Dark Matter is a 2.5D side-scrolling survival horror game, set in a derelict spaceship besieged by a sinister alien presence, and infested with deadly parasites. As the Ensign, you must explore fetid hallways and abandoned facilities, scavenging for parts and blueprints, expanding your arsenal to up to four deadly weapons and freely customize each to fit your combat style against intelligent, reactive enemies. Dark Matter delivers a hard-hitting take on the survival horror genre in deep space, with a heavy emphasis on tactical combat and exploration.
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EDIT -- Guess I'm already done. Went back to play it some more, accidentally started a new game, skipped the tutorial so I could quit back to the main menu, only to find out it didn't take my manual save I made from the previous game and the only autosave now was the one that it created at 0 hours and 0 minutes in the first room of the game. WHAT A GEM!
Original review follows below.
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Oof, this game seems to be a mess. Metroidvania that's VERY light on the exploration and VERY heavy on the bugs (both as monsters and as issues with the game).
Take these impressions with a grain of salt, as I'm only an hour into the game and have just reached the Process Control area (for the record, Global Steam Achievements suggest less than 4% of people even get this far into the game).
Things I've encountered so far:
1) Controls are a VERY mixed bag. Using a DS4 and although the tutorial tells you to keep an eye on contextual prompts for things you can interact with, the control system only displays on-screen prompts properly (or as properly as they can when it assumes you have a 360 controller) during the tutorial. After the tutorial, all interactions will tell you to right-click, left-click, or whatever. A bit lazy, but I won't hold it against them.
2) There's these boxes you can shoot with your gun to get resources. You want these resources. Fun fact: the first time you shoot at one of these boxes (it takes several shots with the basic pistol to break one), the AI warns you to not waste your ammo on the boxes because you need to conserve it for enemies (despite having infinite ammo in your pistol). By the time you find out that you NEED to break some of these boxes, you're already a couple areas into the game and the backtrack doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Speaking of backtracking...
3) If you decide to backtrack, enemies MIGHT show up, but save points don't seem to work anymore in areas you already left. Why? Who knows?
4) When you reach your first elevator, you're in for a treat if you're using a controller because when you walk in, you interact with the elevator...and nothing happens. I thought maybe something was wrong and climbed up on top of the elevator to check out the area up there. After getting partially stuck in a wall a couple times, I jumped back down and noticed that when my character hit the ground in the elevator, she'd duck down slightly and there was a second interactive prompt. YOU HAVE TO CROUCH IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE THE BUTTON TO GO DOWN A FLOOR WHEN YOU'RE IN AN ELEVATOR.
4) Nevermind the text errors in the logs you discover on the way through the ship, the real gem is finding random code notes that will show up if you're running and aiming at the same time. One of them comes and goes too fast for me to read but in most rooms (at least in the Security and Maintenance areas), you can see one pop up a lot that's listed as "pre-camera_trigger" or something to that effect. Always a fun time when you can see flags for code just hanging out in your game.
5) They tell you to keep your light / surrounding lights off to avoid enraging the bugs/monsters/whatever. When a bug is enraged, it'll jump through the air toward you and likely hit you. Fun fact: they'll do this with the lights off and only really care if you're within a certain range of them. This includes LEAPING AT YOU FROM OFF-SCREEN. Definitely had one of those purple jankfests yeet itself through the area into my face while I had all lights off just because it was apparently the life goal of this thing to make out with my character (and apparently have no hitbox briefly so the shotgun wouldn't hurt it).
But yeah, I'm only an hour in, so this game's surely going to get better...right?!
Original review follows below.
-------------------------------------
Oof, this game seems to be a mess. Metroidvania that's VERY light on the exploration and VERY heavy on the bugs (both as monsters and as issues with the game).
Take these impressions with a grain of salt, as I'm only an hour into the game and have just reached the Process Control area (for the record, Global Steam Achievements suggest less than 4% of people even get this far into the game).
Things I've encountered so far:
1) Controls are a VERY mixed bag. Using a DS4 and although the tutorial tells you to keep an eye on contextual prompts for things you can interact with, the control system only displays on-screen prompts properly (or as properly as they can when it assumes you have a 360 controller) during the tutorial. After the tutorial, all interactions will tell you to right-click, left-click, or whatever. A bit lazy, but I won't hold it against them.
2) There's these boxes you can shoot with your gun to get resources. You want these resources. Fun fact: the first time you shoot at one of these boxes (it takes several shots with the basic pistol to break one), the AI warns you to not waste your ammo on the boxes because you need to conserve it for enemies (despite having infinite ammo in your pistol). By the time you find out that you NEED to break some of these boxes, you're already a couple areas into the game and the backtrack doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Speaking of backtracking...
3) If you decide to backtrack, enemies MIGHT show up, but save points don't seem to work anymore in areas you already left. Why? Who knows?
4) When you reach your first elevator, you're in for a treat if you're using a controller because when you walk in, you interact with the elevator...and nothing happens. I thought maybe something was wrong and climbed up on top of the elevator to check out the area up there. After getting partially stuck in a wall a couple times, I jumped back down and noticed that when my character hit the ground in the elevator, she'd duck down slightly and there was a second interactive prompt. YOU HAVE TO CROUCH IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE THE BUTTON TO GO DOWN A FLOOR WHEN YOU'RE IN AN ELEVATOR.
4) Nevermind the text errors in the logs you discover on the way through the ship, the real gem is finding random code notes that will show up if you're running and aiming at the same time. One of them comes and goes too fast for me to read but in most rooms (at least in the Security and Maintenance areas), you can see one pop up a lot that's listed as "pre-camera_trigger" or something to that effect. Always a fun time when you can see flags for code just hanging out in your game.
5) They tell you to keep your light / surrounding lights off to avoid enraging the bugs/monsters/whatever. When a bug is enraged, it'll jump through the air toward you and likely hit you. Fun fact: they'll do this with the lights off and only really care if you're within a certain range of them. This includes LEAPING AT YOU FROM OFF-SCREEN. Definitely had one of those purple jankfests yeet itself through the area into my face while I had all lights off just because it was apparently the life goal of this thing to make out with my character (and apparently have no hitbox briefly so the shotgun wouldn't hurt it).
But yeah, I'm only an hour in, so this game's surely going to get better...right?!