Observation is a sci-fi thriller uncovering what happened to Dr. Emma Fisher, and the crew of her mission, through the lens of the station’s artificial intelligence S.A.M. Players assume the role of S.A.M. by operating the station’s control systems, cameras, and tools to assist Emma in discovering w...
Observation is a sci-fi thriller uncovering what happened to Dr. Emma Fisher, and the crew of her mission, through the lens of the station’s artificial intelligence S.A.M. Players assume the role of S.A.M. by operating the station’s control systems, cameras, and tools to assist Emma in discovering what is happening to the station, the vanished crew, and S.A.M. himself.
You're not on the station, you are the station
Blending narrative adventure, puzzles, exploration, and cosmic existential horror, uncover the true nature of yourself, your crew, and the mysterious always-present hexagon on Saturn...
Completely bugged for me.
I couldn't do what was expected to do to solve the first puzzles.
I saw a walkthru on youtube and was surprised to see that what I was trying to do was realised on the walkthru.
I asked for a refund.
Needs a big huge patch.
This is an no-spoilers review
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In this game, you play as the AI of a space station, trying to help the crew recover after something befell the station by interacting mainly though camera feeds and commands.
By reading around notes and memos you'll piece together the lore surrounding what's happening and you might even understand things that are not explicitly told in the story. The plot hook was gripping and i wanted to see it resolved.
There are missable achievements (sadly) and that'd require a playthrough with a guide. I used a spoiler-free guide to get to 100% on the first run as i wanted to preserve my experience.
The story was gripping and cohesive throughout, the ending felt satisfying, the twists felt like they made sense and the overall feeling i was left with was one of a memorable experience, enough for me to think about the game even a week after completing it!
Buy it at any price! (I'd still buy it on a sale)
Basically you're HAL 9000, but not an antagonist.
Mostly it's a narrative-focused walking simulator. I say "mostly" because most of the "puzzles" are just the same as all the other tasks: press the buttons you're told to press when you're told to press them, over and over. Except that suddenly out of the blue one or two of the puzzles are ridiculously opaque or tiresome.
Normally I hate anything walking-simulator-y, but they actually pull that part off (mostly). A lot of the things you have to do are just involved enough to engage you. Sometimes the press-buttons-in-sequence-ness would just make my sigh in frustration and broke my immersion, but less than most games like it.
So the game starts off pretty well... but the controls are so clunky, unresponsive, and sluggish, that it quickly becomes a massive headache to do anything. The worst part by far is the controlling of cameras, which is what you spend most of your time doing. See other reviews for detailed breakdowns of this.. it's awful. The UI *mostly* has a very nice visual design, which is a shame since the usability on PC is often pretty crap.
In my playthrough I ran into multiple bugs and found many parts of the writing to be pretty baffling or completely stupid. I have a long list of complaints about all sorts of things that aren't worth writing here.
TL;DR: I don't recommend it. It's one of those games that manages to do most of the hard things right, and messes up the easy things. Most of its more severe problems could be easily fixed, but clearly won't be :(