I've had this game on my wishlist for as long as it was available and finally decided to pull the trigger today. Honestly: can't tell you what I've expected of it, but I got fantastic atmosphere and tons of style (both visual and aural), with quite tight if simplistic gameplay. There is one glaring issue I have with this game and that is its length - according to GOG Galaxy I've managed to reach end credits by the 2 hours and 40 minutes mark, and I wasn't even trying to be quick. Apparently it can be done within just shy of 1 hour and 40 minutes according to the achievements, so it is very, VERY brief. Don't get me wrong, I think that what is there is fantastic, but I wish there was at least twice as much content and length to the story. The sequel is there but uses Denuvo, of all things, which means it is hard pass for me on PC until that gets patched out, so it's not a valid option for more FAR. All in all, at -80% I'd say it was worth it, but otherwise there simply is not enought game in it to justify the price.
"The Invincible" is by far my favourite Lem's book and from the first announcement of this game I've been waiting anxiously for the moment I'd be able to play it. Now over three years later it can be safely said that the game delivered on it's promise of respectful yet creative interpretation of the source material, with only a few small issues in tow. It should be cleared up from the start what this game is not: it is not, nor it ever aimed to be, anything like “No Man’s Sky” or “Starfield”, games which emphasise to varying degree exploration of large, open worlds. “The Invincible” is closer to titles like “Medium” or “The Vanishing of Ethan Carter” – a linear, narrative-driven experience with quite a lot of dialogue and scripted sequences and not much in the way of exploration, inventory management or anything of the sort. It’s slow, methodical, but while constrained it brilliantly conveys the scale and inhospitality of an alien world, something no game I’ve ever played managed to do so well. The retro-futuristic “Atompunk” style and the lack of hi-tech gadgets reinforce the experience which aligns perfectly with the book’s tone. I won’t spoil anything regarding the plot because that would basically be ruining the experience for anyone wishing to play it, suffice it to say then that Starward Industries chose to tell the original story from a different perspective and add to the Lem’s universe with their own characters and subplots, and from what I’ve seen so far it all seems to have turned out pretty well. There are some minor technical issues like very poor DLSS support (only “Auto” mode with horrible smearing) and some glitches with FSR 2.2, a few patches of weird geometry and an odd low-resolution texture here and there - one star off for that, with the hopes of a patch soon. Overall though the game is pretty well made and works nicely even on lower-mid tier hardware like RTX 2060 SUPER and R7 2700x. All in all – a fantastic hard sci-fi experience!
NOT PRETAINING TO THE GAME ITSELF: On all of my systems running the demo from the Galaxy client trips behavioral protection of my antivirus (Norton 360), with the message that "chasm-demo.exe" contains SONAR-family process hijack. Curiously enough, running the demo downloaded manually via the shortcut does not cause that. Also Steam version works without a problem, so there is something wrong with the files that are getting installed via GOG Galaxy. As for the game itself - it looks "softwarely-enough" for something rendered in hardware via modern APIs, plays like it used to and is light enough to run smoothly on a toaster-class PC like my Atom-based Windows tablet (with keyboard and mouse, of course). Aside from that it's a quite unique "boomer-shooter" with a claustrophobic, dark atmosphere and a moderate skill requirement. Worth checking out for free at least, the full game price seems a bit steep though for something that old.
To me, Duke Nukem 3D is THE definition of a first person shooter and a game that every gamer should play through at least once. I could praise every single aspect of the game and not lie about it a single time, but really - all you need to know is that Duke Nukem 3D is so far the ONLY first-person shooter that I'd call "perfect", with Unreal (the first one) behind only by a hair. Go get it. Now!
