I pre-ordered Tacoma -- it had all the elements of what should make a great indie sci-fi game. Space station? AI? Mystery? Yes! Sadly, it all really fell flat on its face. At first, there was a feeling similar to the start of System Shock 2 going on -- what happened here? Is anyone alive? Are there more sinister motives in play? Those feelings started to fade away after the first few minutes; it became very clear that there were no real threats on the station. This was in stark contrast to Gone Home, where the twist wasn't revealed right at the end, so your own imagination was playing tricks on you. There were interesting mechanics, like watching recordings and rewinding them to follow every character's path, as well as innovative ways to discover codes and secrets. However, none of that makes up for the story as generally being boring and, quite frankly, predictable. By the time I was a quarter of the way through, I had disengaged my brain and was barely even thinking about the story -- all I was doing was going through the motions. What happened to the psychological trickery we're used to coming from Fullbright? I really wanted to like Tacoma; by all means, it had indications of greatness through the development cycle. Sadly, what was delivered was not an epic tale, but instead a half-baked cake trying to play at being a walking simulator.
Overall, I enjoyed Tacoma, yet it feels as if something is missing. The voice acting was done very well; it was clear and understandable, yet carried a weight of emotion with it. While playing I felt a hint of empathy with the characters and what they were going through. There was a decent amount of stuff to find about the crew, but it felt half-baked -- there was enough to put together a vague idea, but not much to really flesh them out. Why is Tacoma there? What's it do? What does the crew do? Why are they contractors? I may have missed the answers to these questions, but in all my searching I couldn't find them and so was left in the dark at the end -- empty. I could understand why the ending was there but the buildup to that ending just left me feeling empty. When the ending came it just left me going: "That's it? That's all there is to it?" The story felt so disconnected from what was actually happening that the emotions I felt early on tapered off until I got to the point that I just didn't care and was simply going through the motions to finish the game. Perhaps I expected too much from an indie game -- but then I remember games like Fran Bow. To be fair, Tacoma isn't a bad experience; it feels as if it's a disjointed one. Also: it would be nice if we had the option of turning off gamepads and other devices in games these days. I have a gamepad and a joystick yet use neither for first person games. It was annoying to have the viewpoint constantly try to shift around from my gamepad that I wasn't using -- this persisted even after I unplugged it.
