Paradise Lost

The visuals are nice. But they come at the price of bad optimization and still lots of bugs. This is a walking simulator, but the problem is, that the 'walking' part is slow and the protagonist often gets stuck without any obstacle. The only thing that helps is reloading the last checkpoint or restarting the level. Which gets tedious quickly. The beautiful scenery is also prone to flickering and disappearing textures. So this is only a 'game' for players with high end machines and a lot of patience. But honestly you're better of watching a Let's Play of this 'game'. The amount of interaction will be about the same.

Yup, it's a mix of Dear Esther, Wolfenstein The New Order, and Bioshock. In that it's a non-combat exploration experience (aka 'walking simulator') set in a hidden sealed away fallen utopia built by the Nazis but with retrofuturist technology. At times waaaay too dark to make anything out even with your gamma cranked way up (annoying - where was the zippo used in the first area as a way to make light?), a *very* slow walking pace which I can understand is to make you look around and find the story clues rather than just rush through like someone swapped your Ritalin for caffeine tablets, some annoying glitches (reloading from a checkpoint and being stuck on some stairs unable to move, requiring a restart of the chapter), and no option to replay chapters from the main menu, only a New Game... but I still wouldn't say I didn't like Paradise Lost. I've had far worse times with far bigger games. You can pretty much see the plot beats coming a mile off but it's got the kind of captivating bleakness that works well with a story like this, and visually it's very impressive for a project of its nature. Framing the chapters with the names of the Kubler-Ross 'Five Stages of Grief' model felt like an unwise attempt to add gravitas (especially as it skips 'Bargaining') - come on, you're dealing with a nuclear winter and a Nazi gotterdamerung project, that's already plenty heavy enough! From the ending I reached it wasn't really very clear what the outcome of my choice was, and I missed a couple of areas due to one-way transitions, but I suspect I'm going to play through again just to make other choices and find out.

Currently the game is discounted by 80 % - for that price it's an okay deal but full price is another story. Paradise Lost (PL) is yet another walking sim inspired by the Bioshock-idea of visiting the remnants of what was once a very interesting place to figure out what happened to it. In PL's case that place is an abandoned gigantic nazi bunker which you visit while escaping from the surrounding wasteland - in short, WW2 ended differently and you are one of few survivors after a nuclear holocaust. The nazi bunker has been the home of not only nazis but another group of survivors before you arrive and the game deals with the usual theme of religious nutjobs versus rational semi-fascist survivalists as well as usual tropes surrounding nazi ideology, experiments etc. PL is void of any gameplay besides walking forward down a linear path: besides collecting the occasional item, playing voice records and reading letters there is no interaction at all with the world you are in. In order for such a limited experience to be any good, the story, visuals and sound needs to compensate and in PL, they don't. The story is extremely predictable, the voice acting is bad and visually the game is unimpressive (although the graphic design is kinda good in certain places). The music is nice but can't compensate for everything else that PL is lacking. on top of all this, the game is buggy and required a handful of reboots during the few hours a playthrough demands. The game is made by a small indie studio and I can absolutely lower my expectations in many ways but leaving the game unpatched in the current state is where I draw the line.

just load the game - go to options and set/reset head bob - you will move again! apart from hat nice environment, nice story, would have been nice for more interaction, puzzles

I just reviewed another game that I had a technical issue with and wanted to share the solution that worked for me. During that review I mentioned this game and found I never did a review for it! So, here it is... I agree with the majority of reviews I have seen, this game is super slow. So much so I almost quit early. But...I’m glad I didn’t. I really liked the story and art. It’s actually sad to me that due to the game play issues (so slow!) this game gets so many negative reviews. I’m a FPS player and so I understand the frustration, if this story was in a Stalker, System/BioShock or similar game play element I would consider this a 5 star for sure and this review would sound like I was paid :-) But it’s a walking sim. and I think my first of this type. As much as I like the game I hope they consider making a larger game with more interaction (FPS please!!) because I want more of this back story and events. The game mechanics here ‘work’ they just do not match the level the story and environment are at. On the technical side I encountered no issues so I cant speak for what others had happen, perhaps I was lucky. So in the end I can’t judge this game against others that it is not trying to compete with. Since walking sim and speed are a factor, I took away a star. I liked the game a lot but can absolutely understand the feedback from the other reviewers. For me, I am considering this game a first of hopefully many more games from PolyAmorous, I really look forward to your next one!