This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
Science fiction is such a hard genre to review due to its potential. You’ve had so many works since Lucian that have gone above and beyond conventional pulp that a number of authors these days are desperate to achieve similar results: to be crowned the next 2001 or Solaris. The problem is they often circumvent the basic fundamentals of storytelling, opting for obscurity in place of mystery, and a finale that mistakes shockers for shocking awe.
What exactly do I mean by these two? With the first, hiding pertinent information about your setting is the key to giving it life as lore is built from not fully understanding the machinations underlying your world. Unfortunately, hacks or misguided creators often take this as an excuse to be vague or indescriptive of common sense narrative blocks that explain character motivations and actions. With the second, writers crave leaving a lasting impression- to make audiences think about their work long after it has ended. And to do this, they risk indulging in some grand spectacle or revelation that’s so poorly thought-out or executed, it ends up being confusing to the point of frustration.
It goes without saying that the reason I’m starting off this review on such a tangent is because Observation is another one of those sci-fi failures. A tale that seeks to impress itself on the minds of prospective gamers, only to falter in simple facets that render it not worth playing. Those simple facets are not just restricted to the plot (of which there will be plenty of criticism), but the gameplay. The premise is you’re an AI named SAM on-board a space station helping one of its scientists uncover what has befallen the rest of her crew. An unknown event has knocked the vessel out of Earth orbit, and you’ve got to piece together the past to get to the bottom of things.
Sound interesting? Well, don’t get your hopes up as you’ll be experiencing the majority of it inhibiting the station’s cameras, hacking from afar like you’re some rogue camcorder. You may ask, well Red, what difference does the platform make - isn’t solving puzzles the important part? You’re right, but here’s the thing: this “platform” moves PAINFULLY slow. Scanning a room means panning and zooming to view all vulnerable media, and the geniuses at developer No Code thought reducing the movement speed to a crawl would….you know, I can’t even think of a logical reason why they would do this. Maybe it was to artificially elongate the game as 30-45 minutes could’ve easily been knocked off the runtime if they had sped this facet up, and I wish I was exaggerating. But no, there’s no option in the menu for adjusting sensitivity (nor one for swapping the joystick controls should you want to as I did). Periodically there are sections (particularly in the second half) that feature SAM transferring his consciousness to a spherical drone, which thankfully glides at a reasonable velocity, but it doesn’t make-up for those other segments and comes with its own set of issues (more on that below).
Do the puzzles at least make this bearable? The answer is no, no, and NO. The “puzzles” in this game are so stupidly easy I swear I’ve struggled more with children’s jigsaws. Enjoy playing Simon Says? How about whack-a-mole? Or just holding down buttons? If the response to any of those is yes, then you’ll find plenty of enjoyment here because those are the limits of No Code’s imagination. These things are not so much riddles as IKEA instructions printed in size 30 font. Members of the Alien: Isolation team were reportedly a part of the production process here, and it’s sad that that game had more challenging minigames to resolve considering they weren’t even the focus.
But, you enquire, isn’t the story the main appeal for Observation over the gameplay? Well, if it is, let me explain why it’ll fail to move you. Observation is based on a premise we’ve seen time and time again- a normal (or seemingly normal) person arriving at a location to find it deserted and something eerie in the air. It’s a formula that works beautifully for thrillers and horror titles, and Observation certainly leans into those tropes (when it isn’t boring you with its puzzles).
The problem, from the get-go, is two-fold. One, the people act like idiots(+), and two, you’re primarily tasked with doing mundane stuff in order to get the ship up-and-running. The latter, of course, makes rational sense from the perspective of the characters; however, as a player, it kills the pacing. There are other games that have featured similar storytelling beginnings, but they generally have some form of action to occupy the “empty space” between big narrative progressions. All Observation has is simple puzzles made aggravating by sluggish movement, so you can hopefully get an idea as to why it drops the ball where others succeed.
In the second half, major developments start to manifest; however, they’re quickly killed by those aforementioned two issues, as well an additional one: curveball upon curveball without bread crumbs (++). Plot twists are a hit-or-miss tactic because they require enough clues laid beforehand to make the surprise natural, and too often you catch writers so interested in being the smartest person in the room, they toss in some nonsense without it holding water. Observation does provide some explanations (after the fact, but better than nothing), yet others are tossed without warrant, the writers wanting it to be up for “interpretation”. I don’t want to be libelous, but it comes off as pretentious, especially when no concerted effort was put into making the gameplay fun up to this point.
It also pertains to what I was saying earlier in the introduction about creative minds being too vested in getting to that bombshell of a denouement that they forget they’re supposed to be telling a story. It’s like they want to shoot straight to the floating baby instead of first depicting the turn of HAL. How many pieces of fictional media do you think would’ve been better if they had been more small-scale instead of pseudo-macro?
I’m not going to lie to you guys: part of the reason I’m so critical is because I had been given the wrong idea about Observation. I must’ve misread the synopsis as I thought it was about an AI waking up from hibernation and discovering all its shipmates dead. You would then have to go room-to-room, solving puzzles to unearth hints that compiled together into a ghastly truth; I guess basically a space horror version of Return of the Obra Dinn. I’m not saying the concept here was bad or inferior, but surely you’d agree that mine sounds, at least, a little more invigorating? Regardless, it was disappointing that the actual plot didn’t live up to even its own premise.
It’s a shame because a lot of effort was put into the graphics. The eponymous space station borrows heavily from prior sci-fi works, from the Discover One and Nostromo to even the Tantive IV, but manages to be foreboding in its own right courtesy of cramped interiors packed with paraphernalia, from crew belongings to system interfaces to astronaut gear. None of the rooms are particularly personalized per a member, and the overall structure isn’t visually distinct like its predecessors, but I wouldn’t be truthful if I said it lacked atmosphere, which is all you ultimately want from a claustrophobic environment.
Human models are mostly good. The animations (particularly as they relate to zero-gravity) are well-done, and no one looks out-of-proportion. However, there was something off about the eyes or eyelids that gave them (especially protagonist Emma Fisher) a sleepy gaze that was at odds with their personalities.
Some nice touches were done with the physics engine as it relates to the drone in weightlessness: colliding with a floating object sends it bolting per Newton’s First Law and flight feels more like propulsion than gliding. Really, the biggest downside with the graphics comes with a problem I alluded to before with the droid, which is the implementation of too much realism. Video games have to walk a fine line in this department because something that would actually occur in a real-life situation ends up infringing on the fun factor in its digital counterpart. When you’re operating CCTVs or the mini-bot, you get a lot of screen cracking, static interference, and other kinds of temporary technical issues that, yes, are authentic to these devices; yet having it constantly go-off can’t help but be a bit headache-inducing. Dialing it back would’ve done much for my eyeballs at least.
The sound work is impeccable. I don’t believe I’ve ever played a game that so masterfully combined music and SFX into one cohesive vision as, with the exception of the epilogue, you honestly can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. The ship hums a tune amidst its innerworkings, and the mysterious entity eclipsing you is a symbiotic sonar of alien and machine alike. The end result manages to be both creepy and entrancing at the same time.
Lastly, voice work is solid, with leads Kezia Burrows and Anthony Howell more than living up to the spotlight. My only qualm here was the shortness of dialogue for SAM. I get that it’s meant to be a nonliving AGI, but he remains silent even when basic responses or acknowledgements would have been more than warranted.
Regardless, all this technical effort is for naught as I can’t recommend Observation. It fundamentally fails at giving a compelling story and gameplay, the two critical bastions of any video game. While I recognize I’m not a fan of titles that indulge in ultra-philosophical climaxes, I can’t see the gameplay appealing to anyone.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
+SAM flat-out tells Fisher that he’s the one who hyper-jumped the Observation to Saturn, and she just brushes him off as though he’s a silly child. It’s like what? You’re being told by a calculating computer an objective truth, and you process it as a malfunction? Later on, one of her fellow cosmonauts goes out on a stand-up EVA without bothering to first check if the space weather is solid. Then later, you have Jim, in his destruction of SAM’s processor, failing to realize that an AI can move through the dang network, even as it’s constantly reappropriating new drones.
+The presence of a clone ship, the presence of clones, Jim’s betrayal, the weird happenings going on with the crew, the messages SAM receives, Fisher surviving being trapped in space with a broken helmet, the black goop, the freakin ending with other humanoids, and of course the last scene wherein a singularity has occurred.
Look, there are optional data files you can collect throughout that give an idea as to what is going on, but the execution is still so sloppy as new turn upon new turn is tossed ad nauseam at you. And it makes things more frustrating than anything.
Science fiction is such a hard genre to review due to its potential. You’ve had so many works since Lucian that have gone above and beyond conventional pulp that a number of authors these days are desperate to achieve similar results: to be crowned the next 2001 or Solaris. The problem is they often circumvent the basic fundamentals of storytelling, opting for obscurity in place of mystery, and a finale that mistakes shockers for shocking awe.
What exactly do I mean by these two? With the first, hiding pertinent information about your setting is the key to giving it life as lore is built from not fully understanding the machinations underlying your world. Unfortunately, hacks or misguided creators often take this as an excuse to be vague or indescriptive of common sense narrative blocks that explain character motivations and actions. With the second, writers crave leaving a lasting impression- to make audiences think about their work long after it has ended. And to do this, they risk indulging in some grand spectacle or revelation that’s so poorly thought-out or executed, it ends up being confusing to the point of frustration.
It goes without saying that the reason I’m starting off this review on such a tangent is because Observation is another one of those sci-fi failures. A tale that seeks to impress itself on the minds of prospective gamers, only to falter in simple facets that render it not worth playing. Those simple facets are not just restricted to the plot (of which there will be plenty of criticism), but the gameplay. The premise is you’re an AI named SAM on-board a space station helping one of its scientists uncover what has befallen the rest of her crew. An unknown event has knocked the vessel out of Earth orbit, and you’ve got to piece together the past to get to the bottom of things.
Sound interesting? Well, don’t get your hopes up as you’ll be experiencing the majority of it inhibiting the station’s cameras, hacking from afar like you’re some rogue camcorder. You may ask, well Red, what difference does the platform make - isn’t solving puzzles the important part? You’re right, but here’s the thing: this “platform” moves PAINFULLY slow. Scanning a room means panning and zooming to view all vulnerable media, and the geniuses at developer No Code thought reducing the movement speed to a crawl would….you know, I can’t even think of a logical reason why they would do this. Maybe it was to artificially elongate the game as 30-45 minutes could’ve easily been knocked off the runtime if they had sped this facet up, and I wish I was exaggerating. But no, there’s no option in the menu for adjusting sensitivity (nor one for swapping the joystick controls should you want to as I did). Periodically there are sections (particularly in the second half) that feature SAM transferring his consciousness to a spherical drone, which thankfully glides at a reasonable velocity, but it doesn’t make-up for those other segments and comes with its own set of issues (more on that below).
Do the puzzles at least make this bearable? The answer is no, no, and NO. The “puzzles” in this game are so stupidly easy I swear I’ve struggled more with children’s jigsaws. Enjoy playing Simon Says? How about whack-a-mole? Or just holding down buttons? If the response to any of those is yes, then you’ll find plenty of enjoyment here because those are the limits of No Code’s imagination. These things are not so much riddles as IKEA instructions printed in size 30 font. Members of the Alien: Isolation team were reportedly a part of the production process here, and it’s sad that that game had more challenging minigames to resolve considering they weren’t even the focus.
But, you enquire, isn’t the story the main appeal for Observation over the gameplay? Well, if it is, let me explain why it’ll fail to move you. Observation is based on a premise we’ve seen time and time again- a normal (or seemingly normal) person arriving at a location to find it deserted and something eerie in the air. It’s a formula that works beautifully for thrillers and horror titles, and Observation certainly leans into those tropes (when it isn’t boring you with its puzzles).
The problem, from the get-go, is two-fold. One, the people act like idiots(+), and two, you’re primarily tasked with doing mundane stuff in order to get the ship up-and-running. The latter, of course, makes rational sense from the perspective of the characters; however, as a player, it kills the pacing. There are other games that have featured similar storytelling beginnings, but they generally have some form of action to occupy the “empty space” between big narrative progressions. All Observation has is simple puzzles made aggravating by sluggish movement, so you can hopefully get an idea as to why it drops the ball where others succeed.
In the second half, major developments start to manifest; however, they’re quickly killed by those aforementioned two issues, as well an additional one: curveball upon curveball without bread crumbs (++). Plot twists are a hit-or-miss tactic because they require enough clues laid beforehand to make the surprise natural, and too often you catch writers so interested in being the smartest person in the room, they toss in some nonsense without it holding water. Observation does provide some explanations (after the fact, but better than nothing), yet others are tossed without warrant, the writers wanting it to be up for “interpretation”. I don’t want to be libelous, but it comes off as pretentious, especially when no concerted effort was put into making the gameplay fun up to this point.
It also pertains to what I was saying earlier in the introduction about creative minds being too vested in getting to that bombshell of a denouement that they forget they’re supposed to be telling a story. It’s like they want to shoot straight to the floating baby instead of first depicting the turn of HAL. How many pieces of fictional media do you think would’ve been better if they had been more small-scale instead of pseudo-macro?
I’m not going to lie to you guys: part of the reason I’m so critical is because I had been given the wrong idea about Observation. I must’ve misread the synopsis as I thought it was about an AI waking up from hibernation and discovering all its shipmates dead. You would then have to go room-to-room, solving puzzles to unearth hints that compiled together into a ghastly truth; I guess basically a space horror version of Return of the Obra Dinn. I’m not saying the concept here was bad or inferior, but surely you’d agree that mine sounds, at least, a little more invigorating? Regardless, it was disappointing that the actual plot didn’t live up to even its own premise.
It’s a shame because a lot of effort was put into the graphics. The eponymous space station borrows heavily from prior sci-fi works, from the Discover One and Nostromo to even the Tantive IV, but manages to be foreboding in its own right courtesy of cramped interiors packed with paraphernalia, from crew belongings to system interfaces to astronaut gear. None of the rooms are particularly personalized per a member, and the overall structure isn’t visually distinct like its predecessors, but I wouldn’t be truthful if I said it lacked atmosphere, which is all you ultimately want from a claustrophobic environment.
Human models are mostly good. The animations (particularly as they relate to zero-gravity) are well-done, and no one looks out-of-proportion. However, there was something off about the eyes or eyelids that gave them (especially protagonist Emma Fisher) a sleepy gaze that was at odds with their personalities.
Some nice touches were done with the physics engine as it relates to the drone in weightlessness: colliding with a floating object sends it bolting per Newton’s First Law and flight feels more like propulsion than gliding. Really, the biggest downside with the graphics comes with a problem I alluded to before with the droid, which is the implementation of too much realism. Video games have to walk a fine line in this department because something that would actually occur in a real-life situation ends up infringing on the fun factor in its digital counterpart. When you’re operating CCTVs or the mini-bot, you get a lot of screen cracking, static interference, and other kinds of temporary technical issues that, yes, are authentic to these devices; yet having it constantly go-off can’t help but be a bit headache-inducing. Dialing it back would’ve done much for my eyeballs at least.
The sound work is impeccable. I don’t believe I’ve ever played a game that so masterfully combined music and SFX into one cohesive vision as, with the exception of the epilogue, you honestly can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. The ship hums a tune amidst its innerworkings, and the mysterious entity eclipsing you is a symbiotic sonar of alien and machine alike. The end result manages to be both creepy and entrancing at the same time.
Lastly, voice work is solid, with leads Kezia Burrows and Anthony Howell more than living up to the spotlight. My only qualm here was the shortness of dialogue for SAM. I get that it’s meant to be a nonliving AGI, but he remains silent even when basic responses or acknowledgements would have been more than warranted.
Regardless, all this technical effort is for naught as I can’t recommend Observation. It fundamentally fails at giving a compelling story and gameplay, the two critical bastions of any video game. While I recognize I’m not a fan of titles that indulge in ultra-philosophical climaxes, I can’t see the gameplay appealing to anyone.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
+SAM flat-out tells Fisher that he’s the one who hyper-jumped the Observation to Saturn, and she just brushes him off as though he’s a silly child. It’s like what? You’re being told by a calculating computer an objective truth, and you process it as a malfunction? Later on, one of her fellow cosmonauts goes out on a stand-up EVA without bothering to first check if the space weather is solid. Then later, you have Jim, in his destruction of SAM’s processor, failing to realize that an AI can move through the dang network, even as it’s constantly reappropriating new drones.
+The presence of a clone ship, the presence of clones, Jim’s betrayal, the weird happenings going on with the crew, the messages SAM receives, Fisher surviving being trapped in space with a broken helmet, the black goop, the freakin ending with other humanoids, and of course the last scene wherein a singularity has occurred.
Look, there are optional data files you can collect throughout that give an idea as to what is going on, but the execution is still so sloppy as new turn upon new turn is tossed ad nauseam at you. And it makes things more frustrating than anything.