This is how story-driven, exploration survival games are done! The atmosphere, the sound, the simple mechanics... everything fits together to make a consistent experience, that keeps your attention as the mystery unravels. I still remember to this day how the first time I experienced a tornado sent shivers down my spine, or going into that first cave made me feel dread of how will I survive there. Many "survival exploration" games just skim over the "survival" part, not here—hunger, temperature, hydration, sleep, wetness, weather... Outward is the only game that I know of does it now in such depth, but that's years after this one. Interactable objects are impressively well highlighted in the environment—not that they would be too much on the nose to detract from the experience, but well enough to not be easily missed. As good as it is it is not perfect. E.g. tracking secrets of what you found is wildly off, not to mention that not all story pieces (achievement for that), can be a small photo in hidden places, so I ended up at 509/514, but don't even know where or what to look for, and the environment is quite large. Also, a pet peeve is the weather anomalies are drawn towards you. I know that will have something to do with the survival part, but it doesn't really make sense now, does it? Despite some of the negatives, heartly recommended, it's astounding. Here's hoping for a sequel!
I don't usually play this type of games, but when I read the title, that has immediatelly drawn my attention. It was on a discount, so I got it and found out there is a DLC. I usually get the game with all the DLCs to begin with (as long as it's not something like +1 ability point and 1000 credits—you know, the cancer of DLCs) but didn't pay enough attention to notice there is one. Played for a while and decided to get the DLC after a few mins. The game is that much fun. The Crystals maybe take longer to accumulate than necessary, but that's about all the negative feedback I can muster.
The story is very scarce, so the rest needs to rely on gameplay. It's functional and the broadside mechanic with a possibility to set your turrets to behave in certain ways is fun. The game is simple, which is a positive for the most part, but in some aspects way too much simple and with limitations that just don’t make sense. The best thing about the whole feeling of the game is that every upgrade you get will make tangible difference. You won't see anything increasing by 2%, like many games do—here you get minimum of some 20%, with gear tier having difference of around double the effectiveness, which is HUGE! You start with a really tiny corvette and get mauled by almost anything and by the end of the game (assuming you work for it, and not race to the end) you end up with a massive dreadnaught, capable of obliterating pretty much anything. The most severe flaws are balancing some of the quests. Defend missions—the bane of players since the dawn of video games—where you are told to protect 3 ships, where each can end up at a different part of nebula. You are almost at the end of the mission, with all of your charges being ok, because you manage to blast each enemy with one salvo, and then enemy warps literally next to one of them and obliterates it faster than you can one-shoot them. This happens ALL THE TIME. At that point, you’ll start avoiding some of the profitable missions, because they are not only impossible, but complete and utter waste of your time due to that and you get nothing out of it.
I read people comparing this to Portal, and complaining that it's both too much as and not enough as Portal. Don't listen to Portal fanboys and fangirls, they obviously can't get past those two games to take the game in its own merit. As I played both Portal and Portal 2, I can say that the only thing that these have in common is being 1st-person physics logic puzzle, with two... colours? I found this to be somehow more difficult than either Portal, but also with perfect difficulty curve—so much so, it's a straight raising line. Didn't bump into any roadblocks. Everything was solvable within a couple of minutes and looking around the area a bit, but one place was really frustrating—though that just may have been mental exhaustion at that point. One bad thing I'll say is you can't jump when you carry stuff—it all works fine without it, but would be a nice quality-of-life improvement if that was possible. All levels appear to be made so you don't get stuck when you mess up something and I found no bugs (not saying there are none, just didn't notice anything). The story is wonderfully creepy, just ending is a bit anticlimatic. *Not bad*, just anticlimactic.
It's pretty good. The cinematics are done quite interestingly. To finish the game, it takes 3-5 hours, depending on your gaming habbits, so really only get it on a discount.
First of all, I have to say that this point-and-click adventure actually makes sense in majority of the times, unlike most such games. The object combinations are few and very logical - you'd actually likely do the same thing in real life and it would work - as I said MOST of the time, not always. The story is really gripping, awesome and horrible (in gruesome kind of way, not in the “story is horrible” way). No jumpscares - a big plus. Some of the sequences are really, REALLY messed up, but amazing at the same time - one still lingers with me - it had to do with a certain surgery... It could do with some tweaks like an option to skip a dialogue, that happens after checkpoint, but before place you can die - YES! You can die here, if you're not thinking, but also sometimes when you try the most obvious solution. You have to watch the environment and at certain points to not do something that would make sense at first sight. Or shift the checkpoint after the dialogue. The character animations - especially the walking pattern - can be a bit weird, and sometimes the isometric view makes it look even worse, but that is a small thing here. The ending is... well... satisfying in a way that you don't wander "What's that about?" and you are really not disappointed, in that sense. I can't say that I didn't see that certain part of it coming - the first part, not the second cinematic part. You'll know what I am getting at once you finish it. Overall, this game is great - not for everyone mind you. Makes you think what's wrong with us, the people that like this kind of thing.
