HIGH Clever level design. Throwback one-bit style. Unsettling sci-fi and horror elements.

LOW Missed opportunities for world-building, wonky controls, tedious trial and error gameplay.

WTF No mouse controls whatsoever?

At first glance, REPOSE could be mistaken for an untouched classic CRPG, as it’s rendered in starkly monochromatic one-bit graphics with a square aspect ratio. Upon further observation, there’s a lot more going on than one would find in a stock dungeon crawler from the ’80s.

This title offers a creepy, Giger-esque art style, leagues of claustrophobic, labyrinthine corridors, gameplay that demands careful management of one’s stamina and an oppressive atmosphere established by the crestfallen NPCs, all of whom work for a sinister, mysterious corporate entity — “The Company.”

The player’s job is grim but simple — Gather oxygen tanks from dead employees whose corpses can be found collapsed on the floor, sitting mutilated in office chairs or hanging from cables throughout the Company’s space station.

The tutorial turns out to be a dream from which the player wakes, only to find themselves sitting in a booth at a cafe an NPC named Cynthia. She informs the player that she also works for the Company, and it’s clear from her dialogue that the Company is some sort of spacefaring mega corporation with a penchant for placing profit over people, much like Weyland-Yutani in the Alien universe.

The original Alien’s iconic tagline, “in space, no one can hear you scream,” could just as easily be applied to REPOSE as the player sets forth from the bustling cafe and descends into the desolate lower levels where they will find a host of humanoid monstrosities — all the more horrifying for their indeterminate features with cables writhing around like tentacles.

With such threats lurking around every corner waiting to one-shot the player, they must be careful to take their journey one step at a time — literally.

Like the classic OG dungeon crawlers REPOSE was inspired by, the player assumes a first-person perspective and moves by taking one step after another (rather than fluid movement) which might feel archaic to players who unfamiliar with the genre, or nostalgic to those who grew up playing such games.

In an interview with DreadXP, Hungarian developer Bozó Attila Bertold explained how REPOSE started out as a sword and sorcery game in the same vein as the genre-defining dungeon crawler, Wizardry, but gradually, it felt more natural to change tack and make it sci-fi/horror-themed which is also reflected in his art.

However it’s not just an homage piece, as some mechanics work differently than one might expect. For instance, while the combat is as simple as can be, stamina does not exist in the traditional sense.

Rather than losing and recovering stamina as one does in many modern games, the player has a specified number of steps they can take (pivoting to look in a different direction does not count) before they hear a radio-like screech and they collapse.

It’s crucial to mind this mechanic, as it forces the player to carefully plan their route ahead of time based on what they learned from their last venture. One might say that REPOSE‘s greatest challenge is making the most out of every move.

One way that players can recover stamina is by drinking flasks of tea which can sometimes be found between areas, but these do not allow the player to save. It’s only once the player manages to make it to the next bed (they serve as checkpoints) that they can replenish their stamina and save their progress. 

The beds are often spread out between 40 and 50 paces away from each other so as to offer a variety of ways that the player can go about reaching the next bed, but sometimes, the player has far less steps to work with and must think carefully to figure out what the most efficient route is.

Often, the route to the next bed is blocked by obstacles or doors that must be opened elsewhere, and sometimes, opening the right door can create a shortcut back to a bed from earlier in the campaign, allowing the player to have more steps to work with.

Inevitably, the player will die many times before they find the way forward, so they must be careful not to lose their save codes as REPOSE will not autosave or autoload — saving is done the old-fashioned way by physically writing down a code somewhere, or by taking a screenshot.

This could be infuriating for some, but it does add to the sense of retrofuturism by being required to ‘input a code’ as an ’employee’ of the company. With that said, this feature can also be turned off, if one so chooses.

While these nods to retro sensibilities will be well-received by the right players, one of REPOSE‘s most polarizing features may be its maze-like level design.

I was often struck by how much thought and effort must have gone into the layouts as the paths I took wound around, up, down and back to somewhere ages before. However, impressive as it was, it didn’t take long before I lost my sense of where I was supposed to go and with it my motivation to continue the cycle of trial and error.

Something I was irked by was there was no option to rebind controls to the mouse. Personally, I would have preferred right clicking over having to hold a button for the windup attack as that felt less natural to me. Navigating menus or submenus is also inconsistent, alternating between WASD and the arrow keys, which isn’t a big deal, but it does seem strange to not have chosen to pick one or the other.

While I didn’t finish REPOSE, I did make it far enough to have unraveled some of the mysteries surrounding the Company, and it’s all fairly interesting — but I also felt that there could’ve been more opportunities for engagement with the NPCs and the lore that appeared in a few areas. My attention did start to wander at times and perhaps more of a story hook would have boosted that engagement.

Overall, I enjoyed visiting the world of REPOSE because I appreciate the retro look and feel, but the gameplay loop of stomping around looking for oxygen tanks, running out of stamina and respawning at the last bed before venturing out again is more tedious than it is challenging.

I’m sure there’s plenty of wandering left to do and there are more questions to be answered, but I’ll leave the Company to its devices and the corpses of its employees undisturbed.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Buy Repose — PC

Disclosures: This game was developed and published by Bozó Atilla Bertold and published by Akupara Games. The game is currently available only on PC. It was obtained via publisher and reviewed for PC. Approximately 1.5 hours were devoted to the campaign mode. The game was not finished. There is no multiplayer mode.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB, but if it were me, I would rate it T for disturbing imagery and violence. The player will find dead NPCs in different stages of decomposition and have to kill or be killed by various weapons.

Colorblind Modes: The presentation is strictly black and white which makes it colorblind-friendly.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The dialogue is all text-based and the gameplay does not rely on audio cues making it fully accessible.

Remappable controls: The keybindings are remappable, but there’s no option to rebind to mouse controls.

The post REPOSE Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Amazing set pieces and co-op gameplay

LOW Simplistic storytelling, predictable character beats.

WTF Pig body horror. 

Split Fiction is the latest game from Hazelight Studios, the studio behind It Takes Two and A Way Out.

Their most recent offering happily builds on the foundations of its predecessors to create what is possibly one of the best two-person co-op (especially couch co-op) action games around. Similar to It Takes Two, Split Fiction is mainly a split-screen cooperative 3D action-platformer with puzzle-solving mechanics, but it pushes collaboration further than we’ve experienced in virtually any other game. It also looks and feels as though it intends to tell a more mature story than the studio has done in the past, though the script isn’t as successful as the gameplay.  

Split Fiction centers on Zoe and Mio, two aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction, respectively. They are invited to get their work published by a tech CEO named Rader, but instead of a traditional book deal they’re told they must first relive their stories in his VR bubble machine called, “the Machine”. Such a naming convention is, sadly, indicative of the storytelling complexity here.  

Mio and Zoe become trapped in the same VR bubble and must figure out how to work together to escape. Naturally, the two women are polar opposites, with Mio preferring action and dark sci-fi stories, while Zoe enjoys escapist happy-ending fantasy. Over time, the two learn from each other and find common ground as the experience develops them and reveals their formative traumas.

Having a predictable story structure like this one is not necessarily a problem, but my partner and I felt that the character conflict felt forced, with Mio written to be unrealistically immature considering that both characters seem to be writers in (at least) their 20s. For example, Mio initially claims that she’s never thought about whether she puts a part of herself in her stories, which we found implausible for an adult writer. We also found that the character development of their respective inner conflicts to be fully unsurprising, and that their development never grew past the stereotypes they appeared to be from the start.

Fortunately, outside of the narrative, Split Ficton has much to offer.

In terms of aesthetics, Split Fiction dabbles in existing genres and themes — the worlds and stories aren’t wholly original and often seem referential to other games — but the gameplay and setpieces are exciting, and the co-op integration and variety are extremely well-executed.

Like It Takes Two, Split Fiction excels at pushing players to collaborate to solve puzzles. Typically, the players are given distinct abilities that work together in interesting ways, and both are needed in conjunction to move through an environment or defeat bosses.

In one of the fantasy sections, Mio had the ability to create platforms, while Zoe could rotate them. This division of skills meant that we had to plan when and where we would place them. In one of the sci-fi areas, we were super soldiers infiltrating a high-tech chemical base, and we had color-coded shooting mechanics integrated with puzzle solving. My partner and I often had to talk through overcoming obstacles that were more complicated than simply trying to coordinate pressing a button at the same time.

In addition, I see one of Split Fiction’s strengths being that it breaks up the campaign through the use of shorter “side stories” which give players a temporary detour from whatever’s happening. These allow the introduction of new mechanics and generally don’t outstay their welcome. In one case we spent a short time as (literally) magical pigs which farted rainbows or extended like a slinky.

Overall, while the individual gameplay mechanics in each section are not novel, the way that co-op and the “split” part of Split Fiction is executed is highly original and impressive, and the roles of the characters were often distinct enough that there might be some replayability in swapping characters for a second playthrough. 

The difficulty of Split Fiction seems intended to be approachable to the average gamer, and we found the difficulty to be calibrated just high enough to present an enjoyable challenge. That said, people who do not play many modern action games might have more of a learning curve. However, the penalty for dying is minimal, there are generous checkpoints, and as long as one player is alive, the other person can rejoin within seconds. We also appreciated that accessibility settings like reticle on/off or button mashing on/off can be adjusted for each character individually.

Overall, Split Fiction exceeded our expectations when it came to co-op action-puzzling — we just wished the story had more nuance and depth. If Hazelight Studios were to focus the same level of attention to both gameplay and writing, their narratives could serves to be more than vehicles to experience their action through, and that would be something like no other. However, even as it is, Split Fiction remains something special and one of the best cooperative experiences out there. 

Rating: 8 out of 10

Buy Split Fiction: PC – PS – XB

Disclosures: This game is developed by Hazelight Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It is currently available on XBX/S, PS5, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. The game was completed in approximately 15 hours, and the entire game was played in split-screen co-op.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Language, Blood and Gore, Crude Humor, and Violence. There is swearing, shooting guns and welding swords, mild violence, explosions, and scary situations like dental procedures and prison are depicted.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. All audio can be shown in subtitles and closed captions are available. Audio cues have visual indicators as well. The subtitles can only be altered to add a background, but not resized. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Split Fiction Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

As I wait for the dropship to pick me up, I reflect on just how badly this run had gone.

It started — as all deployments do — with my character, a freshly-ressurrected cyberzombie clad in an armored exoskeleton, jumping out of a helicopter into a warzone..

The assignment was a simple one. I was to make my way to the designated pickup zone and scavenge all the valuables I could find along the way. If a few bandits or cannibals happened to get gunned down, there was a bonus in it for me. Had I stuck to the plan, things might have gone well, but just two minutes in I spotted a Revival Artifact — one of the most valuable pieces of tech available in the wasteland.

Unfortunately, retrieving it requires a few minutes of decoding, during which wave after wave of mechs will be sent to defend it.

I’d foolishly brought along a precision rifle this time. It’s a heavy-hitting semi-auto great for picking off foes from a hundred meters away, but far less effective against the swarming biped robots that spent the next three minutes chasing me, barely leaving me any opportunity to regenerate my health as I waited for the decoding counter to run down.

Finally the last mech exploded and I returned to my Artifact — I’d managed to survive a half-dozen close calls and scavenge this top-tier bit of gear, and I even had ample time to get back on-mission and make it to my pickup. I thought I had it made… Which is when the Scarab arrived.

A four-legged tank, the Scarab sports an ultra-fast machinegun with infinite ammo that never overheats or needs reloading. The way to beat it is to flank it with multiple players, but since I was rolling solo, I had only one advantage — it has to put its gun away to move, and then stop to deploy it again. By breaking line of sight I could generate a two-second window in which it was vulnerable — but I had to be careful to not get too far away, because that would trigger its long-range defenses, rolling bombs that would home in on me.

What followed was nearly fifteen minutes of tricking a tank into thinking it had a chance to kill me, and then gradually stripping away its health until it gave up the ghost.

Any triumph I felt was undercut by the fact that I had just two minutes to cross the half-kilometer between me and my pickup location before the mission ended, either with a successful exfiltration… or my head exploding as the people who were responsible for my rebirth locked onto my signal and pushed a button.

Exoborne is the latest entry in the extraction shooter genre — the type of game in which players are dropped into a location, tasked with scavenging as much as possible within a strict time limit, and then attempting to get away with the loot before rival players gun them down and pillage their corpses. This one is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by superstorms caused by global warming.

Now, survivors scrounge the blasted landscape for any pieces of old-world tech they can find. This is a world where a jar of peanut butter is significantly more valuable than a box of ammunition, and people are happy to pay for creature comforts now that everything has gone to hell – one of the more valuable items I came across was a package of toilet paper.

After generating a character and playing a tutorial to get a handle on the controls, I was dropped into the Exoborne‘s world — it’s a foreboding landscape where threats are as likely to come from the quickly changing weather as enemy NPCs or greedy players.

The developers have built a map that’s incredibly exciting to explore. From the moment they’re dropped into battle using their always-available glider, players will be surrounded by a stunningly crafted vision of destroyed America. The rusted-out cars, shattered storefronts and shanty towns cobbled together to protect people from ceaseless storms have a gritty authenticity that serves to ground all of the action.

That grounded feeling extends to the unusually satisfying movement mechanics. The player may have access to an exoskeleton, but they won’t find themselves bouncing around the map like characters from Fortnite or Titanfall. The running, jumping, and sliding on offer doesn’t feel far beyond the realm of human ability, while special movement tech (the aforementioned glider and a grappling hook) allowing quick vertical ascent and descent as the situation requires. This feeling of realistic movement plays an important role in the way Exoborne builds spectacle — by making the player feel like an improved human rather than a super-powered being, the threat of random weather effects is magnified. A guy in power armor with an assault rifle might think he’s tough, but all of that gets stripped away when a firenado is bearing down on them.

The main action of Exoborne is built around scavenging as much as possible as quickly as possible, then making it out alive. Just how they do it is up to the player — pick fights with bandits and cannibals and swipe their gear? A perfectly viable option.

Go searching through the ruins of stores and homes looking for damaged tech and bottles of booze? Just as valid.

They can even hack high-tech machines to produce valuable intel.

Then, of course, there’s the way of the pirate — wait for another player to do the work of finding resources, then kill them and steal their hard-won prizes. That might seem like a cold thing to do (and it doesn’t exactly come up in the tutorial) but it’s not like the game accidentally sends out a map notification whenever a player has called for an extraction.

With a large arsenal of moddable weapons and three different exosuits available, Exoborne has plenty of options for different playstyles. Backstabbing, sniping, and charging into battle are all viable tactics, and with a large variety of enemy types to combat, scavenging is a compelling challenge even without the PVP action — although that always adds a little extra tension, especially because new players are constantly being dropped onto the map. I might be on minute 18, running out of ammo and armor kits, desperate to make it out with a backpack full of power tools and gently used laptops, but the player on my tail could have just dropped into the map, fully equipped and ready to run me down.

When GameCritics was invited to the Exoborne playtest I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never seen much appeal in the extraction genre, finding it frequently little more than a deathmatch by another name. However, Exoborne‘s developers have done such a great job of building a breathing, changing world full of dire threats that I found myself eager to jump back into the action over and over, even though I knew that there was always a good chance I’d wind up in some jackal’s sights.

Regardless, Exoborne offers such a great experience that it may have turned me around on the whole genre — I can’t wait to see what the finished game is like.

The post PREVIEW Exoborne appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Easy-to-learn mechanics.

LOW The voice acting.

WTF They swallowed the sun guys.

Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a third-person action-adventure stealth game where players take control of Ayana, a humanoid alien with shadow-themed powers — as in, she can literally turn into a shadow. Ayana will use every skill she has to combat Helios, a shady corporation obsessed with harvesting energy.

Ereban has a cel-shaded art style that is simple and legible — vital for a stealth title where recognizing patterns (especially in enemy movement) is key for players to avoid them. The devs also do a great job at conveying other relevant information visually via excellent prompts and alerts, relating to hostile NPCs especially.

Looking to the gameplay, Ereban gives players a handful of tools to sneak around its levels. These tools
include things like the most important one — turning into a shadow and traveling through shadows in the environment. She also gets things like ability to hide downed enemy bodies, sonar to reveal hostiles, and binoculars for extended sight, providing the player with enough options to surpass even the most challenging encounters. For example, the sonar allows Ayana to identify her foes so she can adapt to their patrol patterns and use that information to safely move past them, or she can also strike at them from the shadows if she wishes for a more aggressive approach.

Speaking of enemies, while there isn’t any real combat, Ayana can attack from above my landing on top of passing foes or by sneaking behind them. Thankfully the game provides her with tools that can either distract enemies like holograms or mines that can stun them giving her the chance to take down or avoid her foes.

This leads me to the narrative. Ereban: Shadow Legacy‘s plot is about Ayana and her quest to understand the fate of her people, and how it’s tied to megacorp Helios. During this inquiry, she’s dragged into a power struggle between the corporation and a group of freedom fighters called the Forgotten Suns.

Plainly put, the narrative is better in concept than execution. This exploration of the conflict failed to elicit any emotional responses from Ayana, whose voice actress half-heartedly reads through the script. That
apathy dictated how invested I became, and little about the protagonist and the general premise is ever well-realized. It’s a shame, since themes of reclaiming one’s identity and the abuses of foreign corporations are very relevant in the modern era. The failure to capitalize on real-world politics around us was a disappointing missed opportunity.

While the narrative falls utterly flat, Ereban: Shadow Legacy remains a good point of entry into the stealth genre, encouraging players to take things patiently and strategically while also giving them a unique adventure that lets them — quite literally — blend into the shadows. It’s worth a try for this, if nothing else!

Rating: 7 out of 10

— Fumo Chabalala

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Baby Robot Games. It is currently available on XBO/X/S and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has not been rated by the ESRB. However, it does contain mild violence which is mainly directed towards robots, and there is minimal gore. Also, there are a quite a few jokes that contain sexually-suggestive innuendo, but I suspect most of them will fly over the heads of younger players.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and resized. I played a portion without sound, and aren’t any audio cues that lack a visual indicator. In short, I believe it is a fully accessible experience.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Ereban: Shadow Legacy Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

GOOD Beautiful, well-crafted environments.

BAD Incessant narration every five seconds.

WTF Leaving the best feature until the end of the campaign.

I love a great lore-rich experience. It’s one of the main reasons why I love videogames like Elden Ring and Assassin’s Creed. But to support the weight of that storytelling, it needs a solid foundation based on interesting gameplay, mechanics and pacing. Astor: Blade of the Monolith is what happens when that foundation isn’t as strong as it should be.

Astor is a cartoony hack-and-slash title that tells a lore-rich, interesting story about the implications of humans creating artificial life, and how that life interacts with the natural world. Unfortunately, the message is often lost behind waves of mundane combat, mind-numbing narration, and boring traversal mechanics.

Things open with the titular character and his friend Zan exploring an ancient temple to find artifacts of the past. Astor and Zan are masked puppet-esque androids who live in a sprawling fantasy world that’s been long-abandoned by humans. Astor then falls through the temple floor, collects a mysterious artifact, gets a magic sword, and finds out that he is “The Chosen” – a special member of their species that was meant to overcome an insurmountable evil.

After a lengthy tutorial, I soon learned Astor is a Diokek — puppet androids created by the humans who are no longer in this world. The Diokek are locked in a constant battle with the Hiltsik, which are similar masked androids, but evil. Both of these factions derive from the Monolith, a tall structure of black stone that towers over the land in Astor and emanates with dark energy. Later, a town elder gives a typical cut-and-paste quest structure where Astor has to go through three trials and come out the other side somehow.

My next few hours of gameplay were spent looking at Astor‘s environments while learning the basic mechanics, and the art direction in Blade of the Monolith is a shining light in a sea of mediocrity. Every environment is crafted with the intent of being a wonder to behold, featuring sweeping vistas and beautiful colors.

Yet while there are countless wonderful environments to explore, there’s not a lot to do once Astor is in them. He’s either fighting the same band of enemies for the fifth time in a row, collecting haphazardly-scattered resources to upgrade his combat abilities, or walking to the next mission. This is compounded by the incredibly annoying narrator, who quite literally spells out every single thing that happens to Astor, not leaving an ounce of space for original thought from the player to interpret their surroundings.

This monotony is extremely evident in the first world, the desert, as I had no other means to get to a distant objective other than to walk. Eventually, Astor unlocks the ability to traverse the environment more easily, but I didn’t get this until two-thirds of the way through — one of many small tweaks that could be made to the pacing of Blade of the Monolith that would make it far more enjoyable.

Additional tweaks are needed in Astor’s combat. The game tries its best to emulate Devil May Cry-esque flurries of light, heavy, and special attacks, stringing them together in elaborate combos, but the execution is lacking. For example, I’d smack a normal enemy with the starting sword, and then it would fly back, yet I’d still be in the combo so Astor would do a weird glitch-jump to continue it. None of the attacks have synergy with any other, and combos feel janky.

Furthermore, this janky combat would often distract me from crucial story moments. I’d spend entire gameplay sections not remembering what happened in the plot because I was too focused on how jarring the combat was, all while the narrator was spewing words at me.

Eventually, the combat does begin to click, but it soon becomes more of a chore than anything else, and a lack of enemy level scaling makes the entire last third of the campaign a cakewalk – but there’s a hidden beauty in that. The story that I wasn’t paying attention to in the first two thirds was now my only focus, and when I wasn’t toiling through boring encounters or walking to my next mission, I began to appreciate the slightly deeper meaning of the story in Astor, which is passable, save for the narration.

There’s a good experience buried beneath all the issues in Astor: Blade of the Monolith, I think. There’s no reason why some reworking of the combat, reordering certain elements to speed up the pacing, and putting some duct tape over the narrator’s mouth wouldn’t do wonders, but in its current state these flaws are simply too glaring.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10

– Jack Dunn

Disclosures: The game was developed by C2 Game Studio and published by Versus Evil and tinyBuild. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, Switch, and XBX/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 9 hours was devoted to the game, and it was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has an ESRB rating of E for Fantasy Violence and Animated Blood. This is an action-adventure game in which players play as Astor, an android who goes on a quest to save his species from war with an evil faction of androids. Astor will get into sword combat with these evil androids, but these smaller fights have no blood and end in the enemies disappearing off the screen. A few of the boss fights have some animated blood in them, but it’s extremely few and far between. Outside of the combat, there is no violence in the game and it’s very tame in its themes.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind options.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game offers subtitles. Subtitles cannot be resized. There are no audio cues needed for successful gameplay. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game features 4 preset controller settings, but no remappable controls.

The post Astor: Blade Of The Monolith Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH A fresh, yet nostalgic approach to the survival genre.

LOW When making soup is an unlockable skill, we’ve gone too far.

WTF I didn’t think a toilet minigame would be such a big selling point.

Abiotic Factor, developed by Deep Field Games, is a first-person, story-based, real-time action survival title hosting up to six players.

The action centers around a secret government facility where players start their first day on the job amid an all-out catastrophe. With guidance from the scientists still active around the compound, players must strip the facility for useful parts to survive while fighting off any extraterrestrial creatures that may be slipping through cosmic cracks.

The draw of Abiotic Factor is immediately apparent thanks to its promotional imagery and concept, taking the best parts of the survival genre such as base creation and weapon crafting and infusing it with the atmosphere and nostalgia of the venerable Half-Life, which it takes heavy inspiration from via its scientists, secret facilities and portals to alien worlds, all of which lend it a natural familiarity.

Rather than waking up on a tropical beach butt-naked (which seems to be the go-to for developers within this genre) the facility as the starting location adds an extra level necessary for Abiotic Factor’s success. Staplers, table legs and unidentified ‘bio scrap’ are the types of resources players will find and use to craft various tools to combat this new, threatening landscape. The crafting itself is easily one of the best I’ve seen for a survival title, and the recipes for tools and objects are locked behind simple intuitive minigames which give the player the chance to have an understanding about how they are making any particular item.

The environment offers challenges and tactics for how to navigate progression. The facility itself is run on power, and power is limited. Players will find sockets dotted around the compound which they can draw from to power different stations – but as they will quickly find out, this power is not constant. At night, everything will go on ‘sleep’ mode and shut down, adding a passive timer to the gameplay. This experience was terrifying the first few times I was plunged into darkness – the only glow of light coming from the security bots who do not distinguish the players from the alien threat.

Despite these elements which make Abiotic Factor a fresh and smart addition to the survival genre, it does make a few choices that hinder the gameplay, rather than add to it.

For example, the combat takes a backseat to the story and atmosphere. Each combat encounter felt lackluster and repetitive – step, slash, dodge, step, slash and repeat. As someone who built up the throwing skill to add variety (and potentially impale enemies), there was no real opportunity to use this until later in the campaign, and even then it wasn’t worth the time or effort.

Speaking of not being worth the effort, in some of the later levels players will find enemy soldiers with weapons capable of killing in two or three shots. Clearing out these camps takes a lot of resources and time, but after clearing them and leaving the area for a couple of minutes, the enemies respawn back, erasing any sense of progress and making it all feel frustrating.

As for the skills, I’m an absolute sucker for progression and skill trees, but Abiotic Factor misses the mark in this area by having too many basic things locked away, and earning them gives little thrill. For instance, to throw my chosen weapons I had to level up the “sharp weapons” skill, rather than having the simple ability to throw them from the start. This was also an issue with cooking. To add meat or vegetables to hot water in order to make soup, I had to level up my cooking – it made me question why the character was lacking such basic human function.

Thankfully, while those aspects may not be up to snuff, it’s clear that Deep Field Games have focused on the setting and story. Players will enlist the help of fellow scientists and security guards to hack and slash their way through the facility. Audio logs left behind will slowly piece together how this outbreak happened, and how to combat this alien threat. Eventually, the player will reach alien worlds to explore which dial the atmosphere and cryptid horror to an eleven, challenging players to survive in dire circumstances.

While the appealing concept of marrying Half-Life to a survival gameplay experience is what brought me into the world of Abiotic Factor, I ultimately stayed for the atmosphere and storytelling. Despite some repetition when it comes to gathering materials, Deep Field Games managed to fill their adventure with unique moments and a new interpretation of classic material that caught me by surprise and kept me wanting more.   

— Tom Porter

*

This title is currently in Early Access.

The post PREVIEW: Abiotic Factor appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The exploding floor level!

LOW The level that demands too many dashes in a row.

WTF Apparently the game is now a SHMUP?

Bzzzt seems almost embarrassed by the expectation that it should have a story, and it’s breathtaking how perfunctorily the premise is introduced — good scientists have built an AI, and they pop it into a robot to test its running and jumping abilities. Then an evil scientist turns up. Why is he evil? He put on a helmet that turned him evil. The good scientists are then kidnapped, and it’s up to the player to brave 52 levels of platforming to get them back.

Bzzzt offers 2D puzzle-platforming at its purest and most direct. The goal of each level is simple — get through a gauntlet to the exit. That’s it. Accomplishing that task is complicated by hopping over deathbots, laser fields, sawblades, moving floors, and every other obstacle that the genre traditionally offers. That’s not an exaggeration, either — Bzzzt is nothing less than a best-of collection of every mechanic and threat that devotees of the genre have come to expect.

The result of this design philosophy is a game that moves at such a breakneck pace that one never has a chance to get bored. One level might involve vents that shoot the robot high into the air, with the next being built around a series of ladders that the player has to zip between, avoiding robots that slide up and down them.

There are so many different gimmicks on offer that Bzzzt almost never repeats them more than once. While every level will offer some manner of deadly wall and/or difficult jump, the more in-depth mechanics like a moving gun platform that the player has to control using buttons, or a masterpiece level built around an exploding floor, are featured just a single time before disappearing forever. It shows a real belief in their own design skills that the developers were willing to toss away so many great mechanics rather than riding them into the ground.

I could easily see Bzzzt being three or four times as long, with the developers milking each new gimmick over a whole series of levels, Super Meat Boy-style. They don’t, however, which is both a disappointment because I adore the level design, but also a an impressive statement of purpose. These are developers who know they’ve done a great job, and aren’t interested in resting on their laurels.

None of this would work at all if Bzzzt’s controls weren’t absolutely flawless, and I’m happy to report that it plays exactly as well as it needs to. The robot is a breeze to guide through levels, with jump physics that have just enough gravity to feel satisfying, while never slowing the pace. Then, soon enough it will be air-dashing and double-jumping through increasingly convoluted energy mazes. In a twist I wasn’t expecting, the dash can be used an infinite number of times with only a spit-second cooldown, which at first seems like it’s going to be overpowered, but the level design ensures that the ability can’t be abused. In fact, the developers rely on the player having an endless dash in later levels, forcing them to perform some truly impressive acrobatics.

The only real flaw I encountered in Bzzzt was a lack of bells and whistles beyond the main game. In addition to being given a par time to hit, there are an assortment of golden bolts to find. I collected all of them — because why not? — but I was disappointed to discover that my reward for having done so was… an achievement? Where were the alternate skins for the robot, visual effects to place over the gameplay, or even something as simple as concept art? Bzzzt is nice enough to let the player keep their upgrades after they’ve been unlocked, so it’s a simple matter to go back to earlier levels and use the double-jump and dash to easily collect everything and beat the par times, but what motivation does the player have for doing so? For developers who so thoroughly understand the appeal of challenging platforming, it’s strange to see them completely whiff on an aspect that serves as strong motivation for many players.

Despite the lack of prizes for going above and beyond, I found Bzzzt to be a delight. This is a platforming masterpiece crafted by people who know the genre inside and out. Anyone who loves super-intense platforming is all but guaranteed to adore it, as it’s a truly exceptional game that’s as rewarding to play as any of the top titles in the genre.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by KO DLL and published by Cinemax Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 2 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.

Parents: This game was not rated by the ESRB, but it is effectively E10 grade content with Cartoon Violence. Yes, there are lots of exploding robots, but no blood and no real tension. The robot is super-cute, as are most of the enemies, so this should be safe for almost any player. There’s even an easy mode where the player can take three hits before dying!

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the majority of the game without audio and encountered zero difficulties. All dialogue is subtitled and all vital information is provided visually. Subtitles cannot be resized. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Bzzzt Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH A gripping, expertly-framed first-person sci-fi adventure.

LOW Polish issues and rough edges in the climax and finale make for an awkward landing.

WTF How did this story come out in 1964 and manage to still feel as timely as it does?

The key art for Starward Industries’ The Invincible shows an unfortunate astronaut buried up to their neck in sand on a desolate desert planet, skin and tissues rotted away to reveal the skull underneath. Looking at this art without any prior knowledge of the game or its inspirations, one might think The Invincible is a science fiction-themed horror title, or even a harsh survival simulator set on a distant world. Luckily for me, The Invincible is neither. Instead, it’s a rather compact, engrossing, and almost perfectly delivered first-person sci-fi adventure.

The Invincible is based on Polish author StanisÅ‚aw Lem’s 1964 novel of the same name, but it isn’t a direct adaptation. Where the original tale focused on the titular vessel — a heavily-armed military spaceship — Starward Industries opts to reframe the story on a more personal scale. In Starward’s version of the story, the protagonist, Yasna, is a biologist instead of a soldier, part of a small, six-person research crew. She wakes up on the surface of a barren, foreboding planet with gaps in her memory and her journal to fill the blanks. Yasna must find the rest of her crew and reestablish contact with Novik, the mission commander in orbit onboard their mother ship. During this journey she’ll uncover why she and the crew were separated, and how their troubles relate to the planet and its mysterious, dangerous ecosystem.

Players will go about solving that mystery in the manner of a first-person exploration game — the kind some jokingly call “walking simulators”. In its opening moments, The Invincible gestures convincingly to the minutiae of survival simulators by having Yasna check her spacesuit for damage, carefully doing an inventory of her backpack, and perusal of her mission log, giving herself (and the player) an initial set of objectives. However, these actions are less an introduction to a set of gameplay systems (such as maintaining hunger or oxygen supplies) than a way to establish Starward Industries’ expertise at first-person navigation and immersive presentation. Other than a few small HUD elements to help players orient themselves, almost all functions are represented diegetically by using objects or mechanisms in the world of the game rather than abstractions.

Need to navigate? Yasna will open up her log, turning the pages to represent different sectors on the map grid. Need to find landmarks to pinpoint a landing zone for the mother ship’s evacuation capsule? Yasna’s telescope has separate “dials” for distance and zoom. Notes and waymarkers appear marked in bright yellow pencil on the map. All of this is couched in a sublimely appealing retro-futuristic visual style inspired by the Cold War-era space race art and concepts from the Soviet side of the divide. There’s a chunky, weighty physicality to every object and animation that matches or exceeds even the likes of triple-A behemoths like Cyberpunk 2077 in making a player feel like they’re inhabiting the viewpoint character. If you’re like me and love to look at vintage appliances or appreciate consoles covered in old LEDs and switches, knobs, and dials, The Invincible‘s chunky, grounded aesthetic sense is as intoxicating as catnip.

Starward Industries knows what it’s doing when it comes to looks and sounds, too. The synth-heavy soundtrack puts a haunting CRT TV hum behind every vista, and every vista looks like the cover of a weathered sci-fi paperback novel, not to mention the fact that the Soviet-era origins of both the story and the style are fresh and new compared to the endlessly reiterated versions of American retro-futurism envisioned by the likes of Fallout and old sci-fi TV reruns. The Invincible genuinely feels like a vision of an alternative future grown from different roots than the “typical” titles one might encounter growing up in the English-language gaming scene.

Where The Invincible is heavy on style, it’s deliberately light on gameplay systems. Rather than distract from the story by having to maintain vitality meters or batteries, Yasna’s main jobs are to explore each area, uncovering clues and slowly moving along with the pace of the narrative. While I won’t reveal specific plot points, the script does feel a little quaint. Starward Industries’ take on the original The Invincible‘s themes of robotic advancement, artificial evolution, and the relationship of humanity to future alien environments is well-executed, but doesn’t fundamentally challenge or alter them significantly, making the beats come across as a bit easy to predict, even without having read the source material.

That said, the alternative framing does a fantastic job of making the experience of those predictable beats land close to home. With players never leaving Yasna’s viewpoint, it’s good that she’s a personable and engaging lead, and the solitude of being marooned on an alien world is alleviated by Novik, a radio voice in Yasna’s ear. As Yasna travels the planet in search of her crew and and some answers, she can discuss various topics with him while players are usually given agency in deciding Yasna’s attitude. Yasna isn’t a blank slate protagonist, and the writing works to make her a convincing driver for much The Invincible‘s ten- to fifteen-hour runtime.

I say “much”, because things hit rougher patches in the last couple of hours of the journey, unfortunately.

As the story closes out, I couldn’t help but wonder if Starward Industries was forced to compromise on scenes or gameplay sequences that could’ve formed useful connective bridges for some of the logical leaps Yasna takes as the tale reaches its climax.

As things begin to draw near their conclusion, Yasna becomes something of an exposition device, spouting long, awkward monologues full of expertise outside the field of a biologist — or worse, calling on knowledge or speculations that she didn’t seem to know or encounter earlier. If the first three quarters of The Invincible come across as a well-paced sci-fi yarn, its last quarter feels haunted by the ghost of a producer telling the rest of the team to wrap it up. This abruptness wouldn’t be so bad if the rest wasn’t so good at delivering its slow-burn story in every other instance, but it’s disappointing to see the story stumble in the last few paces before the finish line.

An undercooked ending doesn’t capsize the rest of the experience, though, which is ultimately a perfectly calibrated sci-fi adventure with an inimitable aesthetic sense. As a game, The Invincible may not be entirely unassailable, but its credentials are as solid as one could ask for.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Starward Industries and published by 11 Bit Studios. It is currently available for the PS5, XBS/X and PC. This review of the game is based on a review build provided by the publisher and reviewed on PS5. Approximately 11 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, discovering multiple endings. There is no multiplayer mode. The game was completed.

Parents: This game is rated M by the ESRB, with content descriptors for Strong Language and Violence. The description is as follows: “This is a story-driven adventure game in which players assume the role of a scientist searching for her missing crew. From a first-person perspective, players traverse an alien terrain, engage in radio chatter, and interact with robots and drones to uncover mysterious events. Some interactions with robots can lead to instances of violence: a robot destroyed by a cannon blast; a character nearly crushed by a walking tank. Comic-style prints also depict violent imagery: humans getting shot by lasers; robot blasts melting through flesh; a surrendering character disintegrated by energy beams. The word “f**k” is heard in the game.”

Colorblind Modes: The game has no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Voiced dialogue is accompanied by subtitles (see examples below), however, some subtitles showed discrepancies between the wording of the voiced line in English and the written text onscreen. The game features text size options, and highlights handwritten text and notes in computer font for readability. All gameplay cues are visual. Fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game’s button controls are not remappable.

The post The Invincible Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Eventually (I assume?) this will be a fine release.

LOW It sure as s*** ain’t right now.

WTF Putting the level cap to 99 in this game is the definition of arbitrary and capricious.

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that made me ponder what the hell a written videogame review is even supposed to be in 2023 quite like The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition has.

Before we get into everything awful here, please read Josh Tolentino’s exceptional review for the original Outer Worlds. He does a great job running through what the game is and what makes it fabulous, and I find myself agreeing with so much of what he said. The Outer Worlds is a whip-smart Action-RPG with some truly outstanding writing that lambastes corporate culture while providing an exceptionally well-realized galaxy to explore. The game is directed by Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain, the original developers of the Fallout series as well as Fallout: New Vegas, and this definitely feels like something they would make.

My favorite thing about the dialogue and choices is that they’ve created a world that doesn’t define itself with the traditional ideals of “good” or “evil”. Essentially, everyone in The Outer Worlds is kind of a garbage human, so I found it liberating to go from virtuous hero in one scenario to being a sadistic, greedy bastard 30 minutes later because it felt like the right move at the time. I never found myself worrying about a morality arrow pointing in a specific direction due to a choice I made, and that’s a sign of a game where decisions truly matter.

In terms of combat, while it gets relatively monotonous, the shorter-than-average RPG runtime does a lot to make sure it doesn’t overstay its welcome, making The Outer Worlds an exceptional choice for anyone looking to play what is essentially a slightly improved, tighter Bethesda game. This is how I felt about it when it first released in 2019, and that is still the case today.

The Outer Worlds is a great videogame, full stop — but that’s not why people are reading this review.

No, they’re reading this because the recently released Spacer’s Choice Edition (a name so ironic given what that term means that I find it hard to believe Private Division didn’t know what they were implying) is the latest game industry dumpster fire, evidenced by the numerous reports citing its deficiencies, lots of anger, promises of patches, and the obligatory “we’re sorry” tweets from publisher 2K. It’s so bad that original developer Obsidian Entertainment even sent out an apology despite apparently having nothing to do with the new version.

That last bit is important.

While Obsidian actually did a fair bit of enhancing and patching to the original release, this new version of is essentially a whole new product, developed primarily by port-house-of-questionable-quality Virtuos, who are probably best known as the people behind the much-maligned Batman: Return To Arkham remasters.

When purchased (or “upgraded”) it shows up as a separate title, apart from the original release for those who owned it already. That’s because Private Division, the “boutique” publishing subsidiary of 2K, is about to lose the publishing rights to Microsoft, who now own Obsidian.

In other words, this is a cash-grab, and the last chance for 2K to capitalize on an IP before it’s no longer in their control. Also, is it a coincidence that something so clearly undercooked was released in mid-March (right before the end of the fiscal year) instead of being kept in the oven a bit longer? I’m not the first one on the internet to point out how hilarious/dystopian it is that The Outer Worlds has become such a cynical product of corporate apathy, but the projection going on here is something fierce.

So what the heck is the Spacer’s Choice Edition? Well it’s supposed to be an enhanced remaster of the original 2019 release with updated character models, new lighting, a new level cap, and they also threw in the DLC from the first game for good measure. It represents a pseudo “Definitive Edition” for a game that deserves such treatment, but it fails spectacularly at every turn.

I was given a code by the publisher for the Playstation 5 version. Like a lot of late-generation titles from the PS4/Xbox One era, The Outer Worlds did not perform well on then-modern hardware. It fared a little better on the PS4 Pro/Xbox One X, but for the most part they represented a significant step back from the PC version with bad framerates and a substantial nerfing of graphical fidelity.

While the graphics in the console version of Spacer’s Choice are a significant step up in terms of effects, the framerate is absolutely dreadful on PS5. There are two graphical options — quality mode targets 4K and 30FPS, and performance mode (I almost put that one in quotes) targets 1800p-ish resolution and 60FPS. Neither are particularly successful, but the performance mode has quite possibly the worst framerate I have encountered recently. It’s a stuttering mess that only reaches 60FPS while talking to characters in dialogue, and while the quality mode isn’t as ghastly as the performance mode, it certainly isn’t what anyone would classify as consistent.

That’s not the only problem. While the lighting engine has improved, the contrast of the images have been turned up considerably, making things look either incredibly washed-out or oddly neon in certain scenarios. The Outer Worlds was always colorful, but now it simply looks unnatural, and the lighting indoors is incredibly inconsistent. Combine that with the contrast issues, and some environments are borderline impossible to maneuver around because it’s so dark. I will give them credit for touching up and improving character models, but combined with the framerate, not only does it run like crap, I’m tempted to say it may be legitimately nauseating to look at.

Graphics aren’t the only place where Spacer’s Choice Edition is rushed. They’ve included the two DLC packs from the original release, but have done nothing to better integrate them into what should be a definitive edition. Both Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos are late-game expansions with a suggested minimum level warning, and both are introduced to the player early in the adventure when they won’t be able to properly tackle them. Also, the main menu advertises each DLC pack as if they’re something that can be bought instead of something I already own due to having this version. This is a small issue, but I think it speaks volumes about just how slapped-together this package feels.

The most significant gameplay enhancement comes in the form of a new level cap of 99. With the DLC installed, the original Outer Worlds had a level cap of 36, which doesn’t sound like much, but was perfectly adequate for an RPG that isn’t very long by RPG standards. One can blast through the main quest in about fifteen hours, and doing all the sidequests and DLC may take up to 50-ish hours. I find this a selling point by the way, as The Outer Worlds doesn’t have a lot of fat, nor does it have many quests that come off as filler. In my playthrough, I completed the main quest, did a fair amount of side content including both DLCs, all companion quests, some of the faction quests, and my final level was 46.

While Spacer’s Choice does benefit from being able to level past 36, I don’t see a world in which it has enough meat to justify going to level 99, and any significant benefit to a level cap increase probably peters out around level 50-ish. In The Outer Worlds, the vast majority of XP earned comes completing quests, and there aren’t an overwhelming amount of those to begin with. I suppose someone could spend 40 hours grinding through enemies to get to level 99, but I have no idea why anyone would want to. Spacer’s Choice does nothing to actually change the way leveling up works, nor does it rebalance the late game to accommodate this new cap. This is a poorly-implemented “enhancement” that serves only to be a bullet point on the back of the box.

The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition retails for $59.99, and while the price is a bit eyebrow-raising, the original version has maintained its value on digital storefronts surprisingly well. As such, if Spacer’s Choice actually was a definitive version, I wouldn’t find the price so tasteless. What I do find tasteless is the “upgrade” path, where players who own the original and the DLC can fork over another $10 to play a version that is worse than what they have.

So, at the moment this release is an abject mess. It performs poorly, it’s not a good deal from a cost perspective, it’s actively worse than previously-released versions, the gameplay enhancements are superfluous at best, the first of presumably many patches released didn’t seem to do much, and it comes off as nothing more than a cash grab for a quality game that deserves better. The nicest thing I can say about it is that the load times are slightly improved, but that tiny boost doesn’t make up for what went wrong here.

With the modern ability to patch games, there’s a good chance this review might be rendered completely irrelevant within a few months — that’s one of the perils of writing something in an age where so many experiences are dramatically different months after release. My hope is that someday the Spacer’s Choice Edition will be a great version of The Outer Worlds, but that day ain’t today.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This version of the game was originally developed by Obsidian, ported by Virtuos, and published by Private Division (A subsidiary of 2K games). It is currently available on PC, PS5, and XBS/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PS5. Approximately 42 hours of play were devoted to the single-player modes. There are no multiplayer modes. This version of the game was completed.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M with descriptors for Strong Language, Intense Violence, and Blood and Gore. The official ESRB description is as follows: “This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of a colonist in a space colony. From a first-person perspective, players explore an open-world environment, interact with characters, complete mission objectives, and battle alien creatures. Players use blasters, machine guns, and shotguns to kill creatures and human enemies in frenetic combat; action is highlighted by slow-motion and blood-splatter effects. Players can also shoot and kill civilians, though this may negatively affect players’ progress. Some attacks result in decapitation and dismemberment of creatures; one area depicts a dismembered corpse amid a large bloodstained environment. Cutscenes depict additional acts of violence: a man shooting himself in the head; a character executed off-screen. The words “f**k,” “sh*t,” and “a*shole” are heard throughout the game.“

Colorblind Modes: According to Obsidian, the game was explicitly designed to be playable independent of color information. However, it has no colorblind modes selectable.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue, cinematics, and combat barks are reflected in text and visual interface elements. The standard text is rather small, but a slider in the menu allows for larger text for those that require it, however the color of the font is not modifiable. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable, though there are several presets to choose from. A controller layout is available in the options menu.

The post The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition (PS5) Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Brilliant voice acting.

LOW The setpieces.

WTF This platforming is so bad.

The Entropy Centre is a first-person puzzle adventure where time is manipulated in order to progress from one challenge to the next while trying to uncover the mystery around the titular locale.

The architecture on display oozes brutalism via bare concrete accented by glass and steel, but foliage has taken over this long-abandoned moon base, and the effects are impressive. There are also other areas such as beaches which provide a stunning dosage of color, promptly followed by melancholy once the sense of isolation sets in. The industrial areas, however, aren’t as impressive since they lack polish and refinement with bland design and lackluster textures, but more often than not, good art direction gives The Entropy Centre a visual identity that carries its weight.

In terms of gameplay, TEC’s puzzles are a real treat, especially earlier on when the experience is fresh. All its tasks are built around the premise that the player will reposition items inside each level in such a manner that rewinding time will open previously-restricted areas and allow the player to progress. New elements are steadily introduced throughout The Entropy Centre’s chapters including lasers, conveyor belts and bridges amongst other things, each one remixing the format to varying degrees. However, the novelty does wear off after the initial six to seven hours, because each chapter wrings the new elements dry by including too many puzzles per chapter that utilize the same element, and this compounds over time.

To make matters worse, the movement is problematic. There were multiple times when I accidentally fell from a spot and was required to use the ‘restart puzzle’ option, or worse, I’d fall prey to a hazard and die, resulting in sitting through a loading screen and having to listen to the same dialogue again — this frustration ate away at my patience. This is all made worse during scripted, linear segments that are time sensitive, often requiring multiple retries.

So the gameplay side of The Entropy Centre has issues, but what about the narrative? Ultimately it’s about an amnesiac operative trying to save the Earth from a mass extinction event by generating “Entropy Energy” via solving the puzzles, whilst also figuring out what happened to the long-abandoned moon base and her place in it.

The initial setup of the plot is superb thanks to the intrigue surrounding the Centre and the cataclysmic stakes. Both are well-established and the cast is endearing. However, after that strong introduction, the narrative becomes little more than background flavor text and the occasional dialogue exchange. None of it does much to move the plot forward, which is genuinely disheartening considering how strong the introduction was.

Overall, The Entropy Centre is a decent puzzle adventure that suffers from too much friction and an excessive runtime, and the individual issues are detrimental to the whole. A leaner package with fewer puzzles per chapter and more emphasis on the plot would have improved things — it’s a shame it’s not more compact and memorable experience.

Rating: 5 out of 10

— Fumo Chabalala

Disclosures: This game is developed by Stubby Games and published by Playstack. This copy of
the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBO. Approximately 14 hours of play
were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no
multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Fantasy Violence, Mild
Language, and Tobacco Reference.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not offer subtitles. The subtitles can be altered
and/ or resized. Audio cues are not relevant towards the gameplay. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game does not offer a controller map diagram, but movement is on the left stick. Camera is the right stick. Jumping is A. Y grabs items, RT rewinds, and B stops the rewind.

The post The Entropy Centre Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.