And once again, we finish another game picked up by the monthly bundle. At the time, I saw the trailer and while I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it, I knew it looked absolutely GORGEOUS. It had a hint of fear, suggested heavy exploration, but all in a technicolor word we could only partly see but managed to look hauntingly and achingly beautiful.
But does the game live up to that first impression? Let's find out.
Story: Who you are and why you are here are fairly unknown. All you know is you woke up in your tent and outside it is total darkness, well almost. Nearby is a stone platform which has a scanner and VR headset, which once you put it on, allows you to use the scanner to fire lasers at the walls of the cave you find yourself in, creating a virtual map the headset will let you see around you.
Beyond this, you know very little... only that no one has been down here for centuries, if at all. Your discovery awaits. While this opening seems a little threadbare, the game will expand on it as you play, giving you more insight into this underground world and your place within it. To explain more would be doing this plot a disservice. It's not particularly deep, but it does have a really good twist I don't want to give away.
7/10
Graphics: As I said in the opening of this review, this game incredibly beautiful. Despite the short length of the game, there were several moments I had to stop and just admire the view placed before me. You will play from a first person perspective where outside of your tent, you will basically have zero light to work with. The world is absolute darkness. Instead to find your way around you will "scan" the world and where the lasers stop, dots of light will remain to create the scene. It is a weird kind of minimalist, but it is amazing to see the world form around you as you look on. And then you turn around and look behind you...
...and wow. The game keeps the world transparent outside of what you lit up, and at first this feels weird as you KNOW there are physical objects in your way even though you can see through them. But in return for this, it lets you see EVERYTHING you have lit up in that direction. Early on, it produces a small distance "cave of light" that is absolutely breath-taking, but later on, you will see your early path, those same lights you yourself set becoming a model of the world glowing hauntingly in the distance. Between these views, this is a non-stop spectacle to behold with spectral images of ancient ruins and the tragedies around them that somehow manage to each stand out on their own! Enjoy.
9/10
Sound: Sadly as great as this game looks, it doesn't have the same epic sound most of the time. Rather, you are going to have no music and no voices: just the sound of your own footsteps echoing around you.
But there are occasions to break this rule, standing out all the more for it. These can be moments of panic when some monsterous roar echos through the world, triumphant music as you reach a specific high moment, or even just cresendo to push the tension of the moment. It helps the mood of the moment when it happens. I just wish it was used more.
6/10
Gameplay: The actual gameplay behind the gorgeous visuals to this game is relatively simple. You have a cave before you which you will use your scanner to look around and explore and ultimately find the path you need to follow to progress. It is all very linear, which is a good thing as your limited visibility will inevitably lead you down dead ends and trying to figure out the very landscape as you play. That's all there is to it. Unlike most games, you do not have any real effective way (or need to) interact with anything on the way. There is maybe a single puzzle in the entire game and there are no enemies to speak of here besides gravity from time to time.
Still the game does evolve some as you play, for through your short journey (even getting stuck due to missing a detail, I finished the game in 2 hours), you will come across a few enhancements for your scanner, giving you new ways to fine-tune how you use it. But none of it will be necessary and in fact your first "upgrade" I found completely useless.
The end result is this is a game much more about showing then doing, but when that showing is actually interactive, it actually works pretty well for the most part. Unfortunately that same blindness does come with the draw-back of geometry that it can get easy to get stuck in due to rough surfaces you might try/have to explore, robbing the experience of being it's absolute best it could be. I get the feeling a little work here would have done wonders to perfect your short time exploring this cave.
7/10
Bugs: Once again, we have another game that ran flawlessly. The closest it came to a bug was a lack of polish when reloading a checkpoint after death, when it looked like it might have frozen for a second before returning control to you.
However, there is one other point to concider, and that's the size of saved games. True, you shouldn't need many, but a saved game will get MASSIVE in this title. Stored in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Introversion Software, they store every singe spot you light, preserving everything for your adventure, but at the cost of a single game easily needing 80 MB or more by the end of the game. It's easy to waste a TON of hard drive space with this game, so it's worth knowing this directory in case you want to clean it out when you are done.
Overall: You would not expect a such a simple modern game to be much good, but it really is. What the game lacks in enemies or even challenge, it makes up for in visual style and a truly unique exploration mechanic you will likely not find anywhere else. This game will wow you while playing and stay just long enough to enjoy what you are doing. If you are looking for something different, especially as a quick break between other titles, you would do very well giving this a try.
Score:
8/10
System Requirements:
- Intel Core i5-2500k running at 3.3 Ghz, AMD Phenom II x4 940 running at 3.0 Ghz, or an AMD FX 8350 running at 4.0 Ghz
- 4 GB RAM
- Radeon HD 2000 or Geforce 8 series graphic card.
- Windows 7
- 3 GB Hard drive.
- AMD FX 8350 running at 4.0 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 960 with 4 GB VRAM
- Windows 10
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