Tacoma

This game is a character-focused walking simulator with sci-fi window dressing in which you explore an abandoned space station and - by watching augmented reality recordings - discover what happened to the crew. As other reviewers have pointed out, it is an utter failure as a gripping survival horror game. This is okay, as it is not trying to be one. This is a walking simulator. If you want to succeed against overwhelming odds, do NOT buy this game. Reviewers have also criticized its short length compared to other 10-hour games. That's because it's 2 hours long. That's what howlongtobeat lists as its length, and I can verify that claim. If you want to get lost in a world for days on end, do NOT buy this game. This game features a cartoonishly evil fictional corporation. It does not paint said corporation in a good light. If this upsets you, do NOT buy this game. If you want a character-focused walking simulator with sci-fi window dressing in which you explore an abandoned space station and - by watching augmented reality recordings - discover what happened to the crew, buy this game.

As you can probably see from the reviews, this game gets a pretty mixed-poor rep. I think a lot of this comes from misguided expectations from the game, so allow me to tel you what to expect (without spoilers, I promise!) This is a walking simulator. Do not expect to be doing any fighting or action-style gameplay. The majority of the game is listening to the narrative and exploring the environment, interacting with objects, and uncovering the mystery. That being said, the game was far from boring in my opinion. It features 7 (sort of) main characters other than the player, so it is fairly easy to remember who is who (and as you can see from the trailer they are even color coded!) Personally I thought the characters were incredibly interesting: each one has their own unique personality, and deal with the events of the game in unique ways. Interacting with the environment not only helps solve the mystery but also reveals much greater insight to the cast's background and all of their stories. If you want an action-packed game, move on. If you want an intriguing mystery story onboard a spaceship, this is the game for you, much like it was the game for me!

You are sent to an abandoned space station to recover some data, particularly its AI. Basically everything the crew did was recorded and many recordings are still intact (more or less), allowing you to peruse them and learn why and how the crew left the station while you wait for the data to download. The story is OK but not spectacular. I'll grant that the presentation is original. That is the gist of it. You may wonder where the game is, and indeed there isn't much of it: mostly cracking code locks either by viewing someone punch the keys or finding where they wrote down the code. The recordings can be viewed only where the events took place, thus you'll want to get in those locked rooms to see what happened there. The space station is rather nicely presented, a rotating wheel with a zero g hub. The rim parts where you spend most of the time are a bit labyrinthine though, and don't really convey a sense of the circular geometry. Despite the "onboard or dedicated graphics accelerator" spec, the Linux version is a totally unplayable slide show on Intel HD 4600 with maybe 1-2 FPS. The Windows version under Wine does a lot better, which is still far from good. I suppose it must be playable by definition since I played it, but fluent it is not. The graphics are rather simple, particularly with the lowest settings; I see no excuse for such abysmal performance.

Tacoma has a decent game-engine, decent graphics, great voice-acting and really cool concept art and setting building going on, but the a story is build upon its characters, and the characters of Tacoma just aren't memorable, relatable or in any way realistic. Many games try to provoke your thoughts with the implementation of characters with certain opinions, or by forcing you to do certain things because you have to, in order to win, and Tacoma is no exception, but where this works well for most games, with Tacoma, it just left me shaking my head. It wasn't thought-provoking or scary, just... Too much propaganda. That doesn't mean the game isn't worth playing, but I wouldn't pay very much for it, if I were you. Once you do get into the story, my bet is that you'll want to see how it ends. My opinion? It had a drab and completely disappointing ending. That aside, I feel like the game tries to force certain values upon you. Whether or not you agree with these political messages or not, I don't feel like a game that promotes specific ideas is necessarily a good idea. I'm not saying this is the only game that does that, but it's new for me that it's done in this way. In addition, I feel like the game takes its mission of celebrating diversity too far, by offering a game-cast that is basically a present-day US HR-Department's dream, for the purpose of a poster. If we set the unrealistic level of diversity aside, we can take a moment to examine the fact that the game features morbidly obese astronauts who are claimed to be in good health in the game, and in addition, are surviving on space-food made from vitro-meat, which has no fat, and have exercise routines. I mean, body-positivity is apparently an important message these days, but morbidly obese astronauts? Come on! Anyway, to summarize, the game is OK. I wouldn't pay over 10 bucks for it, and frankly, I'd be sore to pay that.

Mediocre story, burned through it in 2 hours. Not worth it.