BF2S Forums The "All Other Games" Chat Thread

RTHKI wrote:

https://youtu.be/ThYFM-dWlco

tl;dr wrote:

visuals: 8/10, interesting unobtrusive use of RTX (almost not even worth mention which is a level of subtle where I think ray tracing really shines) but my other settings held me back.
audio: [x] muffled or muted depending on environment, audible again when repressurized.
music: 7/10, fitting but forgettable.
story: 3/10, one I wanted to follow but told by faceless characters who may as well have been nameless. big plot holes could preclude most of these events if plugged.
gameplay: 4/10, does not respect your time.
value: 7/10, $15 sale, ~10 hrs to complete: 1 hour wowed, 3 engaged, many more stuck or searching every nook and cranny.

Best Pro: Game kept me interested enough that I saw it through in a sitting.
Worst Con: Tries to tell a story without introducing any of the characters.

Why Buy: Sale currently, worth trying if you're into the genre. Not a whole lot of astronaut games out there compared to zombie/survival/etc., and fewer astronaut games still without cosmic horror or cartoonish elements.
Why Skip: Story game with a weakish outcome, told by characters you don't get to see the faces of, about even more characters whose motivations are never unraveled.

Flushable Space Toilets: [x]

• seems to take many liberties with zero- and low-grav physics; inconsistently interactable objects/props.
• space tease, incomplete environments. most of your game will take place indoors. very little time spent moonwalking or in rovers.
• game's death timers are remarkably varied. sometimes you have a clock, sometimes you don't. if you don't, it will still urge you to pick up the pace while you're filling out a completionist checklist. don't have hidden items then?
• game assume player starts with PC's knowledge of the 10+ step sequence to launch a space shuttle. luckily I took a screenshot of the manual back at the starting point.
• mazy with no navigational aid. again, the PC would have prepped for this, not necessarily a player with no prior knowledge of a specific fictional lunar complex.
• mute PC protag whose name I didn't even catch until the end, who seemed to hold an unexplained connection to some of the missing astronauts they were investigating.
• ambiguous puzzles and challenge change-ups can sometimes keep you in an area for longer than strictly tolerable (re: does not respect your time). obstacle feature throwing elements at you out of nowhere, and failing to do a very good job at some of them resulting in a few load screens back to a close but still irritatingly tedious checkpoint. 3d platforming on a control scheme I cannot change is super-yuck.
• cannot reassign controls but there are still quicktime events I had to do with keys I don't use often for games.
• unskippable cutscene upon opening the game. have to restart to enable directx 12 to enable ray tracing, forcing you to watch it again. might have to watch a third time if you close out before beating it.
• unrewarding conclusion that doesn't explain much, followed by basic credits, followed by a short epilogue that doesn't add much, tricking you into waiting through the long credits (including all the kickstarter supporters) in case there's anything more after those. there isn't.

RabidRetrospectGames wrote:

no commentary playthrough

Last edited by RTHKI (2021-03-26 13:14:12)