On First Person Fridays for Extra-Life, I am trying to alternate between more action based and more puzzle based games. With the last game being more point and click then action and a craving for more games like Descent, I found myself picking up and playing a game I had never heard of, but a certain prominent youtuber pointed out during his review of my personal favorite Boomer Shooter. And while he was right about the game being straight up sadistic from time to time, I always walked away happy with my night and somehow wanting more.
Story: This is not a game you play for the story, as there is really isn't anything more then a little bit to set the the backdrop. It is the year 4096 and mankind has colonized the galaxy. However, for every successful bustling structure in the stars, you can bet the human race has also left something behind to fall apart in the darkness of space. You are a Desecrator, which is effectively a space-tomb raider in a fighter space ship (yes this is every bit as awesome as it sounds) for whom these decrepit structures exist to be looted. But the job is never simple, as these places tend to still buzz with the activity of whatever systems were abandoned inside still humming away at their last commands... and sometimes far worse including (but not limited to) competition who would happily destroy you over the prizes.
And prizes are the main goal here, for somewhere out there, there is the motherload all desecrators dream of finding: the vaults of the galactic treasury.
There is nothing else to the story of this game from start to finish. There are no developments, no warnings... hell there really isn't even an ending. This is one of those games that basically ends with a congratulations screen, your stats of the run, and then dumps you back to the main menu. There is literally NOTHING outside of that basic backdrop, and even that you will not hear or see in the game: You only even get this from the game's steam page.
4/10
Graphics: The word of the day for this game is "nostalgic." Everything about what you see on your screen is made to remind you of what gaming was during a simpler time when you likely played shooters with a basic goal of kill everything in front of you and full 3D worlds were only starting to be the norm. Sometimes you would play with friends, on a couch with your new N64, other times tearing through a campaign with your Pentium II and maybe one of the early 3D accelerator graphic cards out there if you were lucky.
True it does not recreate the limits a lot of games back then had, but it does get the feel absolutely perfectly. You will fly around in a first person maze made of a massive variety of rooms and corridors which in their own are clearly made of deformed cubes and textured with a limited selection of bitmaps to create the feel of the area you just entered. As basic as this sounds, the developers still were able to pour personality into each and every space as well as some pretty massive amounts of variety. You will be asked to explore several different biomes before your run is complete, and each one has it's own set of rooms and images giving each a distinct feel and vibe that lets each stand out on it's own. And yet the way it all comes together keeps it as one cohesive picture. If you ever played a Six-Degree-of-Freedom (6DoF) game from the era, you will feel at home just seeing these places.
And the same thing can be said for the enemies you fight. These carry a little more detail as they are generally ships without moving parts that fly around the maps with you. They look great, and there are genuinely a lot of different types the game will throw at you, but they all have that same old-school feel built from a lack of resources back in the day but somehow remain nostalgic for either gamers who lived through the era or newbies who just love that retro feel that has become so popular now.
Even your weapons carry the same feel as you will see blocky models sticking out of the bottom of your view showing you what you have equipped at that moment. They are not high resolution or detail, but carry the same look as the ships you fight like games of that era tended to do. It even keeps the same simple geometric explosions and primitive but still oh-so-cool looking lighting of things like a missile's engine or energy beams you (or others) are firing that screams late 90s sci-fi action games.
It all makes for a game that looks better then the era it's imitating since it clearly doesn't have to do things like worth with a low draw distance, frames, or resolution, but still keeping the feel alive perfectly.
9/10
Sound: And working with these visuals, the audioscape will enhance this quite perfectly. The music, for example, tends to take a sci-fi synth-tones, keeping a mysterious air about the places you will travel, picking up the pace when you run into things that want to kill you. Each biome you might find yourself in has it's own twists to this musical formula to match it's own vibe, but generally this is how each one will treat it. Nothing here is going to stay with you long after you finish playing though. But to be fair to this game, that was pretty par for the course of video-game music of that era (admittedly with few very iconic exceptions).
But the star here will be the sound effects which this game nails out of the park. Ambient noises from machines and computers on the wall will beep and bloop just enough to worry you: first that it's the sounds of a new enemy you have yet to meet, and then once you get to know them about what they might be covering up and you should be listening for. As for that side of things enemies groan, roar and putter around as they notice you before going really fighting back, giving you a good hint of what is waiting for you before you get there. And while I will talk about that more during gameplay, the sounds of this combat is absolutely fantastic. You will hear lasers zap round you, guns chatter, and some of the meatiest explosions I have heard in a long time as you fight against the devices left behind by whoever once owned the derelict locations offered to you. It's a glorious cacophony of high-tech chaos and you will absolutely love what it brings to the heat of battle.
Add to that a little bit of voice work (basically the computer of your ship announcing item pickups and specific damages you suffer) and you have a very solid sound scape while you lose your minds in the thick of it. True, it may not stand out for uniqueness, but will be incredibly satisfying in game while playing.
7/10
Gameplay: If you know Six Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) games, you already have a good idea of what you are walking into. If not, this is a first person game, but you are not simply walking around. Rather, you are piloting a ship which is not restricted by gravity: you can move up and down, left and right, and forward and backward at will. The direction you face is the forward for you, so you can maneuver at will, adding a whole new dimension to the combat in the game.
But that is not where the game will start you. Rather you will start in a green padded room with a terminal, a closed door, and a massive circular map in the center. This is the planning room of the Nightingale, your mothership and these bare devices each have a function. Before each mission you will be given the chance to review your ship, the upgrades you both have so far and are available as well as your current currency to buy said upgrades via that terminal to the side and while this is advisable for the most part it is optional.
What isn't optional is that map. It will show your path through the missions you have completed so far as well as a choice of two you can pick next.... at least until mission 9, but we will get to that later. Once you pick a mission, the door will open and you can enter the drop ship and begin the level you chose.
Once there you will find yourself with an objective based on what kind of mission you are. The most basic of these is collect. If you chose this type, it will mean you will have to collect X cubes of gold (usually 2 or 3) before you will be allowed to tell the dropship to leave, ending the mission. Do not worry about getting lost, as there is no time limit till you have to get back and the game is kind enough to provide you with a pulsing green line to guide you back once your objective has been met, leaving this to be the most casual of the three kind of missions you will be on.
Should you want to get a little more spicy, picking a meltdown mission will have you hunting switches instead of cubes, but this one might take a little bit of planning since once you hit the last one, you will trigger a countdown as the structure you are in is about to blow up. And finally if you want to go full intensity, you will want to take on an anomaly since that will have you finding X keys to open a portal to a boss you will have to destroy before that same countdown begins.
Once in the mission, anyone who has played Descent will feel instantly at home as the game mirrors it's playstyle pretty well. You will now be flying through the location opening secrets, blasting out grates and destroying all manner of security systems and defense robots left behind, and they all want to do nothing more then to make you yesterday's floating debris. Depending on your difficulty these enemies can be downright brutal, taxing your reflexes as they unleash literal barrages of missiles, lasers, and whatever else they have equipped on them, and it will be up to you to counter that with your own arsenal and potentially the geometry of the space around you... which brings me to the one point I have against how this game feels.
Now do not get me wrong, through all the chaos, it feels absolutely great when you're knee deep in the battle with missiles flying over your shoulder, shrapnel from boxes and enemies alike flying everywhere and all hell letting loose. If you are good enough, you can feel like a straight up god of dog fighting! But the game doesn't let you be the free-est to do so as your ship auto corrects your orientation for each room. Initially this might feel nice since it's harder to get lost when up remains up and down remains down for each location, but you will inevitably hit points in the game where you could have used that corner to get some extra rounds into the enemy you got to park itself just right if your ship wouldn't roll the way the game thinks you should be in that room. Compared to the freedom other games of this nature offer, this can be a bit jarring at times, but considering everything this game offers, it's a very small complaint, just something to be aware of if you are like me and will line up shots if given the opportunity. But to get back on track, these enemies can be very relentless so while on raids, you would be best to keep on your toes, especially as the game does tend to like to open monster closets or teleport enemies in place when you collect one of your objectives. And once you have completed them all, you are allowed to return to the Nightingale. Of course you can choose to explore further, but really you should get into the practice of doing all that before completing the last part due to two of the three mission types having a timemlimit to complete once the objectives are met.
Once you return to base, you will have any bonuses added to your score, any gear you found will be added to the terminal as upgrades you can buy with said score, and you will pick to start again. Completing eight such rounds will grant you access to the final level: the galactic vaults themselves. Here you will face a single much harder level ending with a boss batt against one final anomaly and finish the game. But this is a rouge-like game designed to ideally be played in one sitting... if a long sitting. A successful run can take you 3-4 hours if you spend your time to explore the entire levels. Although they did add a save later if you need it, but this review comes from making entire runs in one sitting.
Which I still recommend because one run will not show you everything. It took me 3 with two completed runs till the game really stopped showing me new enemy variations and a 4th to be pretty sure I had seen all the biomes in the game. Even then I am still not sure I've seen every boss the game offers or even every map configuration since each level is generated before you start.
Nor do you have to take it on alone! If you have friends who play, your game is drop-in for them. You can adjust this to either require you to invite or be open to everyone playing, but the default is friend see you... but don't expect a full game if you make it public. This is one of those games no one is playing so if you want some co-op action you are likely going to need to bring your own team. Just be aware I can not speak for this option as my experience was such that I didn't even realize the game was always online: I simply saw no one else play nor could I find a list of active players who's games were public.
Overall though, I definitely had a blast playing it and could see myself coming back down the road to give that multiplayer part a try.
8/10
Bugs: Once again, we have another game that absolutely ran perfectly. Literally when my only complaint was I was unable to find a list of credits to roll (as per my streaming tradition) when I got through my first successful run, you KNOW this game runs well. Now unfortunately I have not been able to play multiplayer, so I can not speak for how well that works, but what I saw was the game running absolutely flawless.
Digital Rights Management: Unfortunately this is a game that uses Steam as it's DRM, if for reasons of it's core design. In essence this is an always online game. It relies on Steam's matchmaking services, letting your friends log into your game if they see you are online. You can adjust this to be visible to all players or none, but it does mean the game is relying on Steam itself to run by it's very design.
Source: PC Gaming Wiki
Score: For a rouge-like this is a fairly long game with a single successful run taking at least an hour and half to two hours to complete. If you take your time like I did, it could get to 3-4 hours easily. Add to that mix a game you will have to play a few times to see most of what it will throw at you and this is actually a fairly packed little game. And make no mistake, this is for a small indie game as it goes for $15 without a sale. This is not going to be a huge game or your next obsession, but one of those nice well made and thoroughly fun games to pick up and play either with friends or for a few go-around between the big titles you want to get to. If you like the game type you probably should pick it up, enjoy it, and even come back to visit once in a while.
8/10
System Requirements:
- Intel Core i3
- 4 GB RAM
- Geforce GT 440 or Radeon HD 4890
- Windows 7
- 1 GB Hard Drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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