I’ve got to hand it to Compulsion Games for setting Contrast in 1920s Paris. The City of Lights is an ideal location for a platformer that plays with shadows in such creative and interesting ways. Seeing this beautiful, stylized world from the perspective of a young girl’s imaginary friend gives it a wonderfully dreamlike quality. Contrast doesn’t always make the best use of its ideas to create consistently interesting puzzles, but when it does it’s a treat.

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Shining Examples

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Amid the mixture of 3D and 2D platforming, Contrast is an emotional story of young Didi’s bumbling father attempting to find success and win back her showgirl mother. How? With risky deal with violent mobsters and a travelling illusionist. Naturally. The adults come off as a little hammy in a vaudevillian sort of way, but Didi’s performance is more human and relatable. There’s a somewhat bizarre turn at the last second that reduces the childlike wonder of it all, but getting to the end is no less charming. (That's not to suggest that the premise isn't suitably bizarre to begin with.)As Didi’s imaginary friend, you can only see the shadows and hear the voices of the real people she interacts with, and they become part of some unique level design. Having the power to slip between platforming in the 3D world to hopping from shadow to shadow in 2D at will opens up some very clever puzzling possibilities. For example, manipulating light sources to put shadows right where they need to be in order to reach a high platform is an idea with a ton of potential.A few times, it's even realized. There are particularly affecting moments when you’re platforming over the shadows of Didi’s quarreling parents, and some fun scenes that take place in a broken-down amusement park. Control is often tricky, since a wrong step can abruptly knock you out of the 2D shadow plane. There’s no penalty for falling to your death, though, so experimentation is what it’s all about. It only ever hints at what complex shadow-jumping platforming between worlds could be, though. I felt like many of the techniques I learned in early puzzles were never really expanded upon.A standout of the excellent circus section has you playing the part of a princess who must continually save her incompetent rescuer in a shadow puppet play as Didi’s father narrates. It’s a clever concept that could’ve sustained its own Limbo-like 2D platformer, and it’s over too quickly.Contrast’s shadowplay is enchanting, but the spell is broken midway through its roughly five hours, when the puzzles start relying on cliche ideas like moving boxes onto buttons to hold doors open. I mean, c’mon - at least put a heart on the box. Next to strikingly beautiful platforming magic like leaping from the shadows of a rotating carousel's horses, carting crates from point A to point B feels so pedestrian. Sadly, that's where I felt like I ended up spending the majority of my time.Picking up crates is also where Contrast is at its glitchiest, and I frequently got stuck in a mannequin pose when trying to pick up or interact with objects. At one point, a crate I’d dropped down a hole one too many times refused to respawn, and I had to restart a whole level.It’s hard to say whether Contrast looks better while playing as one of those minimalist silhouettes or running around in full 3D space, but it never looks ordinary. On PC and PS4, the texture of the stone streets pops out in an eye-catching way as it glistens in the moonlight, and the lighting of the scenery is often impressive. The animation of the adults' shadows is expressive, but somewhat stiff, and their models are strangely proportioned (they all have huge hands). That's a minor detail, but much more severe are the surprising framerate dips on the PS4, particularly in the outdoor environments. It was especially apparent as I wandered around the streets of the semi-open areas wishing I had a map to direct me to my next objective. Contrast is attractive, but not so much that it should make a brand-new console work like this.