Post by dagless on Jul 29, 2019 21:28:22 GMT
Just finished this and was wondering what anyone thought?
Couldn’t find a thread, so apologies if I missed it.
Epilepsy warning:
Don’t even consider if you are sensitive to strobe and glitchy graphics effects (deliberate). There were clear warnings on purchase and on booting up game, so it’s not a criticism. I’m just saying again now.
Concept:
Basically it’s about as 2001 as a game can be. You play as HAL, no, sorry SAM. A pretty beaten up and corrupted space station AI trying to keep a surviving astronaut alive following some kind of incident. Things get weird (don’t think that’s too much of a spoiler).
Atmosphere:
Really worked for me. Always been a big fan of the weird and mysterious type of sci-fi, and this probably does it better than anything else I played. And better than most movies that try to capture vibe.
Gameplay:
Well, here it’s a bit lacking unfortunately. Much of the game, view things through CCTV camera and interacting with various systems to make stuff happen. In principle, I really like this. It did work for putting you in the perspective of the AI.
Sadly, the “puzzles” are more like hacking mini games, each one with a different lore appropriate interface. There’s no real difficultly like having a logic problem to solve. More just figuring out the interface to do thing it’s supposed to. They don’t really give you sense of satisfaction for being smart enough to solve, more that you were being a bit thick for not getting it sooner.
It’s similar with the overall tasks. It’s not so much having to think about what order you need to do stuff. More just finding and identifying the thing you’re supposed to interact with next.
There are also sections where you move around in a remote drone thing. This kind of took away from the idea of seeing everything through cameras, by basically going into first person mode. These parts also suffered from it being far too difficult to navigate to whatever you were supposed to do or at times know where you are. Much of this could have easily avoided with small changes, like clearly labeling and signposting station modules, and giving clearer directions at times of where to find your next objective.
Plot:
It really nails the aforementioned 2001 vibe and playing as the AI really works. There were a few moments that really made my hair stand on end.
Wasted Opportunity?:
Ah, damn. What it does well, it does soooo well. If they’d fixed the problems with navigation and identifying what you’re supposed to interact with and introduced real logical puzzle solving, it could have been a stone cold classic, IMO. Unfortunately, the only challenge seems to be for all the wrong reasons.
Summary:
Despite the gameplay issues, I got really caught up in it and basically played it straight through (it’s only a few hours long, even with much getting lost and not seeing what I needed to do).
I love this type of sci-fi and I really wanted to see it through and see where it was going. Playing as the AI really worked to get me into it, more than a film could, even if the actual gameplay was a bit lacking.
But I’m not sure I could recommend to gamers in general. Think you’d have to love the genre as I do, and be prepared to play a game where seeing the next plot reveal is enough to overcome inevitable frustration.
Glad I played it though.
Couldn’t find a thread, so apologies if I missed it.
Epilepsy warning:
Don’t even consider if you are sensitive to strobe and glitchy graphics effects (deliberate). There were clear warnings on purchase and on booting up game, so it’s not a criticism. I’m just saying again now.
Concept:
Basically it’s about as 2001 as a game can be. You play as HAL, no, sorry SAM. A pretty beaten up and corrupted space station AI trying to keep a surviving astronaut alive following some kind of incident. Things get weird (don’t think that’s too much of a spoiler).
Atmosphere:
Really worked for me. Always been a big fan of the weird and mysterious type of sci-fi, and this probably does it better than anything else I played. And better than most movies that try to capture vibe.
Gameplay:
Well, here it’s a bit lacking unfortunately. Much of the game, view things through CCTV camera and interacting with various systems to make stuff happen. In principle, I really like this. It did work for putting you in the perspective of the AI.
Sadly, the “puzzles” are more like hacking mini games, each one with a different lore appropriate interface. There’s no real difficultly like having a logic problem to solve. More just figuring out the interface to do thing it’s supposed to. They don’t really give you sense of satisfaction for being smart enough to solve, more that you were being a bit thick for not getting it sooner.
It’s similar with the overall tasks. It’s not so much having to think about what order you need to do stuff. More just finding and identifying the thing you’re supposed to interact with next.
There are also sections where you move around in a remote drone thing. This kind of took away from the idea of seeing everything through cameras, by basically going into first person mode. These parts also suffered from it being far too difficult to navigate to whatever you were supposed to do or at times know where you are. Much of this could have easily avoided with small changes, like clearly labeling and signposting station modules, and giving clearer directions at times of where to find your next objective.
Plot:
It really nails the aforementioned 2001 vibe and playing as the AI really works. There were a few moments that really made my hair stand on end.
Wasted Opportunity?:
Ah, damn. What it does well, it does soooo well. If they’d fixed the problems with navigation and identifying what you’re supposed to interact with and introduced real logical puzzle solving, it could have been a stone cold classic, IMO. Unfortunately, the only challenge seems to be for all the wrong reasons.
Summary:
Despite the gameplay issues, I got really caught up in it and basically played it straight through (it’s only a few hours long, even with much getting lost and not seeing what I needed to do).
I love this type of sci-fi and I really wanted to see it through and see where it was going. Playing as the AI really worked to get me into it, more than a film could, even if the actual gameplay was a bit lacking.
But I’m not sure I could recommend to gamers in general. Think you’d have to love the genre as I do, and be prepared to play a game where seeing the next plot reveal is enough to overcome inevitable frustration.
Glad I played it though.