivocal answer (or just watch the cutscene on Youtube), but almost everyone else will have to make their own conclusions. But in our case, rather than be frustrating, it meant we imprinted on it. We assumed that the statue was GRIS and GRIS was mourning the loss of her youth, or another version of herself. It probably says a lot about us. You could consider GRIS to be a video game Rorschach. 

Artistically, GRIS is a triumph. We don’t know whose neck to put the medal round. It might be the animators, who take GRIS’ spindle-legged form and turn her momentarily into stingrays, flowers and blocks of concrete. You may be the one pushing her in directions with the analogue sticks, but she reacts to everything independently of your input. 

Or we might be putting wreaths around the environment artists’ necks. Through colour-based worlds, all tethered to a different stage of grief, GRIS explores minimalist environments that manage to seem like worlds away from each other. A murky swamp has Ghibli-like creatures crawling around in tunnels. A water-based level has you seeking sanctuary in the shadow of a turtle’s shell. We felt it had echoes of Journey, in the way that GRIS feels miniscule in comparison to her environments, but she still has power over them. 

And through all of this, the sublime soundtrack tinkles away on the ivories, reaching for feelings of awe and bliss. That ‘Optimised for Series X|S’ label is worn with pride, and you could happily put GRIS on the telly to show friends why you bought the system in the first place. 

GRIS doesn’t do a huge amount that’s new or unusual in terms of gameplay. This is a platformer at its core, but there’s no supporting gimmick or mechanic. It might be why GRIS isn’t mentioned in the same breath as games like Braid and Fez when it comes to outright classics. But sometimes you just want a genre game done well, and GRIS is certainly that. 

GRIS develops abilities over the course of the game, and they are a great deal of fun. They’re not over-used, either: GRIS has a surprising amount of restraint in this way, dabbling in a few different scenarios and puzzles that use the ability, and then getting caught up in its love for cinematic moments. There is a fantastic final puzzle that makes use of gravity-switching and swimming, and another at the midway point that uses a time-freeze mechanic, but mostly GRIS is happy to let you walk onwards. 

How you react to that simplicity will be dependent on your tastes. We suspect that there are players who will bounce out of GRIS, simply because it’s not offering enough challenge or delivering anything new. It’s a fair argument and we wouldn’t dissuade them. But the controls are so fine tuned and enjoyable; the hidden secrets so fun to find; and the world a joy to explore, that we ended up not caring about the lack of deep gameplay. We ended up surfing on its wave for a few hours, taking in the sights and touching the edges of the story – what little there is. 

Playing GRIS for the first time, in its Xbox Series X|S format, has been an early 2023 highlight. Its reputation preceded it, so it was never going to surprise us. But we didn’t expect to connect with it as much as we did. What a meticulously crafted platformer it is, and what a fantastic example of Xbox Series X|S prowess it is too. Clear the room of distractions and play it in one go if you can.

You can buy GRIS (Xbox Series X|S) from the Xbox Store

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