I've never got this amount of value for my money before, this game is insane! It's like I can't grow tired of it, and I've not even seen half of it yet ;D Only downside so far is the "tutorial", which is very bad at teaching you what you need to know. It's even easy to choose wrong building/station during the first steps, thinking there is a bug in the game cause the train doesn't work, but it's just the tutorial being bad at showing you exactly what to do! Just google everything you don't get, and check youtube, and do loads of trial and error yourself. The starting campain is there to teach you, and you have loads of money so nothing can go wrong. The final step is if course sandbox, that's what the game is about, and it'll give you endless entertainment! Graphics and details of the trains is so beautiful, very relaxing to just watch them do their work. And very gratifying to try and solve a transport problem the best way you can, even if it's not needed - it's not like it's game over cause you don't do everything perfect, just play it as you want. But trying to optimize for time/money, how to lay the tracks, design the stations, put trainsignals right, choose right locomotive or mix of carts and so on and so on! Just be prepared to learn most of it on your own! It's not hard as long as you have some time and patience, and it's fun to learn since it's all so beautiful and releaxing to just look at :) Some things can take a while before you grasp, like that trains can only load cargo from the platform right next to it. But when it's unloading it sort of "teleports" goods to all platforms, or even to nearby truck stations if roads are connected to a station house. What if someone had told me right away instead! But it's all fun even while learning, so no big deal, but you won't get everything on a silver plate here, you need to learn yourself while playing the campain, then go sandbox when you feel ready :)
Just a big headsup to everyone (who cares about details like this). In this game, opposed to XCOM games, you can not see detailed hit chance information! You might look for a shot with your sniper and only get 75% chance, wondering why it ain't higher, but you can not see how it is calculated! Am I not gettin leadership buff where I stand? Am I too close to the target? Do I get flanking bonus, or do I need to move one more square? Shouldn't my new scope help more? Good luck with that, you get no detailed info at all in this game! (Still almost can't believe it but apparently this is the case.) For me all the fun is gone if I'm gonna fight blindly like this, I love looking at those stats and seeing how it all is calculated. It's also the best way to learn the tactical details of how everything works! If you don't care about this, just ignore my review and read the others instead, but hopefully I can save someone else from wasting their money like I did.
Game looks ok - it has a very simplistic graphical style, yet pretty bad performance, but it can look really good at places and has a nice athmosphere. Music is amazing!!! Everything is extremely linear and locked in though! In the short episodes that make up the game there are invisible walls everywhere and everything is totally on rails! You can't pass even the lowest obstacle, or jump, so no exploration at all here. No physics or real interactions with environment either, unless something is scripted. Everything you interact with in the game is through a prompt that shows up on the screen, like "kick rock", "search trash", "open door" etc. The only real "gameplay" here is in the form of mobile-style mini-games, like click left/right to instantly switch a car between left/right lane to avoid traffic, or a very simple slide puzzle, or shooting a gun in a totally scripted action sequence, and so on and so on. I didn't care THAT much for dialogue/story, but at some places it was exciting and well made. But there are like no real choices! Time and time again I got answers from conversations that did fit all the lines I had to choose between, and if I sometimes tried to avoid doing something I instantly realice it wasn't an option. Probably some choices here and there might matter a bit, but trust me when I say the majority has scripted outcomes written in stone! The music is what saves this game, it is amazing! The game itself though is very simplistic, and almost no real gameplay at all. Can still be entertaining though for the short ride it is, just know what you're buying and don't expect too much.
Very nice game, nice athmosphere, great value for the money! It probably took me around 10 hours, but I never rush through good games... Audio and music are great, lots of soft/relaxing tracks playing, even though some parts had real annoying music too but guess that's very individual. I love the voice acting, which consists of your own character talking to himself sort of, updating the story here and there and reasoning with himself. Gfx could have been slightly more highres so the faces/hairstyles could have at least a tiny bit of detail, cause as it is now many persons look exacly the same, but oh well... It's a very relaxed game overall, even though some dialogue choices are on a timer (that you can disable if you want in options, but the timer is pretty fair I must say and probably there so you shouldn't browse the web before choosing)... Apparently it has quite a few endings, and I guess a few choices really have big impact. I like the one-slot-autosaving though, so you never can go back and change your mind - you play and live with your choices, that's cool - sort of ironman mode ;D The story is really good in this one - it's complex, high level politics, while also easy to follow, probably for everyone, and that's great! Just keep some concentration while playing and there'll be no problems - this isn't Myst or anything, no hard puzzles like that, more doalogue/choices and reviewing clues/data!
Wow, I never expected this to be so good! Everything feels so polished - the music is so good, the audio and ambience is great, the GUI and everything else is just 100% perfect! Nothing is cumbersome in this game, it has a perfect logbook that helps you along the way, so you have easy access to all information regarding both story and puzzles (it's divided in two parts that you switch between with two buttons). There is not much backtracking, only one puzzle were a bit annoying, but that's easy to forgive! You don't have any inventory, so there are no stupid inventorypuzzles where you try everything on everything - this game has more clever and varied puzzles, really really good and never repetetive or booring or too hard. The game has many different environments, you'll never grow tired of that it has in store for you, and you constantly get new pieces of the story as you advance. Probably took me 10-15 hours to complete, but I like to play games slowly and take in the athmosphere, specially when they are this good!
This game is totally strange, like a feverish dream - maybe if you love Alice in Wonderland (but way more strange) you might enjoy this. It's not a regular mystery, it's got nothing with reality to do, everything's just so odd that you likely won't care a bit about the story and just quit halvway through like I did. Very sad, since the idéa about these relaxing carrides are awesome - like walking-sims but you don't even have to walk ;) Very relaxing and nice graphics and all, but wow, I did not expect this kind of a "story"!
Gets very tedious in chapter 3. Loads of instructions/codes/frequencies etc that you need to look up in an old microfilm-viewer manual, which is very tedious. Back and forth, reading out numbers from tables, decoding, scrolling to find the right page, decoding morse alphabet, tuning in the correct frequencies on a radio and so on and so on. And it never seems to end either, so I decided to give up there - wasn't very interested in the story anyway. Chapter 1 and 2 were ok though and a bit cool...chapter 3 though is like some bad math homework...
Very nice production and story, great graphics and details everywhere, and nice music and ambient sounds. Lots of different locations to explore. As opposed to many other adventures out there, this one has very good puzzles! Not as in extremely hard, but they are clever and fun and you have a chance of actually solving them yourself. And there are loads of real puzzles, loads and loads! But you'll never feel "oh no, not another one, I just want to go on in the story", cause the puzzles are really good and varied. I only needed some help from a walkthrough on the very last chapter. Very streamlined interface, and moving between areas are quick. The downside must be the vioceacting, but since everything else is so good I didn't mind it much.
Only tried first 10 minutes, to see how controls and gameplay are, and no problems at all to jump/climb/swing/grab/throw with mouse and keyboard :) Seems like a quality game overall, with nice graphics and details and sound, and apparently a good story too. Will most likely buy the full game, just gonna check some more reviews popping up if theres something to watch out for...
You sort of never feel scared at all since there are no free roaming AI hunting you - only at certain scenes you have to watch out, and then it's mostly scripted anyway. So you never have to sneak around being scared (like in Alien Isolation for example). Story is very strange - I'm 4/5th through the game I'm thinking about quitting cause it's so slow and tedius and uninterresting. I really don't care what happens in the end. Too bad the gameplay is so slow/tedius/lacking, and story is so strange, cause the athmosphere is actually pretty good. Optimization horrible though, but totally playable at 30 fps, but best if you lock fps in driver settings cause locking it in game gave severe stutter!
