For a small fee I learned that my childhood memories were not reliable.
The pixel art and the retro music are awesomes. But the writting is terrible, jokes aren't funny or mature. It's very easy. You cannot try to immitate Monkey Island while failling on the jokes this bad.
It's a puzzle game heavily inspired by lemmings with gore, dark humor and references to classic horror and sci-fi movies. It's fun, the difficulty curve is well dosed. The latter levels are a real challenge. The biggest negatives are no cloud support (lost all my saves when changing laptop) and no access to workshop maps. While i'm writting this review the game is discounted to 1.39€ which is ridiculous considering the huge amount of levels. And even at its full price 12.99€ it is still worth it.
The game looks and sounds great, I love those handmade landscapes. The 3D is not great though, I think it would have been better if they went for full drawing. The aventure looks very promising at first, it's mysterious but quickly fall from grace when most of the plot is discovered. Then the game become dull. Most of it has already been made else where and the really original content is so dull. Just follow the story of the grieving mother. It's was so bad I wanted to put that emo girl out of her misery. It's Obsidian so of course it's full of bugs and glitches. Not long before finishing the game the achievement stoped from unlocking. Whatever, there's one I'll never get : the backer's achievement. Because it's seems that backers need to get validated to the point where only them can get their game to 100% completion. You will also encounter their idiotic personas and their poorly written fan fictions. I think this game could have been so much more than that. When I compare it to Dragon Age origin or even Fallout 1. Thoses games made me feel so much more, I had empathy for my followers and cared for them. And their endings broke me inside. I don't think I'll remember much of PoE.
The graphisms, the gameplay and the humour is great. The only thing bugging me with that game is the difficulty curve. There's none. The campaign is way too easy. So you play skirmish because you want more. But then normal is still too easy. And everything above just buff the enemies, wich made you fight damage sponges. It's bad design, so either you just steamroll everything in your way, or you just get raided before having the time to make your firsts traps. It's really annoying because I was starving for more dongeons 2.
+ The writing is good and the characters are compelling (especially Simon). + It's less hardcore than Amenesia : The dark descent. And it's a good thing imo. There are still somes challenges but it never gets frustrating. I think the game has the good ballance between a walking simulator and a hide-and-seek simulator. + The puzzles are nice and varied, it wont burn your brain but it's a nice break from the ambiant horrors. + The graphics are good and the environments varied enough, but it lack in details sometimes. And I had to play in DSR to get a decent anti-aliasing. - The gameplay is okay, it does its job but it's never ground breaking. Also please next game stop making us open doors with a mouse mouvement, it's super annoying and not practical. For levers ands valves it's fine though. - Something I have hard time to forgive : Choices doesn't matter at all. And it's a shame because there are so many dilemmas in this game. But they are here just to make you feel bad and to add to the story. Which is a worthy enough reason after all. To resume : It's a dark Sci-fi story worth a film or a novel that you will be sucked in until you finish the game. I had a lot of pleasure playing this game (hence the 5 stars even with its flaws) and it succeded in making me care for the story of Simon. I think thoses games should evolve from the walking/hiding simulators and go more into a System Shock/resident evil direction. More into a real survival horror where you could fight somes of the enemies and still had to hide from the stronger ones. As long as we get solid stories like SOMA.
Well, for now i'm not impressed at all. I had more fun playing free DooM total conversions than this game. It's not bad but it's not good either and not worth 11€. Maybe because I just finished playing Ashes 2063 and I got a little bit spoiled by it (even as a free mod, the game doesn't stand the comparison). Apart from this : - When I move and turn around I get somes stutters. - The Hud is not resizable and it's very small for high resolutions. - Switching weapons with the mouse wheel is not smooth at all and you'll be better hitting the corresponding key. - The melee is clunky and not enjoyable, it's really when you get your first firearms that the game start to shine. I'll try to get back at it soon enough because it has potential (I'll probably get the note higher) but I had to put this review early because it's not as perfect as people want you to believe.
C'est un jeu franchement beau tant au niveau des graphisme que pour la direction artistique. J'ai vraiment l'impression d'être dans mon vaisseau, dans l'espace. Le vaisseau se manie bien, parcontre jongler entre arme anti bouclier et anti blindage est assez peu intuitif. Une histoire intéressante est semée ici et là au fur et à mesure de mes runs. Je trouve ça vraiment cool d'autant que les échanges entre le pilote et son ordinateur de bord sont génials. Mais bon, c'est le côté rogue like qui me rebute au final. Ca m'aurait pas dérangé de mourir régulièrement si le début de chaque run n'était pas aussi chiant. Pour moi Everspace avait du potentiel si il proposait une campagne comme n'importe quel autre space opéra. Mais voilà c'est la mode du rogue like, alors on te vend un jeu avec peu de contenu mais une difficulté artificiellement augmentée. La durée du titre se mesure alors au nombre de fois que vous mourrez et recomencez la même chose, pour grinder plus loin que la dernière fois. Bref, si le rogue like c'est votre truc, vous pouvez rajouter 2 étoiles à ma note.
