djyunghoxha
2015
SOMA is a fantastic horror story with a mediocre horror game grafted onto it. The fact that it’s still regarded as one of the best games in the genre has everything to do with its exceptionally strong narrative, and nothing with its mind-numbing gameplay.
7 / 10
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Horror is a delicate subject. Not only is it perhaps the most primal and subjective emotion a person can feel, it more often than not acts like a mirror to yourself. What or what you may not find scary says a lot about you - like it or not. There are innumerable ways to go about eliciting horror, and the fact that it exists in just about any medium imaginable speaks to our collective desire of learning more about ourselves - be it on a species-wide, national, cultural or just purely personal level.
Horror games especially have always been a very popular point of discussion. Personally, I always found movies to be scarier than games, on average at least. Most of that comes down to the fact that dying and having to start a section over typically takes the wind out of the sails of just about any game that isn’t called Silent Hill. The highly curated nature of films, and uncertainty of whether or not the main character will be here the next second will always trump the knowledge that, whatever happens to me next, I’ll be fine. That isn’t to say I haven’t been thoroughly terrified by games, by the way. PT still gives me actual anxiety whenever I think about it.
But horror isn’t just about the immediate experiential side of whatever you’re watching/playing/reading. At least for me, more often than not, it’s the themes and topics that stick with you after the credits roll, and after the PC or console is turned off. The imagery and story aspects that linger on in the back of your mind even after you haven’t touched the game in months. Of course there will always be people that will do everything in their power to not be scared by horror media, for whatever reason they may have. Maybe they want to prove to themselves or others how tough and rational they are, and that nothing ever scares them. But even those people ARE afraid of things, and even if it doesn’t come up in the immediate moment of playing or watching something, it will come up eventually.
In my opinion, there are few - if any - games out there that show this off as perfectly as SOMA.
SOMA is, in my opinion, not a scary game. Not once did I ever feel threatened, tense, anxious or even just mildly spooked during the runtime of the actual game. And yet, when I think about its story, I can’t help but shudder at its implications, and when I remember its ending, it makes me realise that perhaps no piece of fiction I’ve ever consumed quite touched on just how fundamentally bleak this story’s outcome is. This game truly is equally as much of a blazing triumph with its story and themes, as well as a mind-boggling failure, gameplay wise.
The average horror game puts all on its chips squarely on the second to second gameplay. Be it Resident Evil’s focus on surviving being trapped somewhere with nothing but barely-killable zombies keeping you company, Silent Hill’s spiralling levels that drag you deeper and deeper into hell, Outlast’s obnoxious tendency of barraging you with jump-scares, and even Frictional Games’ other, seminal horror-series Amnesia, which popularised the now widely utilised “No fighting, only hiding” type of gameplay.
I bounced off Amnesia pretty hard when I played it back in 2018 or so. Apart from the frankly irritating puzzles that completely obliterated the barely existent pacing here, I find hide-and-seek mechanics to be fundamentally opposed to the experience I’m looking for. More often than not having to repeat a certain section because I failed to recognise a single glance from the enemy, or getting impatient while having to wait for the enemy to finally look the right way, so I’m allowed to progress quickly turns whatever little in the way of tension I may have felt into pure tedium. To me, this isn’t scary, it’s exhausting.
SOMA is, as far as gameplay goes, sadly not all that different. The general gameplay-loop here is mind-numbingly boring. Around 90% of its gameplay consists of you aimlessly wandering around with minimal instruction until you find some banal puzzle to do. And I’m not gonna sugar coat it, sometimes they are so bad I genuinely wonder how on earth Frictional Games were comfortable with putting them in the game. From the top of my mind, I can only think of a single puzzle that actually demanded you think about the solution in a manner that didn’t simply require whatever obvious solution could be found in the immediate vicinity, and if you’ve played the game, you know which one I’m talking about.
What’s even worse, and by far the weakest part of the game is the aforementioned Amnesia-like stealth horror, in which you are completely defenceless against whichever deadly abomination may roam the area. Apart from restricting the player to one single option they have to abide by for every single encounter in the game being a highly questionable design choice to begin with, SOMA’s enemies simply aren’t scary or threatening. And this isn’t even just my opinion about their design - I am saying, they literally do not pose a threat, gameplay wise. There were only 2 instances where I died in this game. First, simply trying to fuck around with the AI of a single enemy because I found it hilarious how easy it was to confuse them, and second during a mid-game encounter where I simply didn’t fully understand how exactly the enemy could see me.
What’s worse than how trivial and unnecessary these encounters feel is the sheer quantity of them. The game relies on them way too much, and they absolutely kill the pacing of the game’s story whenever they happen.
So far all of this has been fairly negative, and not without good reason. As far as this being a horror GAME goes, it’s a disastrous failure as far as I’m concerned, and one of the worst I’ve ever finished. There is exceedingly little I’m willing to give this game as far as it’s actual second-to-second gaming experience goes.
That is, unless we’re considering story as part of the gameplay. You may be asking yourself; “Djyunghoxha, how come you even finished the game if you hated it so much?” Because of this game’s story, that’s why.
SOMA’s story is, in many ways, exceptional. It is the exception to this game’s general experience of tedium and boredom. It is the exception to horror games often featuring some of the worst stories, acting and writing you could imagine. It is the exception in so far that the TRUE horror of SOMA comes not from its gameplay, but its story implications.
[MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE ON OUT].
[I will not go into every single detail concerning the story, but I will talk about the beginning and ending in detail, and some other story aspects that are best experienced first hand.]
I’ve talked around SOMA’s story a lot by this point, but now we should get into why I still regard this game as one of the better ones I’ve played in the genre. Let’s begin with the set up.
SOMA’s story begins with a dream sequence. The player character, Simon, is in the driver’s seat, having a conversation with his girlfriend / friend (it’s not really clear tbh) Ashley. Ashley comments that Simon’s head is bleeding, to which he replies that it’s just from “the accident”. She hands him a liquid, to which he replies that he needs it later for the scan. Simon wants to tell Ashley something which seemingly weirds her out, but in this very moment, his phone rings. “Why is there never enough time?” Simon asks before suddenly crashing his car and waking up.
The phone has been ringing IRL, not just in his dream. On the other end of the line is one Dr. Munshi, reminding Simon to drink a tracer fluid for his brain scan later today. Why does he need a brain scan?
We learn that the car crash that Simon just dreamt of actually happened. In this crash, Ashley, who was in the seat next to him, died immediately, while Simon sustained a grievous head injury which resulted in permanent brain damage, giving him only a few more months to live. It also causes his forehead to bleed profusely. Already, the imagery of the dream we just witnessed becomes clear. Simon is blaming himself for what happened.
Still, we don’t really understand the purpose of the brain scan just yet, but we will. For now, the game takes us on a little journey from a cozy but slightly off apartment building in Toronto, to an eerily quiet subway ride, to a seemingly-abandoned doctor’s office. During the subway ride, Jesse, a friend a coworker at the book store we work at, calls us to wish us good luck with the scan and hopes we can “reverse the whole dying thing”. They both also briefly talk about Ashley, and how her old position has been filled in. The casual manner in which both talk about both Ashley’s and your approaching death struck me as a little odd, and I’m wondering whether there’s a story detail I’m missing. But more on that later.
Arriving at Dr. Munshi’s “office”, we are met with a completely empty doctor’s office. You’d be forgiven in thinking that this is where things go awry. The tone here is a little strange. Dr. Munshi now explains to us what he’s trying to do: Simon’s brain is to be scanned, rebuilt in a computer simulation and then bombarded with stimuli. The idea is to come up with a mode of brain reconstruction that doesn’t involve potentially invasive and harmful procedures, specifically for people like Simon, who are about to die from brain damage. According to Munshi, this could potentially extend Simon’s life for decades, if it works out.
Simon sits down in a chair with a big brain scanner on top. “Will this hurt?” He asks. “Only about as much as having your picture taken.” Munshi replies. Simon then retorts that “[Native Americans thought that cameras would steal their souls”, not understanding the sheer weight of this quote. The brain scanner goes over our eyes. An electrical noise is heard. Everything goes black.
We wake up in a cold, harsh and mechanical place. Dr. Munshi is gone. Everything is dark. What happened? Simon is afraid. Turning on the light, we see metal walls, complex electronics that seem too advanced for our time period and a bunch of weird suits. Immediately, we assume that Dr. Munshi fucked us over, that he must’ve tricked us. This is a horror game after all. Maybe Dr. Munshi is secretly an evil genius who wants to experiment on us? Or alternatively, maybe this IS Dr. Munshi’s treatment plan? Maybe this is all a simulation? It feels too real though. Like, something’s not how it’s supposed to be.
This is where the actual game begins, and I have to compliment the game for how well this gets set up. Knowing this is a horror game, most people will probably have mistrusted everything from the get go. Maybe even the apartment seems kinda weird when you think about it. And yet, this moment still hits extremely surprisingly. You feel the exact same way Simon does. Confused. Alone.
Walking around the place, we slowly put together that we’re trapped in some sort of research facility called “Pathos-II”, and that this research facility lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. More specifically, we’re currently in Station “Upsilon” of Pathos-II. While walking about the early areas, we catch a small glimpse of the types of creatures we’ll encounter here, although we can only hear it for now. We also discover that we can somehow see the memories of other people before us. There are numerous locked doors everywhere. Everything seems to be covered in some black, blood-like goo called “structure gel”.
It’s easy to understand why you would think that, since SOMA very clearly sets this up to be a red herring. This is not a game with a happy ending. This is not a power fantasy.
Simon then meets a robot. Only - that robot doesn’t think of it as a robot. In fact, he is extremely adamant that he is a person. He insists that his name is Carl Semken, that he is hurt and needs assistance, to which Simon incredulously replies that he doesn’t see a human, but a machine. But he won’t hear it, no matter how many times we insist that he’s not actually human. And this is where I come back to SOMA’s story and themes being many times more terrifying and scary than any of the monsters/enemies you have to deal with. Just imagine. How long has he been lying there? This research facility hasn’t been properly kept up in a while. How can he not realise he’s not a person? He’s been here, lying in pain potentially for years. What kind of mental prison is he in?
We’ll get back to this question in a bit, but I want to highlight something else first. To progress the story, we’ll have to get a door to open. However, that door needs auxiliary power to open up. To do this, we have two choices. We can either divert power from the room Carl is in, or we can go to one room over and divert the power from the reactor there. If we do it in the room Carl is in, we will cause him extreme pain, causing him to scream in agony. Needless to say, when I did this without thinking about it a lot, his screams felt like a needle in my chest. It felt fucking horrible. This really is a person after all. If we pull the lever back up quickly after initially pulling it down, Carl will still be in pain, but he’ll forgive us. If we do it again, however, this time it fries his brain for good, leaving him in a catatonic state, without killing him. Naturally, most people will not want to do this.
So, instead we go to the reactor room, and divert power that way. However, this solution wasn’t much better. Where you previously caused Carl pain by diverting the electricity necessary for his upkeep, now you’ve shut it off entirely, effectively killing him. Not only that, but the power surge attracted the attention of the creature you’ve previously only heard, making the current section harder to deal with.
So you’ve been presented with a choice without realising it: Causing a person unimaginable pain, but making the next section easier to deal with for you, or killing that person and making the area harder to deal with. As far as gameplay goes, as already discussed, this barely makes any difference. But it’s the emotional horror of it that really gets to me, and this is perhaps the strongest gameplay element in SOMA. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the game presents you with ACTUAL choices here. There is barely any actual in-game consequence for your choices and actions. It’s more about story context. About how these choices make YOU feel. How it feels to be presented with an impossible choice that will result in suffering either way. This is going to be a running theme in the entire experience.
Back to the plot. After reactivating the reactors or diverting the power from Carl, a female voice speaks to us via the intercom. She introduces herself as Dr. Catherine Chun, and asks us which station we work on. After realising that we have no fucking clue where on earth we even are, she tells us to get to the communications centre to meet her there. When we’re finally there, Catherine again speaks to us via the intercom. But, unnervingly enough, she seems to be almost as confused as you are. At least she knows where and who she is, but she seems just as clueless as to why everything is fucked and why the robots are going mad. Just as the conversation is starting to get interesting, the entire station threatens to collapse. Just before the connection cuts, Catherine pleads with us to come to Lambda station. The station collapses, and we’re buried by millions of tons of sea water.
Simon wakes up. How can this be? He should be dead. He looks at his arms - where there were previously two human arms, they are now black, metallic arms. Simon realises he’s been in a diving suit this whole time. What the hell is going on?
This is where the plot of the game starts in earnest. From this point on I won’t be going into as much detail, and instead will talk more about why and how these plot elements work so well for me.
Over the course over the next hours, we learn that Simon isn’t REALLY Simon. The Simon we’re currently playing is, in fact, a copy of the original Simon. THAT Simon died in 2015, a few months after taking the brain scan at Munshi’s place. The actual current year is 2104, almost 90 years later. Earth has been struck by a massive meteorite some time in the past, killing all humans. All humans except for a small contingent of scientists and technicians that were stationed in this very underground research facility.
It turns out that the project that Dr. Munshi was working on really turned out to be an incredible technological leap forward - basically, he invented the technology to copy and paste a human consciousness into a digital environment, where it could exist indefinitely. However, it could not save the original Simon’s life, despite the Doctor’s best efforts. A few months after the scan, the original Simon dies in a hospital. But not before giving Munshi express permission to use his brain scans in any way he sees fit for the purpose of research and science. Simon’s copied mind thus becomes the prototype and prime object of experimentation, and thus becomes a sort of “legacy” scan for engineers in education to practice on.
How or why exactly Simon (let’s call him Simon-2 for clarity’s sake) got activated and put into this robot body in this exact moment is never really explained, and I suppose it’s purposefully left to the imagination. There is the popular fan theory that the WAU - the AI control system responsible for running Pathos-II - forced Simon to wake up the second it realised there were no more sane humans around. I personally always liked the idea that it’s just a malfunction of the system and has no real reason. Like a sick joke with no punchline.
So, remember Carl from earlier? Remember thinking “How does he not realise he’s a robot?” For the same reason YOU don’t realise it. As far as you’re concerned, you’re still the very same Simon from 90 years ago, even though he died. The most important part that seems to go over seemingly every character’s head is the fact that it’s COPY and paste, and not a simple transferal. The new, copied consciousness has no way of knowing it is separate from the original. Simon in particular seems at times to be downright incapable of understanding this concept, but more on that later.
For now, Simon needs to make his way to Lambda station, where we go on the first of many underwater walking sections. I really liked those, even though once again, there is not much to do here, and even less to be afraid of. While there are hostile robots inhabited by humans who lost their mind, they are once again not very threatening, neither in design nor behaviour. I like these sections because of how atmospheric and beautiful these underwater sections are. The lighting and scenery is phenomenal and I can think of only very few games that nail the feeling of being down in the deep sea this well. The visual FX and sound design do a lot to further immerse you into the experience, and that remains true for the entire duration, not only the underwater sections.
Atmosphere is obviously always an extremely important point in horror media. If the atmosphere isn’t there, it’s simply not interesting. But imagery and visual language in general often make or break the experience in a horror story for me. Luckily, there obviously was quite a lot of thought that went into how the concepts are relayed to you.
Let’s take the general enemy- and art design. While, again, not very scary, they certainly look interesting. The whole game seems to be enamoured with the idea of a split between body and mind (or soul) and how these concepts might function independently of each other. “Soma” means “body” after all, and the question of whether a soul can truly thrive outside of its designated body appears as central to the experience. The WAU, as previously established, is the AI that governs Pathos-II, and it has evidently gone insane trying to follow its most important directive; to keep humanity alive, no matter the cost, and no matter the form that human life takes. The WAU clearly prioritises the idea of the human soul being the most important thing, and that it needs to be kept alive no matter what. Throughout the story we can actually find the corpses of humans, and even a single live human fused to a sort of black, cancerous mass of flesh and technology, and this is also reflected in the design of the stalker enemies. They are fusions of flesh and machine in the most violent, grotesque way possible. The one live human we meet is herself fused to what appears to be a giant mechanical lung. “It won’t let me die. Nothing is allowed to die.”, she says. Again, THIS is where the true horror happens. It’s in the implications of an existence that goes on like this for god knows how long. The imagery of this sort of “forced life” taking the form of cancer cells is extremely fitting. Cancer grows uncontrollably. It clings to life, violently, mutating everything it touches. They ignore the signals that tell them to self-destruct, and are forced into immortality as such.
Back to the story once more. We finally made it to Lambda, and we’re excited to meet another human for the first time since the start. Only - you’ve guessed it - Catherine, like all the others, is just another copy-pasted consciousness trapped in a robot body. Upon our audible disappointment, she asks us to think about our own predicament a little harder, pointing out we’re literally a robot ourself. Catherine transfers herself onto our Omnitool (our handy little device with which we do most things in this game) and asks us to take her along. This is where the overarching goal of the game reveals itself to us.
Catherine was the lead scientist on a project called “The ARK”. Basically, the ARK is a mini version of the Matrix, a simulated reality in which the same type of copy-pasted human minds could live on forever, in an environment much less bleak, depressing and hopeless as being buried under miles and miles of water, while the surface world is still actively burning. While this seems to have initially been more of a passion project for her, it quickly became the sole source of comfort and hope for the remaining population of Pathos-II. One day, Pathos-II WILL fail, and all of humanity will be lost. Hundreds of thousands of history, simply gone, scattered into the cosmic wind. This way, if at least a handful of people actually manage to get copied onto there, and they manage to launch the ARK to outer space, humanity could theoretically persist indefinitely. The people on Pathos-II, emotionally and mentally scarred by their existence as the last survivors of the apocalypse, forever trapped in the pitch black deep sea, begin to see this as their only flicker of hope. And the illusion of hope, as you might know, can be the most dangerous thing in a truly hopeless situation.
Catherine began to scan all the people who were still on Pathos-II, accumulating a data base of their minds. However, they fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the ARK. They think of it as an escape, when it really isn’t. They don’t understand the distinction between a copied mind that lives on independently from them, and their own lived experience. Frustrated that they’re still trapped, they begin to develop the belief that, if they kill themselves quickly enough after the scan, they will be functionally transferred over, escaping this reality. This is, of course, not how it works. Moreover the WAU, as established, has one all-important directive: to preserve human life no matter the cost. Those very humans now begin to commit suicide one after the other, so it does the only thing it can; it forces them to stay alive by any means necessary.
This will be our goal from now on: to copy ourselves onto the ARK, and leave Earth behind for a life among the stars. Perceptive players will likely immediately notice the fatal flaw with this plan, but let’s continue for now.
The next couple of gameplay sections see us descend further and further down, from one station to the next. Our ultimate goal is to reach Phi station, where the Omega Space Gun is located. This “gun” is really a humongous, kilometres-long launch apparatus that’s supposed to shoot the ARK straight into space. This journey gets quite lengthy and involves various distractions and characters we’ll meet along the way, but I want to highlight two story moments in particular.
The first comes in the form of our next immediate goal - to construct a diving suit that can withstand the pressure of the abyss. The parts for it are located in Omicron station, where we can also find an elevator that takes us down almost 4000 metres. What’s interesting about this section is what happens when we finish constructing the suit. Catherine informs us that we can’t just wear the suit, we’ll have to copy-paste our consciousness into it to use it. Simon is very unsure about this. He still hasn’t really understood that he isn’t really him. He has doubts of swapping his body yet again. So, Catherine scans and “transfers” our consciousness into the new robot… only, this isn’t what happens. As we learned, it’s a copy and paste situation. As he gains consciousness in his new body, Simon slowly begins to realise what this so called “transferal” entailed. It’s not a transferal at all. The old Simon, aka “Simon-2” is STILL here. In fact, he’s still in the old diving suit you were wearing the whole time. We’re really “Simon-3” at this point.
Simon is furious at this and lashes out at Catherine, calling her a horrible person, despite having everything thoroughly explained to him, but it’s hard to really fault him. He’s in an extremely demanding situation and it’s understandable he’s on a short fuse. Also, it is kind of chilling how unperturbed she feels about copying a consciousness into another body without giving a lot of thought to what that means for the old consciousness. On the other hand, Simon’s outburst and severe scolding of Catherine for what she does here feels somewhat unwarranted.
Over the course of the game, Catherine tries to explain to him again and again how this all works, but Simon seems to not be able to comprehend it. So Catherine, knowing that Simon likely subconsciously refuses to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth, eventually lies to him. She tells him that it’s all like a coin flip. She claims that there’s a 50:50 chance concerning which body you’ll end up in. She explains that it’s like a coin toss. This is, of course, completely wrong. You’re ALWAYS the one stuck with your old body. You’ll ALWAYS lose the coin toss.
So once again, a choice. Simon-2 will wake up in a couple of hours, and when he does, all of this will happen again. He’ll once again be alone, and even more confused since Catherine will be gone alongside Simon-3. So we can instead choose to shut him off right there. He’ll die, but he’ll never know. This is where Simon’s view of Catherine begins to shift, and where he’ll begin to view her as a heartless monster. And while Simon’s perception of Catherine is evidently tainted by his own inability to even fully comprehend what’s going on around him, she definitely strikes me as quite a callous person to say the least.
Catherine - at the very least, this version of Catherine - does not seem to regard human life with a lot of weight. Apart from the previous incident, there are other situations where we can catch glimpses of the type of person she is. In one of the many memory-hologram-space-time-things we can listen in on, Catherine informs Peter Strasky else that their colleague, Guy Konrad, just killed himself. “What?? How!?” A shocked Strasky asks, to which Catherine calmly replies “Maser tool. What should I do?” It’s obvious that Catherine is more concerned about how this will reflect on her project than she cares about the fact that one of her colleagues just killed himself. This gets even worse when you consider that Konrad killed himself because of the ARK project, and the previously mentioned idea that, if you kill yourself immediately after the brain scan, you’ll get to live on as the copy. To be fair, Catherine did not propose this idea, and seems to have explained to the others that this isn’t how this works. It’s still shocking to see how little she actually cares.
Another such instance comes with one of the better puzzles in the game. The gist is that we need a certain password, but only one single employee named Brandon Wan, who died a long time ago is supposed to have it. So we do the only thing we can do - we boot up his brain scan in a simulation. Only, if we boot him up inside a simulation, he is weirded out and immediately develops a panic attack. If you think about it, he is in the exact same situation you were in a couple of hours ago. To him, it’s the same as for Simon. He got his brain scan taken and next thing he knows he sits in a chair and gets interrogated by an invisible Catherine Chun. Naturally, he can’t deal with this and we have to shut him down again - effectively killing him just as quickly as we resurrected him. This is some dark shit, and what’s even worse - we’re going to have to do this as many times as it takes to get this password from him. The actual puzzle involves determining what exactly we need to say and do to make Brandon feel comfortable enough to share this password. Ultimately the solution here is to assume the appearance of Brandon’s wife/girlfriend and get him to believe he’s still in physical reality for the time it takes to get him to spill the beans. This will take different players different amounts of tries, but for you’re going to resurrect and kill this man a couple of times at least.
There are 2 things that make this whole ordeal even worse. First, the fact that Catherine really just does not seem to care a whole lot about what she’s doing to that poor man, over and over again. To her, the fact that a copy of him does exist effectively means she can do whatever she needs to do as long as the original scan still exists. How many times has she done this before? What kind of a person was the real Catherine, exactly? Secondly… just how many times has this been done to Simon? As we established earlier in the text, Simon’s mind was some sort of legacy practice model for engineers and psychologists to perform experiments and tests on. Just how many times has poor Simon been awoken from the dead only to experience the most panic he ever felt and then be killed again just as quickly? I said earlier that we’re Simon-3 at this point. If we’re being technical, we’re probably closer to something like Simon-239923. It’s been 90 years, and our brain scan was the fundamental building block for this entire technology. Once again, the true horror of SOMA lies in the narrative elements.
The final big story moment I want to touch on is the elevator ride that follows Simon’s temper tantrum after getting copy-pasted into the suit. Despite Simon just saying that he thinks that Catherine is disgusting and that he doesn’t wanna speak to her anymore, he begins burying her in questions again. I haven’t mentioned it until now but Simon constantly asks Catherine all kinds of questions throughout their joint adventure. To an extent this makes sense, as he was literally born yesterday, or more like, a couple of hours ago. Towards the end this gets a little excessive though, and it becomes flat out strange during this elevator ride. And he comes in swinging with the big questions no less. “Where do we go when we die” “Is my place in heaven taken”, and others of similar calibre. I think this would’ve felt a lot less awkward if the two of them didn’t just have the biggest fight of their lives. Simon supposedly despises her but yet can’t stop himself from asking her a whole bunch of questions again. He begins to despair at the thought of having killed himself just a few minutes ago. He still does not understand how to process all this. But then Catherine, in a surprising display of humanity, begins to comfort Simon by telling him of her memories of Taipei, of what life there used to be like. Of her memories of how she was little, of how she climbed the roof of the massive apartment building she lived in, just to catch a glimpse of the masses of people working their way through the streets below. It’s honestly really touching and, after the previous things we learned about Catherine, a direly needed piece of characterisation that prevents the player from outright hating her. Simon again questions whether or not this existence is even a life worth living, and that no matter what we do down in the depths of the sea, that humanity will never regain its former glory. Catherine replies with the only sensible thing one could say in this moment: We are still here. And right during that moment, the elevator stops and the power cuts. A quick repair on top of the elevator, and we’re good to go. Simon and Catherine quickly discuss her experience existing inside the Omnitool, and how time kinda just stops whenever she’s not powered. Suddenly, an unexpected guest makes his way onto the elevator. One of the WAU’s monsters stands before us and… speaks. It tells us it will make preparations and that it will await us.
Down there, we need to make our way to TAU station. There, we will find the last actual, real, flesh and blood human alive on planet earth. Only, she does not know she is the very last one until we tell her. The woman is strapped to life support machinery, meaning she is barely holding on as is. But what’s interesting for us is that she actually has the ARK in her possession. At first, she is protective of it, but as she realises how unbelievably unlikely it is that an actually sentient being just happens to stumble across her here, she relents and gives us the ARK. And she asks us to kill her. Yikes. This entire encounter is perhaps the saddest and most heartbreaking in the whole game. It’s horrible having to watch this woman just vegetate on this spot, as she must have been doing for years by now. She pleads with us to do it. Simon is, of course, hesitant to kill the literal last human on earth, but seeing her in this state, he realises that this isn’t living. She makes the point that the ARK is all we have, and implies that humanity already IS gone. What good are the vestigial remains of humanity if they cause the last living soul unfathomable torment and pain? So we decide to shut off her life support. She asks us to stay with her during her last moment. Jesus fucking christ, this entire scene is so gut wrenching. She tells us of her home, Greenland, the capitol of which, Nanoq (not sure whether or not this is supposed to be an entirely new city or a misspelling of Nuuk, but whatever) has since become a booming metropolis of 12 million people. She tells us that she’s glad she could die here, and that she liked her colleagues here, even Catherine. Her last words are a plea for us to send the ARK to space. To save what’s left of us.
Now, I’m going to kind of skip over the next section of the story because it concerns what I consider to be by far the least interesting aspect of the narrative, and it’s to do with the WAU and its monsters. Essentially, right before the end on your way to Phi, where the space gun is, you’re forced on a little detour into station Alpha, the home station of the WAU. The same WAU Creature that climbed on the elevator shows himself to you again, this time revealing that he is Johan Ross, who was responsible for creating the WAU. He asks us to destroy it, since we’re somehow immune to it. This, like many other instances in the game, is a choice, and we could also simply not bother with it. This is perhaps the least interesting choice in the game, simply because regardless of what you pick, the exact same thing happens. The WAU gets destroyed, Ross plans on killing you to make sure the WAU doesn’t somehow reconstitute in Simon’s body, but he gets eaten by a big old fish robot monster coming out of nowhere. Yeah, again, I’m really just flying over this but I am of the firm opinion that the entire WAU subplot is by far the least interesting and fleshed out aspect of the story so I don’t really feel inclined to talk about it all that much.
Finally, we’ve reached Phi station, and all that’s left to do is to upload ourselves onto the ARK and leave this godforsaken planet. We’ve reached the end. So Catherine goes ahead and copies ourselves onto the ARK in just the nick of time, just as it launches into space… only, we’re still here. Simon is confused. What is going on? Why are we still here?
You know why we’re still here. We were ALWAYS going to stay here. Simon still hasn’t understood this. And it’s possible he will never understand. Catherine tries to explain to him that they DID succeed, that their copies are now out there among the stars, on the ARK, living the best life they could possibly have at this point. But Simon isn’t satisfied with this answer. Catherine again tries to explain it via the coin flip, but Simon won’t hear it. And to be fair, the coin flip was always a lie anyway. They - their current selves - would always remain here. Catherine always understood this, and understood that, to get Simon to play along, she would have to tell him this lie. There was never going to be a chance that they could escape Earth. She insists that they did the right thing, but all Simon can think about is the fact that he’s still here, while his copy is living the good life now. She pleads with him to think of it as having saved something of the hundreds of thousands of years of human history, but he will not hear it. Once again, he lashes out at her in desperation, telling her to go fuck herself. Just as she is about to respond with what seems like hours and hours of frustration she deliberately held back, the power cuts. Everything goes dark. Pathos-II has finally given up the ghost, and Catherine, who was logged into the system, is gone. All is silent. Simon cries out to her, but there is no answer. There will never be another answer. They parted on the worst of terms, and now everything is quiet. Simon is alone. Forever.
Fuck my life. This ending has got to be the bleakest shit I have ever seen. There is literally no fate I could imagine worse than this. Death would be a million times preferable than this. Imagine the sheer and utter horror of being the last sentient being on earth, and you’re not even allowed the privilege to die. You just have to wait until your mechanical body finally gives in after what might be hundreds or thousands of years. To wander the ruins of a once lively planet, now reduced to ashes and black seas. Poor Simon. He was an idiot, but he didn’t deserve this.
But, there is a silver lining. The ARK did manage to launch into space, and is fully functional. So what about the other Simon? In the very final section of the game we open on Simon-4, who is just coming to terms with finally being on the ARK. It’s a beautiful place, and there seems to be nothing wrong with it. There is no evil irony at play here, and Catherine didn’t double cross him. This really is the best they could’ve hoped for. Not only are they here, but presumably everyone else from Pathos-II that got their brain scanned is here as well. Now humanity can enjoy what little it has left inside this ARK, floating around the universe for many thousands of years from now.
While I do like this ending for the characters, I feel like it undercuts the horror of the main ending for Simon-3 a little too much. It’s too easy to simply forget about Simon-3 when you can tell yourself that Simon-4 is doing fine. It’s not terrible, and it doesn’t ruin the ending or whatever, but I wonder if there was a way to work this aspect into the ending without it feeling too sappy. Maybe opening on the ARK first, only to then reveal that Simon-3 and his Catherine are still on the bottom of the ocean.
So, that was SOMA’s narrative. I’m still processing a lot of this story and I still find myself thinking about it a lot even a good month after finishing this game. I certainly would like to experience this plot again some time in the future, whenever I have forgotten enough to warrant going through the whole game again. The thing is, I’m not sure whether or not I’ll maybe settle for a Let’s Play instead of playing it myself, because the best parts of this game happen whenever you’re simply listening in on dialogue or experience the narrative via the environmental storytelling. I can honestly say that the “gamey” aspects of SOMA are so weak, and the stealth-horror sections so obnoxious that I can’t really imagine playing it myself any time soon. Maybe I’ll get my girlfriend to play it some time in the future lol
That being said, before I finish this review I have to go over a few other individual aspects of SOMA that warrant a critical look or special note.
Let’s begin with something that’s perhaps a little subjective, and may very well be related to the PC I played it on, although I should mention that it well exceeded the recommended requirements listed on Steam. I experienced a lot of visual glitches, and at first the game was barely playable due to severe aliasing to the point where I could barely tell what was happening in front of me. When I turned V-Sync on it suddenly tanked my framerate to somewhere below 20. Playing around with the graphical setting for 30ish minutes, I finally managed to get a decently stable 40ish FPS going with only some occasional aliasing, but my PC is able to run games like the 2023 System Shock remake at a stable 60 FPS at 1080p without any issues what so ever, so I’m afraid this very much seems like yet another instance of terrible PC optimisation, and it’s sad to see that it’s been 8 years since release and it has never been fixed. I also have to point out just how absurdly long the game takes to boot up on my PC. The initial loading screen usually takes upwards of 3-5 minutes, which is completely insane if you ask me. I did not experience a loading screen like that on this PC with any other game I have ever played. So the performance sadly isn’t anything to write home about.
While I have already thoroughly explained my problems with SOMA’s general gameplay, there are some minor issues, or maybe even just nitpicks concerning the narrative as well.
The main cast of Simon and Catherine both deliver fantastic, believable and emotionally rich performances, but the rest are a little more hit or miss. There aren’t any in here that I would describe as downright bad, but there is a notable discrepancy between the main cast and everyone else. It’s more like, Cath and Simon are fantastic, the rest are ok.
I also found some parts of the dialogue perhaps a little too quippy and sarcastic for the situation that both main characters are in. For Catherine it makes a little more sense, since she’s characterised as pretty aloof and perhaps even a little egotistical, but Simon should have no business being as sassy as he comes across some scenes. I understand that they probably wanted to take the edge off some parts of the story and have it feel a little more human, but this just ends up feeling inauthentic.
Finally I want to talk about Simon as a character. He’s kind of weird. Overall, I really like him, and I think that his reaction to most of the things he sees is very relatable and sympathetic. However, I think that his sheer inability to grasp the concept of a simple copy+paste process goes a little beyond what is believable for me. If the writers wanted to make the point that Simon flat out refuses to believe/accept that there are multiple versions of him, they probably shouldn’t have included the scene where Simon-3 is forced to decide where to dispose of Simon-2 or not. So Simon clearly is capable of understanding the process, but he still acts surprised at the end that he’s still here. I know Catherine even says that she can’t do anything against his wilful ignorance before she gets cut off. Some fans have argued that the fact that Simon has to exist in make-shift bodies has rendered his mental capacity flawed, or that his brain injury from the accident in the beginning affected his scanned version as well. Personally I am inclined to believe that he simply isn’t very smart and really does struggle with comprehending the reality of more Simons at once.
Speaking of his accident, I did find it weird how everything to do with Ashley, the accident, his brain injury and even his head bleeding seemingly never comes up again after the beginning. I know that there’s a very brief dream sequence in which Simon is back at his apartment for a couple of seconds and we can see Ashley with her back turned to us. All she says that it’s all over now and we should relax. That is the extent to which SOMA’s story comes back to this and I don’t understand it. I can’t even really criticise it because I feel like I’m simply missing something here. It almost feels like the game itself just kinda forgot about all of that. And it’s so weird because the intro frames all of these events as extremely important. Simon is clearly filled with guilt about the accident, since he was responsible for the death of his friend, whom he also had a crush on. Why does that never come up again? I 100% expected to maybe recognise something about Ashley in Catherine, or something like that. Like, maybe Catherine somehow reminds him of her. Or why does the imagery of Simon’s head bleeding under stress never end up as relevant again? It just feels like all but the fact that Simon died in 2015 is kinda irrelevant to the rest of the story, and I don’t want to believe that’s the case, so I choose to believe that I’m simply missing something.
Well, that’s about all I have for SOMA. Once again, this review ended up a lot longer than I had initially planned, but I realised that I did have quite a lot to say about it after all. It’s definitely an extremely interesting experience, and a must play for all fans of slower paced, emotional and psychological horror - or rather, it’s story is. I firmly believe that this game would be better as a pure walking simulator, free from any pretensions of stealth gameplay or puzzles, because both of these elements border the line to “awful” at times.
It’s kinda hard to rate a game like this. The story is one of the best in the medium, and the gameplay is some of the worst. The story is a triumph, the gameplay a failure. Ultimately, SOMA did manage to make me think about it a lot over the last couple of weeks, and that’s just about the highest praise I can give it.
7 / 10
7 / 10
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Horror is a delicate subject. Not only is it perhaps the most primal and subjective emotion a person can feel, it more often than not acts like a mirror to yourself. What or what you may not find scary says a lot about you - like it or not. There are innumerable ways to go about eliciting horror, and the fact that it exists in just about any medium imaginable speaks to our collective desire of learning more about ourselves - be it on a species-wide, national, cultural or just purely personal level.
Horror games especially have always been a very popular point of discussion. Personally, I always found movies to be scarier than games, on average at least. Most of that comes down to the fact that dying and having to start a section over typically takes the wind out of the sails of just about any game that isn’t called Silent Hill. The highly curated nature of films, and uncertainty of whether or not the main character will be here the next second will always trump the knowledge that, whatever happens to me next, I’ll be fine. That isn’t to say I haven’t been thoroughly terrified by games, by the way. PT still gives me actual anxiety whenever I think about it.
But horror isn’t just about the immediate experiential side of whatever you’re watching/playing/reading. At least for me, more often than not, it’s the themes and topics that stick with you after the credits roll, and after the PC or console is turned off. The imagery and story aspects that linger on in the back of your mind even after you haven’t touched the game in months. Of course there will always be people that will do everything in their power to not be scared by horror media, for whatever reason they may have. Maybe they want to prove to themselves or others how tough and rational they are, and that nothing ever scares them. But even those people ARE afraid of things, and even if it doesn’t come up in the immediate moment of playing or watching something, it will come up eventually.
In my opinion, there are few - if any - games out there that show this off as perfectly as SOMA.
SOMA is, in my opinion, not a scary game. Not once did I ever feel threatened, tense, anxious or even just mildly spooked during the runtime of the actual game. And yet, when I think about its story, I can’t help but shudder at its implications, and when I remember its ending, it makes me realise that perhaps no piece of fiction I’ve ever consumed quite touched on just how fundamentally bleak this story’s outcome is. This game truly is equally as much of a blazing triumph with its story and themes, as well as a mind-boggling failure, gameplay wise.
The average horror game puts all on its chips squarely on the second to second gameplay. Be it Resident Evil’s focus on surviving being trapped somewhere with nothing but barely-killable zombies keeping you company, Silent Hill’s spiralling levels that drag you deeper and deeper into hell, Outlast’s obnoxious tendency of barraging you with jump-scares, and even Frictional Games’ other, seminal horror-series Amnesia, which popularised the now widely utilised “No fighting, only hiding” type of gameplay.
I bounced off Amnesia pretty hard when I played it back in 2018 or so. Apart from the frankly irritating puzzles that completely obliterated the barely existent pacing here, I find hide-and-seek mechanics to be fundamentally opposed to the experience I’m looking for. More often than not having to repeat a certain section because I failed to recognise a single glance from the enemy, or getting impatient while having to wait for the enemy to finally look the right way, so I’m allowed to progress quickly turns whatever little in the way of tension I may have felt into pure tedium. To me, this isn’t scary, it’s exhausting.
SOMA is, as far as gameplay goes, sadly not all that different. The general gameplay-loop here is mind-numbingly boring. Around 90% of its gameplay consists of you aimlessly wandering around with minimal instruction until you find some banal puzzle to do. And I’m not gonna sugar coat it, sometimes they are so bad I genuinely wonder how on earth Frictional Games were comfortable with putting them in the game. From the top of my mind, I can only think of a single puzzle that actually demanded you think about the solution in a manner that didn’t simply require whatever obvious solution could be found in the immediate vicinity, and if you’ve played the game, you know which one I’m talking about.
What’s even worse, and by far the weakest part of the game is the aforementioned Amnesia-like stealth horror, in which you are completely defenceless against whichever deadly abomination may roam the area. Apart from restricting the player to one single option they have to abide by for every single encounter in the game being a highly questionable design choice to begin with, SOMA’s enemies simply aren’t scary or threatening. And this isn’t even just my opinion about their design - I am saying, they literally do not pose a threat, gameplay wise. There were only 2 instances where I died in this game. First, simply trying to fuck around with the AI of a single enemy because I found it hilarious how easy it was to confuse them, and second during a mid-game encounter where I simply didn’t fully understand how exactly the enemy could see me.
What’s worse than how trivial and unnecessary these encounters feel is the sheer quantity of them. The game relies on them way too much, and they absolutely kill the pacing of the game’s story whenever they happen.
So far all of this has been fairly negative, and not without good reason. As far as this being a horror GAME goes, it’s a disastrous failure as far as I’m concerned, and one of the worst I’ve ever finished. There is exceedingly little I’m willing to give this game as far as it’s actual second-to-second gaming experience goes.
That is, unless we’re considering story as part of the gameplay. You may be asking yourself; “Djyunghoxha, how come you even finished the game if you hated it so much?” Because of this game’s story, that’s why.
SOMA’s story is, in many ways, exceptional. It is the exception to this game’s general experience of tedium and boredom. It is the exception to horror games often featuring some of the worst stories, acting and writing you could imagine. It is the exception in so far that the TRUE horror of SOMA comes not from its gameplay, but its story implications.
[MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE ON OUT].
[I will not go into every single detail concerning the story, but I will talk about the beginning and ending in detail, and some other story aspects that are best experienced first hand.]
I’ve talked around SOMA’s story a lot by this point, but now we should get into why I still regard this game as one of the better ones I’ve played in the genre. Let’s begin with the set up.
SOMA’s story begins with a dream sequence. The player character, Simon, is in the driver’s seat, having a conversation with his girlfriend / friend (it’s not really clear tbh) Ashley. Ashley comments that Simon’s head is bleeding, to which he replies that it’s just from “the accident”. She hands him a liquid, to which he replies that he needs it later for the scan. Simon wants to tell Ashley something which seemingly weirds her out, but in this very moment, his phone rings. “Why is there never enough time?” Simon asks before suddenly crashing his car and waking up.
The phone has been ringing IRL, not just in his dream. On the other end of the line is one Dr. Munshi, reminding Simon to drink a tracer fluid for his brain scan later today. Why does he need a brain scan?
We learn that the car crash that Simon just dreamt of actually happened. In this crash, Ashley, who was in the seat next to him, died immediately, while Simon sustained a grievous head injury which resulted in permanent brain damage, giving him only a few more months to live. It also causes his forehead to bleed profusely. Already, the imagery of the dream we just witnessed becomes clear. Simon is blaming himself for what happened.
Still, we don’t really understand the purpose of the brain scan just yet, but we will. For now, the game takes us on a little journey from a cozy but slightly off apartment building in Toronto, to an eerily quiet subway ride, to a seemingly-abandoned doctor’s office. During the subway ride, Jesse, a friend a coworker at the book store we work at, calls us to wish us good luck with the scan and hopes we can “reverse the whole dying thing”. They both also briefly talk about Ashley, and how her old position has been filled in. The casual manner in which both talk about both Ashley’s and your approaching death struck me as a little odd, and I’m wondering whether there’s a story detail I’m missing. But more on that later.
Arriving at Dr. Munshi’s “office”, we are met with a completely empty doctor’s office. You’d be forgiven in thinking that this is where things go awry. The tone here is a little strange. Dr. Munshi now explains to us what he’s trying to do: Simon’s brain is to be scanned, rebuilt in a computer simulation and then bombarded with stimuli. The idea is to come up with a mode of brain reconstruction that doesn’t involve potentially invasive and harmful procedures, specifically for people like Simon, who are about to die from brain damage. According to Munshi, this could potentially extend Simon’s life for decades, if it works out.
Simon sits down in a chair with a big brain scanner on top. “Will this hurt?” He asks. “Only about as much as having your picture taken.” Munshi replies. Simon then retorts that “[Native Americans thought that cameras would steal their souls”, not understanding the sheer weight of this quote. The brain scanner goes over our eyes. An electrical noise is heard. Everything goes black.
We wake up in a cold, harsh and mechanical place. Dr. Munshi is gone. Everything is dark. What happened? Simon is afraid. Turning on the light, we see metal walls, complex electronics that seem too advanced for our time period and a bunch of weird suits. Immediately, we assume that Dr. Munshi fucked us over, that he must’ve tricked us. This is a horror game after all. Maybe Dr. Munshi is secretly an evil genius who wants to experiment on us? Or alternatively, maybe this IS Dr. Munshi’s treatment plan? Maybe this is all a simulation? It feels too real though. Like, something’s not how it’s supposed to be.
This is where the actual game begins, and I have to compliment the game for how well this gets set up. Knowing this is a horror game, most people will probably have mistrusted everything from the get go. Maybe even the apartment seems kinda weird when you think about it. And yet, this moment still hits extremely surprisingly. You feel the exact same way Simon does. Confused. Alone.
Walking around the place, we slowly put together that we’re trapped in some sort of research facility called “Pathos-II”, and that this research facility lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. More specifically, we’re currently in Station “Upsilon” of Pathos-II. While walking about the early areas, we catch a small glimpse of the types of creatures we’ll encounter here, although we can only hear it for now. We also discover that we can somehow see the memories of other people before us. There are numerous locked doors everywhere. Everything seems to be covered in some black, blood-like goo called “structure gel”.
It’s easy to understand why you would think that, since SOMA very clearly sets this up to be a red herring. This is not a game with a happy ending. This is not a power fantasy.
Simon then meets a robot. Only - that robot doesn’t think of it as a robot. In fact, he is extremely adamant that he is a person. He insists that his name is Carl Semken, that he is hurt and needs assistance, to which Simon incredulously replies that he doesn’t see a human, but a machine. But he won’t hear it, no matter how many times we insist that he’s not actually human. And this is where I come back to SOMA’s story and themes being many times more terrifying and scary than any of the monsters/enemies you have to deal with. Just imagine. How long has he been lying there? This research facility hasn’t been properly kept up in a while. How can he not realise he’s not a person? He’s been here, lying in pain potentially for years. What kind of mental prison is he in?
We’ll get back to this question in a bit, but I want to highlight something else first. To progress the story, we’ll have to get a door to open. However, that door needs auxiliary power to open up. To do this, we have two choices. We can either divert power from the room Carl is in, or we can go to one room over and divert the power from the reactor there. If we do it in the room Carl is in, we will cause him extreme pain, causing him to scream in agony. Needless to say, when I did this without thinking about it a lot, his screams felt like a needle in my chest. It felt fucking horrible. This really is a person after all. If we pull the lever back up quickly after initially pulling it down, Carl will still be in pain, but he’ll forgive us. If we do it again, however, this time it fries his brain for good, leaving him in a catatonic state, without killing him. Naturally, most people will not want to do this.
So, instead we go to the reactor room, and divert power that way. However, this solution wasn’t much better. Where you previously caused Carl pain by diverting the electricity necessary for his upkeep, now you’ve shut it off entirely, effectively killing him. Not only that, but the power surge attracted the attention of the creature you’ve previously only heard, making the current section harder to deal with.
So you’ve been presented with a choice without realising it: Causing a person unimaginable pain, but making the next section easier to deal with for you, or killing that person and making the area harder to deal with. As far as gameplay goes, as already discussed, this barely makes any difference. But it’s the emotional horror of it that really gets to me, and this is perhaps the strongest gameplay element in SOMA. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the game presents you with ACTUAL choices here. There is barely any actual in-game consequence for your choices and actions. It’s more about story context. About how these choices make YOU feel. How it feels to be presented with an impossible choice that will result in suffering either way. This is going to be a running theme in the entire experience.
Back to the plot. After reactivating the reactors or diverting the power from Carl, a female voice speaks to us via the intercom. She introduces herself as Dr. Catherine Chun, and asks us which station we work on. After realising that we have no fucking clue where on earth we even are, she tells us to get to the communications centre to meet her there. When we’re finally there, Catherine again speaks to us via the intercom. But, unnervingly enough, she seems to be almost as confused as you are. At least she knows where and who she is, but she seems just as clueless as to why everything is fucked and why the robots are going mad. Just as the conversation is starting to get interesting, the entire station threatens to collapse. Just before the connection cuts, Catherine pleads with us to come to Lambda station. The station collapses, and we’re buried by millions of tons of sea water.
Simon wakes up. How can this be? He should be dead. He looks at his arms - where there were previously two human arms, they are now black, metallic arms. Simon realises he’s been in a diving suit this whole time. What the hell is going on?
This is where the plot of the game starts in earnest. From this point on I won’t be going into as much detail, and instead will talk more about why and how these plot elements work so well for me.
Over the course over the next hours, we learn that Simon isn’t REALLY Simon. The Simon we’re currently playing is, in fact, a copy of the original Simon. THAT Simon died in 2015, a few months after taking the brain scan at Munshi’s place. The actual current year is 2104, almost 90 years later. Earth has been struck by a massive meteorite some time in the past, killing all humans. All humans except for a small contingent of scientists and technicians that were stationed in this very underground research facility.
It turns out that the project that Dr. Munshi was working on really turned out to be an incredible technological leap forward - basically, he invented the technology to copy and paste a human consciousness into a digital environment, where it could exist indefinitely. However, it could not save the original Simon’s life, despite the Doctor’s best efforts. A few months after the scan, the original Simon dies in a hospital. But not before giving Munshi express permission to use his brain scans in any way he sees fit for the purpose of research and science. Simon’s copied mind thus becomes the prototype and prime object of experimentation, and thus becomes a sort of “legacy” scan for engineers in education to practice on.
How or why exactly Simon (let’s call him Simon-2 for clarity’s sake) got activated and put into this robot body in this exact moment is never really explained, and I suppose it’s purposefully left to the imagination. There is the popular fan theory that the WAU - the AI control system responsible for running Pathos-II - forced Simon to wake up the second it realised there were no more sane humans around. I personally always liked the idea that it’s just a malfunction of the system and has no real reason. Like a sick joke with no punchline.
So, remember Carl from earlier? Remember thinking “How does he not realise he’s a robot?” For the same reason YOU don’t realise it. As far as you’re concerned, you’re still the very same Simon from 90 years ago, even though he died. The most important part that seems to go over seemingly every character’s head is the fact that it’s COPY and paste, and not a simple transferal. The new, copied consciousness has no way of knowing it is separate from the original. Simon in particular seems at times to be downright incapable of understanding this concept, but more on that later.
For now, Simon needs to make his way to Lambda station, where we go on the first of many underwater walking sections. I really liked those, even though once again, there is not much to do here, and even less to be afraid of. While there are hostile robots inhabited by humans who lost their mind, they are once again not very threatening, neither in design nor behaviour. I like these sections because of how atmospheric and beautiful these underwater sections are. The lighting and scenery is phenomenal and I can think of only very few games that nail the feeling of being down in the deep sea this well. The visual FX and sound design do a lot to further immerse you into the experience, and that remains true for the entire duration, not only the underwater sections.
Atmosphere is obviously always an extremely important point in horror media. If the atmosphere isn’t there, it’s simply not interesting. But imagery and visual language in general often make or break the experience in a horror story for me. Luckily, there obviously was quite a lot of thought that went into how the concepts are relayed to you.
Let’s take the general enemy- and art design. While, again, not very scary, they certainly look interesting. The whole game seems to be enamoured with the idea of a split between body and mind (or soul) and how these concepts might function independently of each other. “Soma” means “body” after all, and the question of whether a soul can truly thrive outside of its designated body appears as central to the experience. The WAU, as previously established, is the AI that governs Pathos-II, and it has evidently gone insane trying to follow its most important directive; to keep humanity alive, no matter the cost, and no matter the form that human life takes. The WAU clearly prioritises the idea of the human soul being the most important thing, and that it needs to be kept alive no matter what. Throughout the story we can actually find the corpses of humans, and even a single live human fused to a sort of black, cancerous mass of flesh and technology, and this is also reflected in the design of the stalker enemies. They are fusions of flesh and machine in the most violent, grotesque way possible. The one live human we meet is herself fused to what appears to be a giant mechanical lung. “It won’t let me die. Nothing is allowed to die.”, she says. Again, THIS is where the true horror happens. It’s in the implications of an existence that goes on like this for god knows how long. The imagery of this sort of “forced life” taking the form of cancer cells is extremely fitting. Cancer grows uncontrollably. It clings to life, violently, mutating everything it touches. They ignore the signals that tell them to self-destruct, and are forced into immortality as such.
Back to the story once more. We finally made it to Lambda, and we’re excited to meet another human for the first time since the start. Only - you’ve guessed it - Catherine, like all the others, is just another copy-pasted consciousness trapped in a robot body. Upon our audible disappointment, she asks us to think about our own predicament a little harder, pointing out we’re literally a robot ourself. Catherine transfers herself onto our Omnitool (our handy little device with which we do most things in this game) and asks us to take her along. This is where the overarching goal of the game reveals itself to us.
Catherine was the lead scientist on a project called “The ARK”. Basically, the ARK is a mini version of the Matrix, a simulated reality in which the same type of copy-pasted human minds could live on forever, in an environment much less bleak, depressing and hopeless as being buried under miles and miles of water, while the surface world is still actively burning. While this seems to have initially been more of a passion project for her, it quickly became the sole source of comfort and hope for the remaining population of Pathos-II. One day, Pathos-II WILL fail, and all of humanity will be lost. Hundreds of thousands of history, simply gone, scattered into the cosmic wind. This way, if at least a handful of people actually manage to get copied onto there, and they manage to launch the ARK to outer space, humanity could theoretically persist indefinitely. The people on Pathos-II, emotionally and mentally scarred by their existence as the last survivors of the apocalypse, forever trapped in the pitch black deep sea, begin to see this as their only flicker of hope. And the illusion of hope, as you might know, can be the most dangerous thing in a truly hopeless situation.
Catherine began to scan all the people who were still on Pathos-II, accumulating a data base of their minds. However, they fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the ARK. They think of it as an escape, when it really isn’t. They don’t understand the distinction between a copied mind that lives on independently from them, and their own lived experience. Frustrated that they’re still trapped, they begin to develop the belief that, if they kill themselves quickly enough after the scan, they will be functionally transferred over, escaping this reality. This is, of course, not how it works. Moreover the WAU, as established, has one all-important directive: to preserve human life no matter the cost. Those very humans now begin to commit suicide one after the other, so it does the only thing it can; it forces them to stay alive by any means necessary.
This will be our goal from now on: to copy ourselves onto the ARK, and leave Earth behind for a life among the stars. Perceptive players will likely immediately notice the fatal flaw with this plan, but let’s continue for now.
The next couple of gameplay sections see us descend further and further down, from one station to the next. Our ultimate goal is to reach Phi station, where the Omega Space Gun is located. This “gun” is really a humongous, kilometres-long launch apparatus that’s supposed to shoot the ARK straight into space. This journey gets quite lengthy and involves various distractions and characters we’ll meet along the way, but I want to highlight two story moments in particular.
The first comes in the form of our next immediate goal - to construct a diving suit that can withstand the pressure of the abyss. The parts for it are located in Omicron station, where we can also find an elevator that takes us down almost 4000 metres. What’s interesting about this section is what happens when we finish constructing the suit. Catherine informs us that we can’t just wear the suit, we’ll have to copy-paste our consciousness into it to use it. Simon is very unsure about this. He still hasn’t really understood that he isn’t really him. He has doubts of swapping his body yet again. So, Catherine scans and “transfers” our consciousness into the new robot… only, this isn’t what happens. As we learned, it’s a copy and paste situation. As he gains consciousness in his new body, Simon slowly begins to realise what this so called “transferal” entailed. It’s not a transferal at all. The old Simon, aka “Simon-2” is STILL here. In fact, he’s still in the old diving suit you were wearing the whole time. We’re really “Simon-3” at this point.
Simon is furious at this and lashes out at Catherine, calling her a horrible person, despite having everything thoroughly explained to him, but it’s hard to really fault him. He’s in an extremely demanding situation and it’s understandable he’s on a short fuse. Also, it is kind of chilling how unperturbed she feels about copying a consciousness into another body without giving a lot of thought to what that means for the old consciousness. On the other hand, Simon’s outburst and severe scolding of Catherine for what she does here feels somewhat unwarranted.
Over the course of the game, Catherine tries to explain to him again and again how this all works, but Simon seems to not be able to comprehend it. So Catherine, knowing that Simon likely subconsciously refuses to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth, eventually lies to him. She tells him that it’s all like a coin flip. She claims that there’s a 50:50 chance concerning which body you’ll end up in. She explains that it’s like a coin toss. This is, of course, completely wrong. You’re ALWAYS the one stuck with your old body. You’ll ALWAYS lose the coin toss.
So once again, a choice. Simon-2 will wake up in a couple of hours, and when he does, all of this will happen again. He’ll once again be alone, and even more confused since Catherine will be gone alongside Simon-3. So we can instead choose to shut him off right there. He’ll die, but he’ll never know. This is where Simon’s view of Catherine begins to shift, and where he’ll begin to view her as a heartless monster. And while Simon’s perception of Catherine is evidently tainted by his own inability to even fully comprehend what’s going on around him, she definitely strikes me as quite a callous person to say the least.
Catherine - at the very least, this version of Catherine - does not seem to regard human life with a lot of weight. Apart from the previous incident, there are other situations where we can catch glimpses of the type of person she is. In one of the many memory-hologram-space-time-things we can listen in on, Catherine informs Peter Strasky else that their colleague, Guy Konrad, just killed himself. “What?? How!?” A shocked Strasky asks, to which Catherine calmly replies “Maser tool. What should I do?” It’s obvious that Catherine is more concerned about how this will reflect on her project than she cares about the fact that one of her colleagues just killed himself. This gets even worse when you consider that Konrad killed himself because of the ARK project, and the previously mentioned idea that, if you kill yourself immediately after the brain scan, you’ll get to live on as the copy. To be fair, Catherine did not propose this idea, and seems to have explained to the others that this isn’t how this works. It’s still shocking to see how little she actually cares.
Another such instance comes with one of the better puzzles in the game. The gist is that we need a certain password, but only one single employee named Brandon Wan, who died a long time ago is supposed to have it. So we do the only thing we can do - we boot up his brain scan in a simulation. Only, if we boot him up inside a simulation, he is weirded out and immediately develops a panic attack. If you think about it, he is in the exact same situation you were in a couple of hours ago. To him, it’s the same as for Simon. He got his brain scan taken and next thing he knows he sits in a chair and gets interrogated by an invisible Catherine Chun. Naturally, he can’t deal with this and we have to shut him down again - effectively killing him just as quickly as we resurrected him. This is some dark shit, and what’s even worse - we’re going to have to do this as many times as it takes to get this password from him. The actual puzzle involves determining what exactly we need to say and do to make Brandon feel comfortable enough to share this password. Ultimately the solution here is to assume the appearance of Brandon’s wife/girlfriend and get him to believe he’s still in physical reality for the time it takes to get him to spill the beans. This will take different players different amounts of tries, but for you’re going to resurrect and kill this man a couple of times at least.
There are 2 things that make this whole ordeal even worse. First, the fact that Catherine really just does not seem to care a whole lot about what she’s doing to that poor man, over and over again. To her, the fact that a copy of him does exist effectively means she can do whatever she needs to do as long as the original scan still exists. How many times has she done this before? What kind of a person was the real Catherine, exactly? Secondly… just how many times has this been done to Simon? As we established earlier in the text, Simon’s mind was some sort of legacy practice model for engineers and psychologists to perform experiments and tests on. Just how many times has poor Simon been awoken from the dead only to experience the most panic he ever felt and then be killed again just as quickly? I said earlier that we’re Simon-3 at this point. If we’re being technical, we’re probably closer to something like Simon-239923. It’s been 90 years, and our brain scan was the fundamental building block for this entire technology. Once again, the true horror of SOMA lies in the narrative elements.
The final big story moment I want to touch on is the elevator ride that follows Simon’s temper tantrum after getting copy-pasted into the suit. Despite Simon just saying that he thinks that Catherine is disgusting and that he doesn’t wanna speak to her anymore, he begins burying her in questions again. I haven’t mentioned it until now but Simon constantly asks Catherine all kinds of questions throughout their joint adventure. To an extent this makes sense, as he was literally born yesterday, or more like, a couple of hours ago. Towards the end this gets a little excessive though, and it becomes flat out strange during this elevator ride. And he comes in swinging with the big questions no less. “Where do we go when we die” “Is my place in heaven taken”, and others of similar calibre. I think this would’ve felt a lot less awkward if the two of them didn’t just have the biggest fight of their lives. Simon supposedly despises her but yet can’t stop himself from asking her a whole bunch of questions again. He begins to despair at the thought of having killed himself just a few minutes ago. He still does not understand how to process all this. But then Catherine, in a surprising display of humanity, begins to comfort Simon by telling him of her memories of Taipei, of what life there used to be like. Of her memories of how she was little, of how she climbed the roof of the massive apartment building she lived in, just to catch a glimpse of the masses of people working their way through the streets below. It’s honestly really touching and, after the previous things we learned about Catherine, a direly needed piece of characterisation that prevents the player from outright hating her. Simon again questions whether or not this existence is even a life worth living, and that no matter what we do down in the depths of the sea, that humanity will never regain its former glory. Catherine replies with the only sensible thing one could say in this moment: We are still here. And right during that moment, the elevator stops and the power cuts. A quick repair on top of the elevator, and we’re good to go. Simon and Catherine quickly discuss her experience existing inside the Omnitool, and how time kinda just stops whenever she’s not powered. Suddenly, an unexpected guest makes his way onto the elevator. One of the WAU’s monsters stands before us and… speaks. It tells us it will make preparations and that it will await us.
Down there, we need to make our way to TAU station. There, we will find the last actual, real, flesh and blood human alive on planet earth. Only, she does not know she is the very last one until we tell her. The woman is strapped to life support machinery, meaning she is barely holding on as is. But what’s interesting for us is that she actually has the ARK in her possession. At first, she is protective of it, but as she realises how unbelievably unlikely it is that an actually sentient being just happens to stumble across her here, she relents and gives us the ARK. And she asks us to kill her. Yikes. This entire encounter is perhaps the saddest and most heartbreaking in the whole game. It’s horrible having to watch this woman just vegetate on this spot, as she must have been doing for years by now. She pleads with us to do it. Simon is, of course, hesitant to kill the literal last human on earth, but seeing her in this state, he realises that this isn’t living. She makes the point that the ARK is all we have, and implies that humanity already IS gone. What good are the vestigial remains of humanity if they cause the last living soul unfathomable torment and pain? So we decide to shut off her life support. She asks us to stay with her during her last moment. Jesus fucking christ, this entire scene is so gut wrenching. She tells us of her home, Greenland, the capitol of which, Nanoq (not sure whether or not this is supposed to be an entirely new city or a misspelling of Nuuk, but whatever) has since become a booming metropolis of 12 million people. She tells us that she’s glad she could die here, and that she liked her colleagues here, even Catherine. Her last words are a plea for us to send the ARK to space. To save what’s left of us.
Now, I’m going to kind of skip over the next section of the story because it concerns what I consider to be by far the least interesting aspect of the narrative, and it’s to do with the WAU and its monsters. Essentially, right before the end on your way to Phi, where the space gun is, you’re forced on a little detour into station Alpha, the home station of the WAU. The same WAU Creature that climbed on the elevator shows himself to you again, this time revealing that he is Johan Ross, who was responsible for creating the WAU. He asks us to destroy it, since we’re somehow immune to it. This, like many other instances in the game, is a choice, and we could also simply not bother with it. This is perhaps the least interesting choice in the game, simply because regardless of what you pick, the exact same thing happens. The WAU gets destroyed, Ross plans on killing you to make sure the WAU doesn’t somehow reconstitute in Simon’s body, but he gets eaten by a big old fish robot monster coming out of nowhere. Yeah, again, I’m really just flying over this but I am of the firm opinion that the entire WAU subplot is by far the least interesting and fleshed out aspect of the story so I don’t really feel inclined to talk about it all that much.
Finally, we’ve reached Phi station, and all that’s left to do is to upload ourselves onto the ARK and leave this godforsaken planet. We’ve reached the end. So Catherine goes ahead and copies ourselves onto the ARK in just the nick of time, just as it launches into space… only, we’re still here. Simon is confused. What is going on? Why are we still here?
You know why we’re still here. We were ALWAYS going to stay here. Simon still hasn’t understood this. And it’s possible he will never understand. Catherine tries to explain to him that they DID succeed, that their copies are now out there among the stars, on the ARK, living the best life they could possibly have at this point. But Simon isn’t satisfied with this answer. Catherine again tries to explain it via the coin flip, but Simon won’t hear it. And to be fair, the coin flip was always a lie anyway. They - their current selves - would always remain here. Catherine always understood this, and understood that, to get Simon to play along, she would have to tell him this lie. There was never going to be a chance that they could escape Earth. She insists that they did the right thing, but all Simon can think about is the fact that he’s still here, while his copy is living the good life now. She pleads with him to think of it as having saved something of the hundreds of thousands of years of human history, but he will not hear it. Once again, he lashes out at her in desperation, telling her to go fuck herself. Just as she is about to respond with what seems like hours and hours of frustration she deliberately held back, the power cuts. Everything goes dark. Pathos-II has finally given up the ghost, and Catherine, who was logged into the system, is gone. All is silent. Simon cries out to her, but there is no answer. There will never be another answer. They parted on the worst of terms, and now everything is quiet. Simon is alone. Forever.
Fuck my life. This ending has got to be the bleakest shit I have ever seen. There is literally no fate I could imagine worse than this. Death would be a million times preferable than this. Imagine the sheer and utter horror of being the last sentient being on earth, and you’re not even allowed the privilege to die. You just have to wait until your mechanical body finally gives in after what might be hundreds or thousands of years. To wander the ruins of a once lively planet, now reduced to ashes and black seas. Poor Simon. He was an idiot, but he didn’t deserve this.
But, there is a silver lining. The ARK did manage to launch into space, and is fully functional. So what about the other Simon? In the very final section of the game we open on Simon-4, who is just coming to terms with finally being on the ARK. It’s a beautiful place, and there seems to be nothing wrong with it. There is no evil irony at play here, and Catherine didn’t double cross him. This really is the best they could’ve hoped for. Not only are they here, but presumably everyone else from Pathos-II that got their brain scanned is here as well. Now humanity can enjoy what little it has left inside this ARK, floating around the universe for many thousands of years from now.
While I do like this ending for the characters, I feel like it undercuts the horror of the main ending for Simon-3 a little too much. It’s too easy to simply forget about Simon-3 when you can tell yourself that Simon-4 is doing fine. It’s not terrible, and it doesn’t ruin the ending or whatever, but I wonder if there was a way to work this aspect into the ending without it feeling too sappy. Maybe opening on the ARK first, only to then reveal that Simon-3 and his Catherine are still on the bottom of the ocean.
So, that was SOMA’s narrative. I’m still processing a lot of this story and I still find myself thinking about it a lot even a good month after finishing this game. I certainly would like to experience this plot again some time in the future, whenever I have forgotten enough to warrant going through the whole game again. The thing is, I’m not sure whether or not I’ll maybe settle for a Let’s Play instead of playing it myself, because the best parts of this game happen whenever you’re simply listening in on dialogue or experience the narrative via the environmental storytelling. I can honestly say that the “gamey” aspects of SOMA are so weak, and the stealth-horror sections so obnoxious that I can’t really imagine playing it myself any time soon. Maybe I’ll get my girlfriend to play it some time in the future lol
That being said, before I finish this review I have to go over a few other individual aspects of SOMA that warrant a critical look or special note.
Let’s begin with something that’s perhaps a little subjective, and may very well be related to the PC I played it on, although I should mention that it well exceeded the recommended requirements listed on Steam. I experienced a lot of visual glitches, and at first the game was barely playable due to severe aliasing to the point where I could barely tell what was happening in front of me. When I turned V-Sync on it suddenly tanked my framerate to somewhere below 20. Playing around with the graphical setting for 30ish minutes, I finally managed to get a decently stable 40ish FPS going with only some occasional aliasing, but my PC is able to run games like the 2023 System Shock remake at a stable 60 FPS at 1080p without any issues what so ever, so I’m afraid this very much seems like yet another instance of terrible PC optimisation, and it’s sad to see that it’s been 8 years since release and it has never been fixed. I also have to point out just how absurdly long the game takes to boot up on my PC. The initial loading screen usually takes upwards of 3-5 minutes, which is completely insane if you ask me. I did not experience a loading screen like that on this PC with any other game I have ever played. So the performance sadly isn’t anything to write home about.
While I have already thoroughly explained my problems with SOMA’s general gameplay, there are some minor issues, or maybe even just nitpicks concerning the narrative as well.
The main cast of Simon and Catherine both deliver fantastic, believable and emotionally rich performances, but the rest are a little more hit or miss. There aren’t any in here that I would describe as downright bad, but there is a notable discrepancy between the main cast and everyone else. It’s more like, Cath and Simon are fantastic, the rest are ok.
I also found some parts of the dialogue perhaps a little too quippy and sarcastic for the situation that both main characters are in. For Catherine it makes a little more sense, since she’s characterised as pretty aloof and perhaps even a little egotistical, but Simon should have no business being as sassy as he comes across some scenes. I understand that they probably wanted to take the edge off some parts of the story and have it feel a little more human, but this just ends up feeling inauthentic.
Finally I want to talk about Simon as a character. He’s kind of weird. Overall, I really like him, and I think that his reaction to most of the things he sees is very relatable and sympathetic. However, I think that his sheer inability to grasp the concept of a simple copy+paste process goes a little beyond what is believable for me. If the writers wanted to make the point that Simon flat out refuses to believe/accept that there are multiple versions of him, they probably shouldn’t have included the scene where Simon-3 is forced to decide where to dispose of Simon-2 or not. So Simon clearly is capable of understanding the process, but he still acts surprised at the end that he’s still here. I know Catherine even says that she can’t do anything against his wilful ignorance before she gets cut off. Some fans have argued that the fact that Simon has to exist in make-shift bodies has rendered his mental capacity flawed, or that his brain injury from the accident in the beginning affected his scanned version as well. Personally I am inclined to believe that he simply isn’t very smart and really does struggle with comprehending the reality of more Simons at once.
Speaking of his accident, I did find it weird how everything to do with Ashley, the accident, his brain injury and even his head bleeding seemingly never comes up again after the beginning. I know that there’s a very brief dream sequence in which Simon is back at his apartment for a couple of seconds and we can see Ashley with her back turned to us. All she says that it’s all over now and we should relax. That is the extent to which SOMA’s story comes back to this and I don’t understand it. I can’t even really criticise it because I feel like I’m simply missing something here. It almost feels like the game itself just kinda forgot about all of that. And it’s so weird because the intro frames all of these events as extremely important. Simon is clearly filled with guilt about the accident, since he was responsible for the death of his friend, whom he also had a crush on. Why does that never come up again? I 100% expected to maybe recognise something about Ashley in Catherine, or something like that. Like, maybe Catherine somehow reminds him of her. Or why does the imagery of Simon’s head bleeding under stress never end up as relevant again? It just feels like all but the fact that Simon died in 2015 is kinda irrelevant to the rest of the story, and I don’t want to believe that’s the case, so I choose to believe that I’m simply missing something.
Well, that’s about all I have for SOMA. Once again, this review ended up a lot longer than I had initially planned, but I realised that I did have quite a lot to say about it after all. It’s definitely an extremely interesting experience, and a must play for all fans of slower paced, emotional and psychological horror - or rather, it’s story is. I firmly believe that this game would be better as a pure walking simulator, free from any pretensions of stealth gameplay or puzzles, because both of these elements border the line to “awful” at times.
It’s kinda hard to rate a game like this. The story is one of the best in the medium, and the gameplay is some of the worst. The story is a triumph, the gameplay a failure. Ultimately, SOMA did manage to make me think about it a lot over the last couple of weeks, and that’s just about the highest praise I can give it.
7 / 10
2023
Lies of P is without a doubt the best Souls-like not made by FromSoftware. Hard-as-nails combat, amazing art direction, fantastic level design and just an unbelievable amount of love and care. While there is room for improvement, it’s amazing to see how much NeoWiz got just right on their very first attempt.
9 / 10 .
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. [SPOILER WARNING - This review/critique will discuss close to all aspects of Lies of P, including its story, themes and endings. This isn’t a game that will be necessarily ruined by spoilers but beware regardless and play the game first if you haven’t already!]
It's not often that a newcomer manages to compete with a master, especially when that master happens to be one of the most accomplished game studios of all time. It's even rarer that such a newcomer might even surpass that master in some aspects. I've played other Souls-likes; Nioh, Ashen, Remnant, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, etc. But none of these games come even close to what Lies of P is doing.
I love the Soulsborne games. It’s my favourite game series ever made. Nothing comes even close to the type of satisfaction and fun they give me. From combat to level design to aesthetics, lore, music, stories, characters, etc. It often feels like they were made for me specifically. So of course whenever I see yet another company try to hop on the Souls-like wagon, I tend to get a little protective. And I would argue, not without reason. But Lies of P is different.
This game has a special place in my heart, because it showed me something. It showed me that the possibility that other people making games in this genre that are just as good as the games that Hidetaka Miyazaki & co. make does exist. It showed me that not every attempt at a Souls-like has to be something like Lords of the Fallen (the older one) or Mortal Shell, either taking a cheap crack at cashing in on a trendy formula, or a well-meaning but sadly incompetent attempt to translate the work of a team of extremely talented individuals into something the scale of a small indie title. For over 10 years, it seemed genuinely impossible that something like Lies of P could even exist. And I have to admit, it didn’t immediately wow me from the first moment on either.
I remember when the first few trailers for this game came out in autumn 2021, and I was.. sceptical to say the least. I had just recently tried the Nioh games, and bouncing off of them left a really sour taste in my mouth. As a matter of fact, every single Souls-like I tried out by this point had been disappointing. And the Nioh games were supposed to be the good ones! Sure, this game looked nice. But would it play even half as well? We’ve all seen it before - game looks fantastic in the trailer, and plays nothing like it when you actually download it. We would have to wait and see.
Come the demo in early-2023, I remember playing it for 3 hours and being a bit underwhelmed. Back then a lot of the combat still felt very rough, with dodges being basically useless, parries trapping you in place, lots of enemies sliding across the floor as if on ice, etc. The demo was better than I had initially expected, but overall I wasn't blown away by it either. There were definitely some highlights, like the Scrapped Watchman boss fight, which was the final enemy you’d fight int the demo. And while that last fight did make me appreciate what they were going for more than just about anything else in the demo, I kinda wrote the game off as "yet another one of those" and forgot about it, until release.
When this game finally released in fall of 2023, I could not believe the critical reception. People LOVED this game, Souls-fans especially. Critics adored it, and heaped praise on it in a manner usually reserved only for the real deal. Even Joseph Anderson, harshest of all online video game critics, uncharacteristically had barely anything negative to say about it. Naturally, this intrigued me beyond belief. This man had just last year released a video in which he seriously tore into Elden Ring, one of the most universally beloved video games of all time, and THIS game he loved so much he could not find anything bad to say about it.
I sadly didn’t have enough money to buy it on release, so I kinda forgot about it yet again until it finally went on sale in February 2024. I bought it, downloaded it and played it. And as you might imagine from the tone of this review so far, I fucking loved it. It is almost unbelievably good. It’s so good, in fact, that I am in sheer disbelief a game like Lies of P hasn’t been made much, much sooner. This really is the best Souls-like out there by a mile and then some. And that is even more impressive when you consider how much smaller Neowiz is when compared to FromSoftware AND that this was the first real video game they ever made. A small Korean independent development team with no prior experience, and their first game is good enough to be directly compared to something like Demon’s Souls. But that also means that it’s only fair to apply a similar level of criticism and objectivity to Lies of P than we do with its forebears. I will be comparing this game directly to the Soulsborne games a lot here, so if that bothers you, here’s your warning.
While this game is amazing, it’s not perfect, and there are definitely areas Neowiz could improve upon for a sequel, spiritual successor or even just expansions for the main game.
Usually in a review like this, I’d typically go over all the positive aspects first, and then the negatives, but I think this review will flow better if I go through the individual aspects of the game, and talk about what works and doesn’t work instead.
Let’s start with what is perhaps the most controversial aspect about Lies of P:
DIFFICULTY
I’m going to be completely honest upfront and say that I think that - on average - Lies of P might potentially be harder than any Souls-game on your first playthrough, even Sekiro. I think it may genuinely be too hard for some people, even if they have prior experience with FromSoft games. Of course difficulty is 100% subjective, and I’ve seen people say they found this game easier than even something like the original Dark Souls or Demon’s Souls, and others found it so hard they dropped it at around the halfway point or even earlier.
I’m not yet sure where I fall exactly. As of writing this review I’ve finished the game twice, once normally and then again with the same character on New Game Plus. There are individual things like certain boss fights or specific levels in other Souls-games and -likes that gave me more trouble than any particular thing or boss here (cough Malenia cough), but the way the Lies of P experience stays consistently brutal all the way to the end is unmatched by anything else.
I did play through the whole game with a DEX build, blind, and without summons, and I’ll say I found it incredibly difficult at times. At first, this was just because of the normal learning curve; I didn’t really understand how the game wants you to play, and so I died an embarrassing amount of times on the first few bosses. At around the halfway point the knot finally loosened and I understood the combat system properly… and still got my ass handed to me by every boss. Even if you understand what the game wants from you, you only realise just how tall the order you were given even is. A lot of what these bosses demand from you goes far beyond what any Souls boss would want from you. In Souls games, you’ll often come across a boss or two that you’ll take out on your first attempt, even if it’s your first time playing the game. That is NOT the case here. Every major boss feels like something a FromSoftware game would throw at you during the endgame or in a DLC. This game drops a Sister Friede-level boss at you around the half-way point, and an honest-to-god Malenia/Sword Saint Isshin-level boss towards the end. Every boss wants you to really sit down and learn their move sets. There is no magic or ranged system to cheese them with, there are no hidden exploits, there’s no real way to power-creep past these guys; you really, truly have to “get good” as it were.
Most of this difficulty is ultimately fair. The majority of it is possible to overcome by simple trial and error and good reaction times, but there are some aspects that I feel artificially inflate some of it:
I think the absurd tracking of some enemies and bosses is a bit too much. It’s not fun to perfectly dodge out of the way of an attack, only for the enemy to instantly turn 180° in a single frame, or suddenly slide 5 meters towards you during the last hit of a combo. I know that the idea is to mostly parry enemies and this is meant to stop you from just spamming the dodge button, but I think it goes a little too far. It’s not helped by the fact that the parry window is extremely precise. What’s more is that you can’t spam the parry like you can in Sekiro, you really have to deliberately hold the button down for about half a second for each parry you do, which can be very daunting when some bosses have 12-hit combos. However I think my biggest gripe with the combat system is the complete lack of poise. Everything else I can excuse, but this is just not great design. Especially for heavier, slower weapons, the fact that not even the charge-R2 has any poise makes some encounters feel ludicrously difficult.
There is also the fact that you actually have to unlock a lot of basic quality of life features in the game like stringing together dodges, weapons degrading slower, decreasing the amount of incoming damage when blocking, etc. If you don’t understand this system, you’re going to have a rough time. I’ll get more into it later but I think that this could’ve been smoothed out a bit.
Finally, there are no optional side paths or alternative encounters you can do, meaning: If you get stuck on a boss, you are STUCK. There is no real way to come back with better gear and a higher level. If you get walled off by a boss, the only way through is to break that wall with your head. For some people, this is the quint-essential Souls-experience. And while I certainly enjoy learning a boss’ move-set if it’s fun and the boss is good, this can turn into a torturous experience when it isn’t.
And this leads me to the biggest criticism I have for the game:
WORLD & LEVEL DESIGN
So, I don’t know how controversial this opinion will be, but my biggest gripe far and away (that isn’t related to the nebulous concept of difficulty) is the fact that this game’s world design and structure are 100% linear. There are no secret areas, no secret bosses, no optional side paths, hell not even a quick diversion from the main path. You really do follow a straight line from beginning to end. I understand that Lies of P isn’t Dark Souls. I understand that this game isn’t meant to be a deep, cryptic and completely authentic experience in the same way as the Souls games, more than it focuses on combat above all else. I understand that the main idea was to create a satisfying and weighty combat system with lots of enemy variety and mechanical complexity. But despite me understanding all of this, it doesn’t change the fact that this is only half of the Souls-like experience for me.
Let’s imagine two typical Souls-players playing Elden Ring. Player A plays these games less for the challenge and boss fights, and more for the experiential side of it. They scour the map for optional areas, explore every nook and cranny and systematically become more powerful as a result of their spelunking. Player B will instead start a new character, pick the big stick weapon, and will run in a straight line towards Stormveil Castle without exploring the world at all, with the goal of fighting Margit with an under levelled weapon for an hour until they finally do it. Player A carefully explores each level, grabs every item they find, talk to every NPC to come across and engage in all the activities of each level. Player B instead runs past everything, engaging with nothing that isn’t absolutely necessary and focus all of their attention on the boss fights. [That is not meant as a qualitative statement btw, both approaches are equally valid.]
Lies of P is definitely a game meant for Player B more than it is for Player A. That is not to say that Player A won’t have fun here. I had a ton of fun moving through the levels and fighting all the smaller bad guys and occasional mini-bosses. But I really missed the feeling of finding something that the devs deliberately hid from me, like Ash Lake in Dark Souls or the Upper Cathedral Ward in Bloodborne. There is only a single, very small optional area in the game, although it really is more of a side-path if anything, and it’s not that easy to miss if you pay at least a little attention to the side quests in this game. The only thing to do there is to loot a few items and then leave again. If you’re the type of player that just wishes for those good old Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls 1 days, and you’re really just looking for that experience to fill this Metroidvania-world-design shaped void that those games left, you’re gonna be sorely disappointed.
All of this is not to say that there isn’t beauty and wonder and interesting things to be found in Krat, the city/land that Lies of P takes place in. The art direction is truly fantastic here, and easily rivals the likes of FromSoftware, Bethesda, CD Projekt Red, etc. The city of Krat feels equal parts real and fantastical. A mixture of early 1900’s belle-epoch era France, with some cultural influence from a steam-punk-ified Italy. Somewhere in between beautiful historical snapshot and fantastical, larger-than-life energy, Krat is as idiosyncratic as it is familiar. From your usual, Yharnam-esque cityscape, to forest paths ending in a cathedral, a large puppet factory, a shopping mall to a grandiose opera house, to a grand exhibition, a poison swamp, a deserted island and much more. The world’s levels are varied and beautiful and fit incredibly well into the vibe the game creates. While, yes, the fact that every level does follow another in a straight line is a bit disappointing, it needs to be pointed out that the amount of levels is quite impressive. This game is quite a bit longer than you’d imagine, I would say it feels similar in length to Sekiro or Bloodborne (without DLC) and considering that it’s nothing short of impressive how solid the quality stays throughout.
While the general world design is more or less a straight line, the individual levels fare a bit better. There is enough variety here to make every locale feel distinct and memorable. Perhaps one of the best things about Lies of P’s level design is how enemy placement generally works. There isn’t a single spot in the whole game that feels like the enemies were put there haphazardly. Each and every enemy encounter feels purposeful and curated. There is no “100 Taurus Demons in Lost Izalith” situation here. It’s also impressive how seamlessly areas connect to each other, despite how linear they are. Playing through Lies of P, you’re basically walking in a circle around the whole municipality, and the game goes out of its way to create beautiful vistas that give a feeling of how far you’ve travelled already.
Sadly I do have to criticise how formulaic some of the actual design for most levels is. Every level feels the exact same when it comes to how you actually progress through them. I know this sounds like a weird complaint so let me explain:
Imagine every level as a circle with a specific starting point, where you complete one rotation, which unlocks a shortcut to the starting point, which in turn lets you progress further without losing any progresss you already cleared, itself introducing another circle you have to complete to get back to the checkpoint, and so on. Standard stuff, and honestly by itself there is nothing wrong with this design - especially since Lies of P is very reminiscent of Demon’s Souls when it comes to HOW those shortcuts look like. In Dark Souls or Bloodborne, you’re typically either opening a one-way-door or activate an elevator. That’s it. The Souls games rarely get more creative than that, other than Demon’s Souls. In the latter, you’d have more unconventional ideas for shortcuts, like redirecting water in a mine to flood an area that is filled with lava, making the lava harden and cool off enough for you to easily get back to the shortcut AND progress further. Lies of P takes a lot of cues from this approach in particular, like pushing a brazier down a hallway filled with toxic sludge, burning it and freeing the way to the boss, and I love that. What I don’t love as much is how literally every single level works this exact same way. Every single level works by this formula. Fight enemies, find the shortcut, progress. Repeat until you find the boss. There are no levels where the challenge is to get through in a single run, there are no areas where you can take either one of two paths, no areas which you can skip by knowing the geometry very well, etc. It all feels a bit… formulaic. There are also only a tiny handful of little secrets you can find within levels, and almost all of them require you to come back later in your playthrough, even though nothing in the main story OR the world design suggests that you should ever have to come back to previous locations. This honestly feels like a weird, vestigial element from Souls games that simply doesn’t fit the formula they made for themselves.
All of this would be a problem in a lesser game, but luckily Lies of P has such a strong vision of what it wants to achieve that it’s very obvious that all of this, the level design, the world, the story, literally everything in this game, is second to what this game does best above all others; the combat.
COMBAT
Let’s begin with the absolute basics. Lies of P is what I would call a “true” or “orthodox” Souls-like. And what I mean by that is that, instead of being simply inspired or influenced by the flow and rhythm or Souls combat, this game tries to fully emulate the “Souls” experience as closely as possible, while putting its own spin on it, of course. This isn’t just “take an ARPG and make it a bit Souls-y”, no, these guys truly did their homework regarding what makes this combat tick.
Lies of P generally takes elements from all of FromSoftware’s Souls-games, but the backbone of the experience is growing from the spine of two games in particular; Bloodborne and Sekiro. This decision is easily understandable, as both of them are generally regarded as having the best combat systems within the genre. Sekiro in particular seems to have been the foundation on which they built the rest. Let me explain.
Lies of P, much like Sekiro, sees its most important combat mechanic in the form of “deflection”. In the last 5 or so years, Sekiro has popularised this mechanic so much that I’m almost certain that even if you never played that game, you have definitely played at least one game with that mechanic in there. Wo-Long, Metroid Dread, Ghost of Tsushima, Grime, Jedi: Fallen Order, Thymesia, etc. And those are just the most popular examples within that genre. And much like Sekiro, it is absolutely essential that you learn this ability in Lies of P. But this game puts a few twists on this system.
First off, deflecting isn’t your only option, you also have the ability to simply block attacks. The catch is that this game starts you off with what would be hard-mode in Sekiro, aka playing without Kuro’s Charm. This means that blocking instead of perfectly deflecting attacks will give you chip damage for every attack not deflected. This alone might be reason enough for some people to call this game harder than Sekiro, but the devs aren’t being unreasonable here. Instead, they give you something very similar to the “rally” system in Bloodborne, which allowed you to recover some health after being hit by an enemy but attacking them back, which in turn allowed you to always stay a bit more aggressive and in-your-face. But here in Lies of P, this only applies if you block incoming attacks instead of deflecting them. So essentially, even if you’re not perfect at dodging or deflecting every single attack in the game, this does not mean that this will always result in you losing a set amount of health for it. This is a perfect addition to the core combat and feeds into its design goals, namely taking Souls-combat back to its methodical and deliberate roots. This game does not like it when you’re greedy at all. Instead it wants you to very carefully pick your attack timings, and let enemy aggression be your best weapon.
Deflecting attacks and getting your own in - especially charged heavy attacks - will eventually result in the enemy’s posture breaking, which will allow you to land a critical hit. A perfect deflection seems to me to be about as effective as half a charged R2 or Fable art, so if you’re a deflect-god, you’re going to be constantly breaking the enemy’s guard as a reward. But this isn’t the only benefit. You can actually destroy enemy weapons in this game. Sadly this isn’t true for every enemy in the game, but the general rule seems to be that if they’re holding an actual weapon that isn’t part of their body or is somehow ethereal/energy based, then you are able to destroy it by deflecting it enough (and/or through a status effect called “corrosion”, although you’ll still need to land at least a couple of deflects for it to work). Admittedly, it does require a lot of skill for this to even become a very noticeable mechanic. On my first playthrough, I don’t think I managed to break a single enemy weapon other than perhaps the most minor of fodder-types. On my NG+ run however, I broke their weapons left and right. It is genuinely one of the most satisfying feelings in any of these games and I seriously hope FromSoftware are taking notes here. The catch here is that your weapons are just as prone to break mid-combat as your enemies’. For this the game gives you an infinitely usable grindstone, which restores your weapon’s durability relatively quickly by holding down the button. Outside of boss fights, this is barely even a mechanic worth bringing up, but during boss fights or otherwise intense encounters this can get quite tricky to manage.
While we’re on the topic of weapons, let’s talk about one of the best and most creative weapon systems I’ve ever seen in any game period. I think I still prefer Bloodborne’s trick weapons ever so slightly but this is about as close as it gets. Every weapon in this game is made up of 2 parts; the “blade”, and the “hilt”. “Blade” in this case simply simply means “part that does damage”, they don’t have to be literal blades. They range from traditional(-ish) swords and daggers to superheated “1000° red hot knife vs butter” type cleavers, a poisoned crystal spear, an electric buzzsaw, a clock hand, a drill bit, a multi-pronged spear made out of a city sign, etc. You can pick any of these “blades” and put them on any hilt. The hilts are what determines the weapons move-set and scaling, so in essence, this is your actual weapon. The “blades” just determine which type of damage is being dealt. What’s better is that scaling in this game ONLY affects the damage you’re dealing with a weapon. There are NO hard stat requirements for ANY weapon in the game. Even if you’re a full-on Strength build, you can still use and experiment with all kinds of Dexterity or Advance based weapons. I’ll go a bit more in detail concerning stats in a later section, but this is all you need to know as far as weapons go.
Sadly, all of this isn’t quite as flexible as it sounds due to the game splitting up ALL attack motions into 2 camps: Thrust and Slash. Weapons are either good at thrusting, good at slashing, or both. If the blade-type isn’t proficient in the movement-type the hill prefers, the weapon becomes unusable as a whole. The problem could be something like you really liking a certain hammer-“blade” and wanting to put it on a specific hilt, but the hilt features one or two thrust moves, so now it’s useless. Maybe this could be fixed by allowing the movesets of hilts themselves to be customised or something like that. But this is a relatively minor complaint.
A thing that really bums me out and really hurts overall build variety is how exceedingly rare upgrade materials are across the board. Lies of P is unbelievably stingy when it comes to weapon upgrades, and doubly so with cranks, which allow you to alter a weapon hilt’s scaling. Seriously, these cranks are ludicrously rare. You only get like 4-5 cranks per affinity per playthrough, which would be ok if there weren’t certain weapons that want 2 cranks from you. This is compounded by the fact that they don’t really seem to be able to, say, turn a Strength-based weapon into a Dex-based weapon, more than they are meant to simply enhance a weapon’s scaling. So, basically, turn a weapon that scales with A in Dex to one that scales with S. Make a weapon that’s already good even better.
On any single playthrough, you won’t get to upgrade more than perhaps 4-5 weapons fully when there are close to 40 weapons in this game. This seems incredibly at odds with the “pick up and experiment” nature of the rest of the game. Even more so when you remember that you’re allowed to basically infinitely change your character stats after a certain point, even though those stats are arguably far less important to the damage you’re dealing than the state of your weapon. In my opinion, Lies of P’s upgrade system should work a lot more like Capcom’s recent Resident Evil 4 Remake, in which you can sell back your upgraded weapons and receive back almost all funds you put into upgrading it. It would gel amazingly well with the idea of you not needing to fuck around with arcane upgrade tables and simply get good at the video game. But instead we got a needlessly convoluted and gatekeep-y system that really didn’t need to be as restrictive as it ended up being. It very much seems like a purely vestigial design element from FromSoftware’s Souls games, which have a MUCH larger focus on exploration and character building.
One final, perhaps kind of weird complaint I have regarding the game’s weapon systems is related to the various boss weapons in this game; and no, it’s not that they’re underwhelming or bad or underpowered. In fact, the opposite is true. I think the boss weapons are a little too good. And no, this isn’t a “waaaah nerf the OP weapons so the casuals can’t play my hard game!!!” type complaint either; my problem is that they’re so good, and so fun and are so universally fantastic to use that, at some point, I had to practically force myself to use the vast majority of “normal” weapons. It felt like I was deliberately played on “underwater” mode, if that makes any sense. One weapon in particular, a sort of Katana you get some time after the half-way point, is so unbelievably strong and versatile that it’s objectively the best weapon in the game. Like, it’s really not even debatable. This single weapon has so many different abilities and perks, multiple attack types, 2 separate parry options, a ranged attack AND insane closing speed. It’s not really the feeling of “this weapon is soo strong that it feels like cheating”, it’s more of “wow all other weapons just seem kinda boring in comparison”. So perhaps the better way to phrase this would be to say, the normal main weapons need a lot more flash and stage-presence to be able to keep up with the boss weapons.
But the main weapons are of course not the only part of this combat system. Lies of P’s protagonist, much like Sekiro, has a prosthetic arm, which is called “Legion”. And where Sekiro’s prosthetic arm often felt more like an afterthought, Legion is a fully implemented mechanic which you can theoretically beat the whole game with. Much like the weapons, Legion has many different forms that scale off different stats and have different abilities. Starting with the clearly Sekiro-inspired grappling hook to a flame thrower, acid launcher, anti-personnel mine deployer or even just a straight up grenade launcher. It’s a fantastic addition to the main combat loop, especially when fully upgraded.
And you’d be remiss if you completely ignored the many, many consumable and throwable items this game offers to struggling players. Other than Dark Souls, throwable items like firebombs are actually really good in Lies of P, and can often make the difference in beating specific boss fights that may have been a little too tough otherwise. They’re clearly meant to be more of a compromise for the fact that you don’t have ANY ranged combat abilities outside of 2 Legion variants - and even those only have very short range. You’re completely free to ignore them, but they can make a lot of fights in the game a lot more manageable.
So, you can tell that this game really does give you a lot of tools and options to tackle any situation in front of you, and as you might have gathered from the section about difficulty before, that isn’t without reason. This game really is quite hard. And it is more so than most FromSoft games because you truly are required to “get good”. There is no way around the boss fights in this game other than learning their movesets, getting better at the combat system and being on your A-game. There aren’t any cheese strats for any boss in this game that I’m aware of. They really do want you to sit down and truly learn their moves.
Luckily those boss fights are exceptionally good for the most part, and I do mean that in the most literal form possible. They truly are the odd one out from just about any other Souls-like out there. No other Souls-like has boss fights that are even remotely on this level. In terms of general overall quality of these fights, I think that Lies of P is absolutely comparable to even FromSoftware themselves. Where FromSoft will always have 2-3 bosses per game that I absolutely fucking hate, I cannot say the same here. And, on the flip side, as far as highlights go it 100% can compete with the original, and I would say it handily surpasses Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 1 and maybe even Dark Souls 2, it’s roughly on the same footing as Bloodborne (without DLC) and only behind Elden Ring, Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro. For what is, again, their FIRST attempt at ANY video game, this is maddeningly impressive. Ever played a game that was so good it made you angry? Like “there HAS to be something wrong here, no way that this really is this good”.
I think there are only 2 (3 if we’re being technical) bosses that kinda rub me the wrong way. I mean both Black Rabbit Brotherhood fights, and the Door Guardian. The Black Rabbit Brotherhood are widely considered the worst boss in this game, and it’s easy to see why, since both fights are simply very poorly balanced gank fights in which the challenge is more about constantly running around the arena trying to avoid two enemies who simultaneously attack you. Honestly a fairly standard “bad Souls boss”. It’s a trap even FromSoftware step into often enough. What I think is a genuinely even more flawed boss however, is the Door Guardian. A hulking brute with a massive (unbreakable) weapon that inflicts the “Shock” special status effect on you with every single hit. Special status effects apply instantly and remain for a given amount of time, depending on how much build up an attack has. I really dislike all of these “special” status effect, but Shock is by far the worst. It reduces your stamina regeneration by something ridiculous like 80%, and the bar takes WAY too long to go down. In effect, this forces you to back off and simply wait. And that is just terribly boring. You can’t attack, you can’t deflect, you can’t dodge, you can only walk slowly and wait.
Luckily, these are just about the only bad ones I can remember, and when this game’s bosses are good, they are REALLY good.
I can’t talk about all of them or I’d be here all day, but my top 3 are Laxasia the Complete, Nameless Puppet and Romeo, King of Puppets. Each one of them feels like something you’d see in a Dark Souls DLC, which is about the highest praise I can physically give them. They genuinely gave me the feeling that someone finally cracked the code, finally understood what makes Souls boss fights so good, so thrilling. I also particularly like the “real first” boss, the Scrapped Watchman. I touched on it in the beginning, but this fight was made made me “get” Lies of P, and got me excited for the full release after the demo.
So, the bosses are fantastic, and the combat system on the side of the player is generally great. But I always say that a combat system can only ever be as good as the enemies you use it against. So how does this game stack up with the general enemies? The mobs? The ads?
Fucking fantastic, that’s how. Once again, this development team seem to have cracked the FromSoft code, and filled this whole game to the brim with so many unique, twisted and lively enemies from the lowliest grunts to terrifying mini-bosses who make your life a living hell. Each and every one of these is fantastically animated, their attack animations are (mostly) telegraphed very well, and their hitboxes and frame-data is very polished. Of course, there are minor hiccups here and there, like a bit too many enemies having awkward “ice-skating” animations, where they’ll inch toward you during attack animations without actually moving their feet, enemies can attack through walls like in Dark Souls but you can’t, and some of them have some pretty absurd stats even on normal NG, but it needs to be once again stated that there truly is NO Souls-like on this level out there. These enemies are generally fantastic to engage with, and are even more varied.
There are literally hundreds of enemies in this game, and they’re all very unique and deliberately animated. This might sound overwhelming, but there is a system to this.
Enemies come in 3 types; Puppet, Carcass and Human - although the latter are so rare and specific that they admittedly barely count. Puppets are the most common enemy type you will find in the game, and are the main antagonistic force of Lies of P’s story - or, so you are being led to believe at first. Later, you will encounter zombie-like enemies that are what happens to victims of the Petrification Disease when not properly disposed of. The few remaining humans in this game are highly trained Stalkers, vigilantes who either fight against the puppet frenzy, or use the chaos to pillage the town.
Each one of these has multiple subdivisions that feature unique attack animations or elemental affiliations, and are (mostly) specific to the area you find them in. The game also does a fantastic job at slowly introducing them to you one after the other, so you never get overwhelmed by too many new enemies, and you’re also never running into the feeling that you’ve seen the current enemies too much already. Again, even FromSoftware needs to take a look at this and perhaps think about it a bit. While humans really only come in the form of “NPC fights” (like Bloodborne’s “Hunters” or Dark Souls’ “Phantoms”) or full on boss fights, puppets and carcasses come in all shapes and sizes from small, weak fodder scrubs, to your average standard “knight” type enemy to terrifying and ferocious mini-bosses that are - for the most part - 100% unique to the area you find them in. There are individual enemies without health bars or names that only appear a single time in the entire game that are more thought out and mechanically interesting than some full on boss fights in some Souls games. This keeps things really fresh as (at least on your first playthrough) you never quite know what to expect from any level. Later on, these 2 categories will even start fusing with each other, creating many different forms of zombie-puppets, who will take on aspects of both.
I will admit that I’m not the biggest fan of the Stalker enemies. They're clearly intended to be equivalent to Bloodborne's Hunters specifically. They do have similar abilities to the player and some of them are more fun to fight than others but they all share the same design issues where they all have plenty of poise while you have none, they can attack non stop and some of their attacks can be suspiciously hard to parry, implying that maybe they're not all super polished. But on the other hand, they can all be easily backstab-cheesed if you can't be bothered to learn their move set. Overall they're fine. Not particularly bad but not my favourite either.
Back to the 3 big groups; each of these enemy types has a certain elemental weakness; Puppets hate electricity, Carcasses hate fire, and humans hate acid. This is what makes putting points into Advance actually very worthwhile. So if you’re struggling with any specific area, it’s wise to bring weapons that have damage type most enemies in the area are weak to. And ultimately, you’re going to want your character the right way for that. But building your character isn’t only about which stats you level, you get an entire new system additionally to that.
P-ORGAN & RPG SYSTEM
So, Lies of P has a skill tree system called the “P-Organ”, and it’s pretty interesting. Yes, that really is what it’s called. No, I’m not sure whether the dev team were aware of how this would sound to westerners. If I remember correctly, the “Fable arts” were also originally called “P-Energy”, so maybe they really did not consider how ridiculous a name that would be.
Gameplay wise, I think it’s generally a cool addition to the core loop, and I like how you’re progressively unlocking everything with certain upgrade items - called Quartz - you could potentially miss, so not every character will look the same by the end, but there are some elements that are a bit strange, and I’m not just talking about the name.
It works like this:
You have a tree of badges you can unlock. Each badge contains a skill or QoL improvement like “Gain +1 amulet slot”, “Gain +1 use of healing flask”, “Deal more damage with Fable attacks”, etc, and is made up of 2-4 nodes, each representative of 1 quartz. To unlock these skills, simply trade in enough quartz. What makes this especially cool is that each node also contains a skill additionally to the main skill you’re in the process of unlocking. So if you have a badge with 4 nodes, you effectively have 5 new abilities for the price of one. Each of these nodes can be fitted with an ability from 1 of 4 classes; Attack, Survival, Ability and Item. You can only pick one of them per badge, so you have to pick one of each class for each badge. Simple enough.
My problems with it mostly stem from how many of these options are totally useless, and how a lot of the ones that aren’t as useless are unlockable abilities in the first place, instead of coming with the base character. The most obvious one would be the fact that you need to unlock the ability to string together dodges. To be quite fair, you can unlock this ability very early on, but I still think that this really should be part of the core move-set. Another one would be the ability to shortly stagger smaller enemies upon a successful deflection. While this might not be as necessary to returning players, I think that the fact that SO many people struggle so much with literally the most fundamental aspect of the entire combat system might have something to do with the fact that deflecting enemies really doesn’t reward you anywhere near as much as it does with all of these quality of life improvements already unlocked.
It doesn’t necessarily break the game or anything like that, but it is something a sequel or future patch could solve. In the past, another ability you had to actually unlock was the ability to quickly roll out of the way after being knocked to the ground. If you hadn’t unlocked this ability, certain enemies like the big, burning shovel wielding robots could stun-lock and keep you grounded indefinitely. Clearly the devs were listening to criticism back then, so perhaps this will get updated in the future as well.
Before we move on to this game’s story and themes, I want to briefly go into more detail concerning the RPG systems of this game. I think that this is perhaps where future games in the franchise might cut even more access fat from this experience. And what I mean by that is; I really think that the choice to feature stats in this game was a mistake. I think that this game would’ve benefitted much more from a more in-depth skill tree which would maybe actually give you new abilities. Similarly to the upgrade system (although not to the same extent) I regard the fact that you still have to level up with XP farmed from enemies to increase certain stats so you do a tiny bit more damage with a certain weapon as a purely vestigial element. This isn’t organic to Lies of P, it’s the remains of a much more RPG-focused game called “Dark Souls” that got carried over. Weapons don’t require stats. Stats make barely a difference when it comes to damage, at least much less than upgrading weapons. There are no spells, and no special abilities that are tied to stats - so why even feature them at all?
I think the fact that my least favourite aspects of this game are all elements that strike me as vestigial is a testament to the fact how good and creative the team at Neowiz really is. If my main criticism of your Souls-clone is “it’s too much like Dark Souls”, then you’re doing something right.
STORY
Finally, I want to talk about the story and themes of Lies of P. Just a few things right off the bat: I am not all that familiar with the actual Pinocchio stories written by Carlo Collodi. I know of them, I am aware that there are a few differences between that version and the one popularised by Disney, especially when it comes to tone and themes. All I know is that this game heavily references the writings of Collodi in its text, and as such I don’t feel qualified to really go into detail concerning that. Instead, I’ll just talk freely about the things that jumped out at me, and whether I liked them or not.
As far as this game’s main plot goes, it’s surprisingly decent. I’m saying surprising because my interest and investment in the story were cultivated despite a rather amateurish way of actually conveying most information to you, and despite it all being unfortunately very predictable. It’s much stronger with its themes and ideas though.
The opening hours of Lies of P are definitely really good at creating a strong sense of suspense and shock right at the start. The team here definitely took a solid chunk out of FromSoft’s playbook for environmental story telling. The cold, dark and damp Krat Central Station you saw as you stepped out of the train cart you first awoke in. The slow but devastating reveal of just massive the casualties of the puppet frenzy truly were. It all works rather well by itself. So it’s a shame that the devs seemingly felt like this wasn’t enough to fully convey the game’s story and plot, and perhaps they were right in that regard. However, the truth is that all of the expositional dialogue and character quips really aren’t playing to Neowiz’ strengths. And I’m not only talking about Gemini here, who already is rather infamous within the Lies of P community as perhaps the most annoying character in the whole game. I find that a lot of the actual dialogues and monologues you’re being treated to simply lack depth and refinement. Much of it is overly quippy and in stark contrast to the very orthodox Souls-ian atmosphere the devs try to conjure. In general and in summary you could say that the actual written word is perhaps the weakest part of Lies of P’s writing.
Upon beating the tutorial boss and finally standing in front of Hotel Krat’s mighty doors, we are met with a question by the hotel’s automatic security system: “Are you human?”
And this is where the other big signature game mechanic, and arguably the most important story element comes into play: P is the only puppet in the world that has the ability to lie. And to enter Hotel Krat, we must put that ability to the test. No matter how you feel about telling lies, here it is most often the most advantageous choice to make, but more on that later.
Entering the hotel we finally meet Sophia, this game’s Fire Keeper, or Emerald Herald, or Maiden in Black, or what have you. She will be our guide and method of levelling up. (at least for now) Sophia also informs us of our next immediate goal; saving Gepetto. We learn that Gepetto is the creator of ALL puppet technology in Krat, and as such is the only person that could possibly put a stop to all of this… and if you’ve played even a single Souls game in your life, you already know from this moment on that Gepetto will be revealed to be the final antagonist. But like so often, the journey is more important than the destination, so let’s put this aside for now, and continue with the other important Hotel Krat NPCs. Most importantly you have Eugenié, a friendly blacksmith and tinkerer who gladly offers her services, loves some small talk and thinks the world of you. Next, you have “old friend to Gepetto” Lady Antonia, an aging but still elegant dame of status, who will provide us with hints and stories about Krat and its people. Next is Lady Antonia’s puppet butler, Polendina, who serves as your typical shopkeep. While these are all the people you can talk to at first, this hub area will receive more people as time goes on, most importantly, the eccentric inventor, business owner, personal friend to Gepetto and richest man in town Lorenzini Venigni and his puppet butler Pulcinella, the sketchy treasure hunter Alidoro and… uh, some soldier from another town whose name I keep forgetting because she really isn’t all that important or does anything noteworthy.
Back to the plot; Sophia tells us that we must save Gepetto from Elysion Boulevard, one of the city’s seedier corners. Though whatever social inequity may have once put a stranglehold on this part of town is now long gone along with most human life. It is on the bridge over to Krat City Hall we discover our first Stalker, the Mad Donkey. Threatening Gepetto before our very eyes, naturally we must deliver this man a hefty dose of demise. This is where we understand that Gepetto regards us more like a son than a regular puppet, and he expresses how deeply important we are to him. Despite this, his very next action is to send us on a mission to retrieve Venigni from the Puppet Factory, since he might know how to stop the puppet frenzy - or at least, who’s behind it.
After successfully saving Venigni from the factory, we learn that a very special puppet seems to be behind it all - the King of Puppets. The king seems to be some sort of alpha-puppet that can command the other via the Ergo in the air - which is essentially crystallised life-energy that can be harnessed to power machinery with it. Before we get to him we must quickly make a detour to the city’s big cathedral just outside of town. This is where we meet the other main enemy type in this game for the first time; carcasses. Like I mentioned a while ago, this is what happens to people who die of the petrification disease who aren’t properly disposed of. I have to admit, I can’t really remember the exact plot reasons we need to come here specifically, but admittedly that isn’t super important. The area is cool, creepy and has some neat design.
I’ll fast forward to after we’ve beaten both the Cathedral area, as well as Malum District, simply because both don’t really seem to be terribly important when it comes to the actual plot. (Also, Malum District is a really short level) There are of course various NPC interactions, side quests and the like, as well as the introduction to Krat’s issues outside of the puppet frenzy, but the actual story doesn’t seem to progress until we’ve defeated the Black Rabbit Brotherhood, which might take the title for most annoying fight in the game, but that’s an aside. Two interesting things happen here. For one, we find a picture of a young teenage boy that looks a lot like us… to an eery degree. More importantly, we take an elevator up, and up, and up and after a while we begin to hear a familiar piece of music; it’s the Hotel Krat OST. We’ve managed to loop back around to the start. Normally this would be extremely impressive and probably my favourite moment in the game, but sadly the extremely linear nature of the game makes it a bit less impressive, had it been something you could’ve missed entirely. But there’s a reason for it being like this, because the next section of the game is locked behind a closed door in the hotel, which leads to Rosa Isabelle Street, which itself leads to the Opera house, where the King of Puppets resides.
So, by the time you’re walking down Rosa Isabelle Street you’ve almost certainly sussed out that Gepetto has to be behind all of this. Yes, the King of Puppets is the one leading them, but Venigni even says that this all seems like a bit much, even for such an advanced puppet. Keep that in mind as we go forward. So, we finally reach The King of Puppets, who has an elaborate puppet performance ready for us. We see a puppet-Gepetto stand in front of another puppet who looks exactly like us. He seems to take out our heart and place it into another puppet, which causes the puppet to get up and dance a little. Jeez, I wonder what this might symbolise! This initiates the 2-phase fight against the King of Puppets, who first appears as a massive, hulking mech that spins around, slams its massive arms into the ground and even fires some Ergo grenades and whatnot. The second phase is where it gets interesting. Out of the mech climbs another puppet, much smaller. In fact, he’s exactly our size, and he looks somewhat similar. His name is now Romeo, King of Puppets. Much later we learn that this was once our best friend in the whole world, who attempts to call out to us during the fight, but we can’t understand his language - yet. The fight is brilliant by the way, my favourite in the whole game. It really tests every single ability that the player is expected to have by this point, and it’s where the game’s combat truly clicked for me.
So, we’ve reached the halfway point of the game. After taking down the King, we step outside the arena to find our old man just standing there. He praises and rewards us, and unsurprisingly tells us that we need to do a lot more to fix all this. We’re supposed to find the Alchemists, because he suspects they are behind this. The Alchemists are a guild of quasi-scientists operating within Krat, and are defined by their utter lack of respect for human life and decency. Naturally we don’t believe a word he says but, we indulge, as the game must progress. So, off we go. Our first new direction is to head towards the Grand Exhibition Gallery. On the way there we also go through Lorenzini Arcade, which isn’t terribly important or anything, but it’s a really cool and interesting area, and one of my favourites in the game. Great environmental story telling and level design here!
Here at the Gallery is where we run into my biggest issue with this game’s story. The gallery itself is fine, if a bit short, and works great as a level. I also really like the boss, Champion Victor, who is a human but genetically modified via Ergo. He seems to be similar to those carcass monsters, but of sound mind and ready to defend the way forward. After an exhilarating fight, we suddenly get interrupted by a fierce looking knight figure, who impales Victor with a sword in the back. A shadowy figure speaks to us from the balcony above. He introduces himself as Simon Manus, head of the Alchemist guild and just flat out admits to facilitating the Petrification Disease throughout the town, and just being the villain in general. Basically, his deal is that he wants to make humans immortal by experimenting on them with the petrification disease - which would also make them incapable of lying, apparently. Honestly, I really dislike this villain reveal this late in the game. First off, it’s incredibly transparent that Simon is a red herring. There is no way that Gepetto isn’t the main villain, or at least the one responsible for the puppet frenzy, and it’s wild that the devs seem to think that simply introducing Simon at this point in the story is enough to confuse the player or make them reconsider their opinions. He isn’t foreshadowed what so ever (at least as far as I can tell) and the Alchemists aren’t even mentioned until shortly before you meet him. It’s made worse by the fact that all other NPCs completely buy the idea that he is responsible, and that your main mission has become to hunt this guy down. It really feels like the game does not respect your intelligence concerning this matter.
And this is where the plot of the game begins to break a bit, because now your next few activities are informed by Venigni going “Hmm, how might we get to the Isle of Alchemists?? Well, how about you go check out (Insert Area)? Maybe there’s something there??”. It feels more like a contrivance to get you where the devs want you to go, rather than a satisfying result of the actions you’ve taken thus far. It’s a good thing the levels are as solid as they are, and that enemy design and bosses are still going strong by that point, because the story definitely lost me by this point. What’s worse is that a lot of what you’re going through here until the final level feels a bit… uninspired? The first level is a big old swamp level, which admittedly is one of the more fun takes on the idea, but it’s not the best level in the game either. The boss here, Green Monster of the Swamp, gave me mixed feelings as well, because the first phase of the fight is really cool, but the second phase sees Scrapped Watchmen return for some reason. To be fair, it’s not just a reskin, they did give it some new moves and a new aesthetic. The fight itself is still enjoyable, but to see repeats of main bosses so shortly after the halfway point was a bit disconcerting. And not without reason, it turns out, because the next 2 bosses are ALSO reskins of main bosses you’ve fought before. One, a rematch against the Black Rabbit Brotherhood down in the depths of the Relic of Trismegistus, which funnily enough is another extremely short level that seems to only exist as a prelude to fighting these Melvins. And in contrast to Green Monster, the only notable difference here is that the big brother enemy does have a single new attack. This is the least excusable moment in the whole game as far as I’m concerned. And we’re not done, because before this we get to explore the first level again. Luckily, this is barely comparable to its earlier iteration, since the entire town is utterly destroyed by massive Ergo crystals emerging from the ground, which opens up massive rifts in the floor and generally dramatically changes the landscape. As for the boss… it’s literally the tutorial boss again, once again, with maybe one or two extra attacks. I’m not sure why exactly the last 2-3 hours of this game was dominated by repeated content, but luckily none of this is really egregious or bad. The gameplay is great, and even if I kinda logged out of the story by this point, the core gameplay loop was more than enough to keep me interested. And luckily right about here is where the story manages to pick up the pace again. Turns out, while we were gone the Alchemists raided Hotel Krat and kidnapped Gepetto, because he apparently stole some ancient relic from them, which they desperately need back. As expected, all the other NPCs in the game still suffer from a severe case of dumb-brain and still haven’t figured out that Gepetto is the main guy to watch out for, so they beg you to go and safe him. Through your travels through the reskin-lands, you managed to find everything you need to track down the Alchemists. But before that, we need to speak with Venigni again, because he has something interesting for us; a decoded message from the King of Puppets, but Venigni can’t understand most of it, and gives it to us. And this is where it happens; the big baddy of this game is finally, officially revealed to us… it’s Simon Manus!… no, I’m kidding, it’s obviously fucking Gepetto. Who would’ve thought huh? No way to predict this! So we tell Venigni, and he surprisingly doesn’t seem to care all that much? He mainly tells us that we still need to save Gepetto so he can fix what he started.
So we arrive at the final level, Arche Abbey, which is very, very long. The area begins with a big desert area we have to walk through, which gives the time to slowly dump some exposition on our heads via some Ergo ghosts of the past. We see visions and hear voices from back when we were still human. I didn’t mind it a lot, since it gives a lot of context to the things you’ve seen. Like your previous friendship with Romeo, your complete lack of a relationship with Gepetto, since he was always working and didn’t have time for P, your eventual infection with the petrification disease, which led to your untimely demise and of course, your real name: Carlo.
So, P, or Carlo, fights his way through Arche Abbey, until we meet the mysterious knight figure we met alongside Simon. She blocks our path and acts like the big wall of the end game. And my god, a wall she is. This is easily the hardest fight in the whole game and it’s not even close. She doesn’t have a lot of lore as far as I can tell, and seems to basically just be an enhanced human made by Simon. After finally defeating her after, like, 50 tries or something, we find Sophia’s true body here. It’s too complicated to get into the full backstory here, but in short, she is the daughter of Simon’s previous boss, whom he succeeded in leading the Alchemists. To oversimplify, Sophia is a “Listener” which means she can control Ergo and communicate with puppets. Simon wants to abuse this power for his own means, but Sophia won’t let him. So he traps Sophia in this tower until he’s able to break her. But you come along and have the choice of ending her suffering. Doing this can potentially unlock the true ending, but more on that in a bit.
So, finally onto the top of the Abbey we get to confront Simon, but not before bailing out Gepetto from jail. After telling him what a piece of shit dad he is, we go and beat Simon’s ass. Which is easier said than done, considering the guy’s colossal second phase health bar and the fact he can use three different projectile attacks at the same time. Here, Simon explains his plan a bit more in detail; basically, the petrification disease traps the body and time of an individual in place, forcing the life energy in them to crystallise.. sound familiar? This infinite existence somehow also prohibits people from lying, which seems to be the big motivator for Manus, who for some reason really can’t stand the concept of lying. The reason he kidnapped Gepetto was the latter’s stealing of the Hand of God, an ancient relic that has mystical properties, apparently including turning Simon into a god. In either case, we finally defeat this asshole and are done with the game.
Or are we?
After Simon is defeated, the game doesn’t stop. Instead, we need to take an elevator down, way down, beneath the foundation of the abbey. Here, Gepetto waits for us, and explains to us that all of this, everything he and you did was to be able to bring Carlo back to life as a real boy. So, what the fuck is really going on? What did Gepetto do?
This is where we need to discuss the nature of Ergo and lying, a specific side quest and the endings of the game in detail.
SPOILER WARNING FOR THE ENDINGS START HERE.
There is a side quest in the game that revolves around a weird little character called Arlecchino. He contacts us a total of three times throughout the game, always via public telephone booths. If we pick up, he asks us a riddle, always something to do with topics that deal with your humanity. As the game progresses though, Arlecchino becomes increasingly disturbing in his questions and demeanour. He hints at the fact that he has killed a bunch of people, and when Venigni begins to talk about the fact that his parents were murdered by a crazed puppet many years ago, things begin to click. Yes, it was indeed he who killed Venigni’s parents. Why, you ask? Well, it has everything to do with what Ergo is. All of Arlecchino’s questions work towards one central question: What is a puppet? And the answer is truly horrifying.
A puppet IS a human.
A puppet is an inanimate object animated by Ergo, which is the crystallised life energy of people who have died. Yes, basically, puppets run on the souls of the dead. At some point in his new existence, his Ergo awakened and he realised that he is a human no different from those made of flesh and blood. It seems that puppets have no actual memory of their past, but a longing sensation remains. One day, Arlecchino, driven mad by his subconscious realisation that he is in fact human, spots a happy Venigni family - the parents of Lorenzini and engineers of the first mass produced puppets. He murders them in cold blood and leaves their son behind, who vows to make sure something like this may never happen again, and invents the very same failsafe which the King of Puppets later manages to undo.
So, puppets are humans. Or, more succinctly, Ergo, the energy that animates them, is the equivalent of the human soul. THAT is what Gepetto discovered. It turns out, despite his profound distrust and hatred for them, he used to be an Alchemist as well. In fact, he seems to have been the most important Alchemist of all. He discovered that human life clings to this world in the form of Ergo, and that this material can be used to create artificial humans. The radical invention that will change society forever is the previously mentioned P-Organ; a mechanical heart, that harnesses the power of ego.
Much later in the timeline, the Petrification disease first spreads slowly through the town, which is deemed by the Alchemists to be a result of long-term overexposure to Ergo. The disease eventually infects Carlo, who perishes from it. This is what breaks Gepetto. He becomes consumed by a mad desire to reunite with his son. Now, Gepetto wasn’t a great dad. He committed his son into a boarding school at a young age, and barely even really knew his son. Carlo never thought very highly of Gepetto, and it’s possible he died full of resentment for this father. But Gepetto doesn’t blame himself for this - not outwardly, at least. To him, the real culprits were the Alchemists, who wouldn’t stop experimenting on Ergo and the petrification disease. In fact, it seems the fact that his son was so estranged to him is what makes it all the worse, and all the more necessary to bring Carlo back. At first, he simply attempts to transfer Carlo’s soul into a puppet body, but this doesn’t really work. The puppet body nearly destroys Carlo’s Ergo - it seems that puppets only run on trace amounts of Ergo, compared to the vast stores of Ergo in a fully human soul. So Gepetto begins to work on a new P-Organ; one that not only runs on Ergo, but is able to absorb it as well, presumably enough to fully rebuild Carlo’s mind. This enhanced P-Organ is stored away in a new puppet body, locked away in some train cart at Krat Central Station. Hmm.
Anyway, over the next few years Gepetto cooperates with Lorenzini Venigni to mass produce puppets and refine the technology further and further. They come up with a concept called the “Grand Covenant”, which restricts the puppets’ autonomy and enforces a set of rules they have to follow unconditionally. For Venigni, the point of this it to prevent something like Arlecchino’s murder spree from ever happening again. The rules are, in order of priority: 1 - All puppets must obey their creator's commands. 2 - A puppet may not harm a human. 3 - A puppet must protect and serve humans and the city of Krat. 4 - A puppet cannot lie.
But Gepetto included another rule in secret, a “rule 0” as it were, one that overrides all other rules:
0 - The creator’s name is Giuseppe Gepetto.
Gepetto then proceeds to take Romeo’s ergo, who also died from the disease, and makes him the King of Puppets. This special puppet has the ability to control all others via the Grand Covenant. And then, one day it happens:
Gepetto instructs Romeo to kill ALL people infected with the petrification disease, who extends this order to every puppet under the covenant. The problem; basically every person in the city is infected, even if they don’t show symptoms. Because, as we established already, this isn’t just a random illness that spreads by virus or something like that. It’s your body’s inherent reaction to overexposure of Ergo. Now, you might think that all of this is in service of stopping the Alchemists and thwarting their plans. And the fact that Gepetto even stole the Arm of God, which they desperately need to fulfil their plans, might even be a good argument for this. But if you’ve learned one thing from interacting with this dickhead is that he is anything but an altruist. He has but one desire, which dominates every facet of every single action of his: To see his son again.
Like we said, the puppet kill every human being with traces of infection. But every human in the city is potentially infected because every human in the city had the same amount of exposure. Also, if you think about it… aren’t these people just walking stores of Ergo? What if the puppets killed the people and absorbed the Ergo? And what if that very special P-Organ that allowed YOU to absorb THEIR ergo, was crafted for this very specific purpose?
And this is where the story of Lies of P suddenly turns exceedingly dark and horrifying. ALL of this, every single dead body, ever destroyed building, every ruined life was all in service just so Gepetto got to see Carlo again. And this is why Gepetto TRULY stole the Arm of God… not to stop the Alchemist, but to have the power to resurrect his son. Simon used the Arm to direct massive quantities of Ergo into one place, and Gepetto is using that very same Ergo to give the arm the power to resurrect Carlo. Initially, Gepetto simply wanted to steal the arm and then get back to P sitting in the train cart, but then gets besieged by the Mad Donkey and his ilk.
So, this explains close to everything we need to make sense of the endings, but there’s one more thing.
We haven’t really talked about one core mechanic of this game: Your ability to lie.
P can tell lies to people. Whether or not he is able to convince people he’s telling the truth seems entirely secondary to the fact that he is capable of lying. In terms of gameplay, on the surface at least, this feels surprisingly barebones with not much depth to it. It really does not happen that often, and it almost never has any direct gameplay implications, but that’s because it’s not really about the act of lying and its consequences, but rather what it means to you, a character who has to find their own humanity - and that’s the key word right here: Humanity.
Humans can lie, puppets can not. And, considering this is a Pinnochio story, our goal is of course to become a real boy. And we do this by maxing out our humanity.
“Humanity” is an invisible game mechanic that never gets explained to you, and is something you have to figure out by yourself. Throughout the game you’ll be met with choices, most of them dialogue based, and of those the majority will be about lying. Every time you lie, you raise your humanity, so basically, lying is universally good in Lies of P. But lying isn’t the only way to increase your humanity. In most cases, especially when it comes to dialogue options, the “human” option is almost always very straight forward. Whether it telling people they’re still beautiful, or telling a distressed young woman that the doll she desperately wants to be her daughter really is her sweet little baby, or telling a solider that her partner died in combat, when he actually turned into a zombie… those sweet little white lies seem to make P connect more to other humans. He understands that needlessly hurting those who already suffer so much is a cruel thing to do. There is also the way to max out your humanity by listening to the many records you can find in the game, although I wasn’t a huge fan of this, personally. I guess if you’re gonna make me listen to an entire 5 minute song in your game to marginally increase my chances of getting the true ending, you better make sure that all of the songs are masterpieces. Let’s just say that the majority of songs weren’t really my taste. There are outliers, I like most of the songs that don’t have vocals, and dislike most songs that do. A neat idea, but I would’ve preferred a little more thought went into it.
While we’re at it, let’s very briefly address this game’s overall OST. It’s no Bloodborne or Hotline Miami, but there are some nice tracks here. As far as the records go, my favourite has to be Misty E’ra. A nice little smooth jazz tune that doesn’t overstay its welcome and has some genuinely nice, melancholic atmosphere. The rest I can honestly take or leave. As far as boss soundtracks go, I have to admit I didn’t find a lot of them very memorable. That’s not to say that they’re bad, simply not really all that noteworthy. There are some outliers, like Romeo King of Puppets, Fuoco and Laxasia, which were the only ones I felt like they warranted a listen outside of the game.
Now with this out of the way, let’s get back to the elevator on top of the Abbey that took us down into the depths, to our final confrontation with Gepetto.
So, this game has three endings.
“REAL BOY”
The first one, the “bad” ending as far as I’m concerned, has you giving up your P-Organ and surrender it to Gepetto, so he can use the Arm of God and finally revive Carlo - only, is this what you really want? You aren’t Carlo. You never were. You’re P. You’re a puppet that physically resembles Gepetto’s son, and you even carry his heart with you, but you don’t have his memories, his emotions, his thoughts and feelings. Whatever “you” currently inhabits this puppet body right now will be gone. What’s worse is that if you DO decide to go with this ending, and you decide to visit Hotel Krat, you’ll find that ALL NPCs have been replaced by puppets, who say the same line of dialogue over and over again. It’s bloody terrifying and heart breaking. Gepetto didn’t learn anything. He killed whoever survived this whole ordeal and plans to rebuilt society with nothing but puppets.
“FREE FROM PUPPET STRING”
So, obviously we can’t do this, so instead we’ll refuse to give Gepetto our heart. Naturally, he’s furious and shows his true face. He never cared about YOU. He only cared about the heart you carry around. And now he’s gonna take it by force.
This is when he pulls out his suitcase and assembles from it Carlo’s old puppet body - the first one he built before you. This is another hot contender for best boss fight in the game. This Nameless Puppet reminds me a lot of Lady Maria from Bloodborne, and also in a way of Gehrman, who similarly decides to fight you, should you refuse his offer of freeing you from the dream. It is extremely fast, powerful and has a shitton of moves but there’s no fight in the game that’s this fun to master.
After a hard fought battle, we’re about to lose the fight in the cutscene even though we beat his ass in the actual game (kinda hate this trope, ngl) when suddenly Gepetto jumps between us when the Nameless Puppet is about to destroy Carlo’s heart. Sacrificing himself, Gepetto is able to save our life. After quickly taking out the enemy puppet, Gepetto lies on the floor, lamenting how deeply disappointed he is in us. He calls us a useless puppet and dies. Wow. Goddamn. I mean it’s preferable to the other ending, but not by much. At least we are free now, I guess. But we won’t find peace, not unless we manage to really max out our humanity, build connections to people, find our own meaning and become ourselves. Our OWN real boy.
“RISE OF P”
So, if you consistently lie in this game, and do good things for NPCs, and listen to all the music, and find the painting, you’ll be able to become properly human. While there is no way to directly check your humanity meter, there are a couple of things you can watch out for. The first indication will happen after taking out the King of Puppets, which, should you have done the minimum in terms of gaining humanity, will cause your hair to grow longer, and your face to look slightly older. Sophia will comment on it, stating that whatever you did so far, you should keep doing. There’s also the cat Spring at Hotel Krat, who keeps wandering about the premises. Depending on how much humanity you have, she’ll either dislike you, and hiss at you when you have no humanity, progressively warming up more and more to you, until, when you’re fully human, she’ll let herself be picked up and petted and kissed. I just wanted to mention this because it’s awesome and I love cats and I love being able to pet cats in games. The moment when I could pick up Spring and she’d cuddle with me was the greatest moment in this game for me, unironically.
Later, when you find the painting in Gepetto’s room, you’ll notice that there’s a small branch growing from the boy’s nose. This nose grows with every bit of humanity you gain, most noticeably whenever you lie - no idea where they got the inspiration for this from! Eventually, this branch will turn into a golden staff-type weapon, which grows in power with your humanity. The moment you’re actually able to pick it up, you officially have enough humanity to trigger the true ending.
This is one prerequisite you need for the best ending, the other one is to make sure to grant Sophia her freedom. If you did everything right, your hair will turn white and you’ll have become fully human. Now just go ahead, kill the Nameless Puppet, and here we go.
At first the ending is identical to the Free From Puppet String ending, up until the moment where Gepetto talks to us for the last time. Instead of stating his disappointment, he sees us shed a single tear for him, which in turn causes him to apologise for everything before dying.
P goes outside, enjoying a warm sunset on the highest peak of the Abbey. He approaches a puppet that looks a lot like Sophia. He kneels down and transfers his Ergo into this new puppet, which causes him to break down, and her to wake up. But P didn’t die, apparently, as we can see his face twitching slightly when puppet-Sophia touches him. Embracing each other, the sun rises behind them, heralding a new age.
But we’re not done yet… looks like we have a post-credit cutscene!?
We open on a figure sitting in a train, presumably going towards Krat. He is named “Paracelsus” and seemingly talks about our adventure, and how we’re “a new brother… a new type of humanity”. He apparently came here with the intent of retrieving the Arm of God. That, and a certain someone. A little girl with shining red shoes named Dorothy. I’ll let you figure out that one on your own.
CONCLUSION:
So, this was Lies of P! I genuinely can’t remember when I played a game that so thoroughly subverted my expectations not only for itself, but for the entire genre it inhabits. Like I said, I used to be extremely dismissive of just about any Souls-like not made by FromSoftware and this game has definitely showed me that I really shouldn’t be.
It is unbelievable how much quality there is to be found here. How much love and care and attention. It’s not perfect, by any means. There are some serious flaws here and there, and at the end of the day, I think I would still play some Souls games over this. But if this game is just the start of Neowiz, and we can expect similar or even better quality going forward, I think we might be looking at a new industry titan in the making.
If you have even a fleeting interest in Souls games, or are simply looking for a really cool, albeit very tough gaming experience, look no further than that. Lies of P will definitely earn a spot on my end of the year list, and I predict it’s gonna be somewhere in the top 3.
God, this game is so good and interesting I don’t even know how to end the review properly. There are still SO many things I’d love to talk about, but this review is already among the longest I have ever written.
Now the choice is up to you:
Lie or Die!
9 / 10 .
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. [SPOILER WARNING - This review/critique will discuss close to all aspects of Lies of P, including its story, themes and endings. This isn’t a game that will be necessarily ruined by spoilers but beware regardless and play the game first if you haven’t already!]
It's not often that a newcomer manages to compete with a master, especially when that master happens to be one of the most accomplished game studios of all time. It's even rarer that such a newcomer might even surpass that master in some aspects. I've played other Souls-likes; Nioh, Ashen, Remnant, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, etc. But none of these games come even close to what Lies of P is doing.
I love the Soulsborne games. It’s my favourite game series ever made. Nothing comes even close to the type of satisfaction and fun they give me. From combat to level design to aesthetics, lore, music, stories, characters, etc. It often feels like they were made for me specifically. So of course whenever I see yet another company try to hop on the Souls-like wagon, I tend to get a little protective. And I would argue, not without reason. But Lies of P is different.
This game has a special place in my heart, because it showed me something. It showed me that the possibility that other people making games in this genre that are just as good as the games that Hidetaka Miyazaki & co. make does exist. It showed me that not every attempt at a Souls-like has to be something like Lords of the Fallen (the older one) or Mortal Shell, either taking a cheap crack at cashing in on a trendy formula, or a well-meaning but sadly incompetent attempt to translate the work of a team of extremely talented individuals into something the scale of a small indie title. For over 10 years, it seemed genuinely impossible that something like Lies of P could even exist. And I have to admit, it didn’t immediately wow me from the first moment on either.
I remember when the first few trailers for this game came out in autumn 2021, and I was.. sceptical to say the least. I had just recently tried the Nioh games, and bouncing off of them left a really sour taste in my mouth. As a matter of fact, every single Souls-like I tried out by this point had been disappointing. And the Nioh games were supposed to be the good ones! Sure, this game looked nice. But would it play even half as well? We’ve all seen it before - game looks fantastic in the trailer, and plays nothing like it when you actually download it. We would have to wait and see.
Come the demo in early-2023, I remember playing it for 3 hours and being a bit underwhelmed. Back then a lot of the combat still felt very rough, with dodges being basically useless, parries trapping you in place, lots of enemies sliding across the floor as if on ice, etc. The demo was better than I had initially expected, but overall I wasn't blown away by it either. There were definitely some highlights, like the Scrapped Watchman boss fight, which was the final enemy you’d fight int the demo. And while that last fight did make me appreciate what they were going for more than just about anything else in the demo, I kinda wrote the game off as "yet another one of those" and forgot about it, until release.
When this game finally released in fall of 2023, I could not believe the critical reception. People LOVED this game, Souls-fans especially. Critics adored it, and heaped praise on it in a manner usually reserved only for the real deal. Even Joseph Anderson, harshest of all online video game critics, uncharacteristically had barely anything negative to say about it. Naturally, this intrigued me beyond belief. This man had just last year released a video in which he seriously tore into Elden Ring, one of the most universally beloved video games of all time, and THIS game he loved so much he could not find anything bad to say about it.
I sadly didn’t have enough money to buy it on release, so I kinda forgot about it yet again until it finally went on sale in February 2024. I bought it, downloaded it and played it. And as you might imagine from the tone of this review so far, I fucking loved it. It is almost unbelievably good. It’s so good, in fact, that I am in sheer disbelief a game like Lies of P hasn’t been made much, much sooner. This really is the best Souls-like out there by a mile and then some. And that is even more impressive when you consider how much smaller Neowiz is when compared to FromSoftware AND that this was the first real video game they ever made. A small Korean independent development team with no prior experience, and their first game is good enough to be directly compared to something like Demon’s Souls. But that also means that it’s only fair to apply a similar level of criticism and objectivity to Lies of P than we do with its forebears. I will be comparing this game directly to the Soulsborne games a lot here, so if that bothers you, here’s your warning.
While this game is amazing, it’s not perfect, and there are definitely areas Neowiz could improve upon for a sequel, spiritual successor or even just expansions for the main game.
Usually in a review like this, I’d typically go over all the positive aspects first, and then the negatives, but I think this review will flow better if I go through the individual aspects of the game, and talk about what works and doesn’t work instead.
Let’s start with what is perhaps the most controversial aspect about Lies of P:
DIFFICULTY
I’m going to be completely honest upfront and say that I think that - on average - Lies of P might potentially be harder than any Souls-game on your first playthrough, even Sekiro. I think it may genuinely be too hard for some people, even if they have prior experience with FromSoft games. Of course difficulty is 100% subjective, and I’ve seen people say they found this game easier than even something like the original Dark Souls or Demon’s Souls, and others found it so hard they dropped it at around the halfway point or even earlier.
I’m not yet sure where I fall exactly. As of writing this review I’ve finished the game twice, once normally and then again with the same character on New Game Plus. There are individual things like certain boss fights or specific levels in other Souls-games and -likes that gave me more trouble than any particular thing or boss here (cough Malenia cough), but the way the Lies of P experience stays consistently brutal all the way to the end is unmatched by anything else.
I did play through the whole game with a DEX build, blind, and without summons, and I’ll say I found it incredibly difficult at times. At first, this was just because of the normal learning curve; I didn’t really understand how the game wants you to play, and so I died an embarrassing amount of times on the first few bosses. At around the halfway point the knot finally loosened and I understood the combat system properly… and still got my ass handed to me by every boss. Even if you understand what the game wants from you, you only realise just how tall the order you were given even is. A lot of what these bosses demand from you goes far beyond what any Souls boss would want from you. In Souls games, you’ll often come across a boss or two that you’ll take out on your first attempt, even if it’s your first time playing the game. That is NOT the case here. Every major boss feels like something a FromSoftware game would throw at you during the endgame or in a DLC. This game drops a Sister Friede-level boss at you around the half-way point, and an honest-to-god Malenia/Sword Saint Isshin-level boss towards the end. Every boss wants you to really sit down and learn their move sets. There is no magic or ranged system to cheese them with, there are no hidden exploits, there’s no real way to power-creep past these guys; you really, truly have to “get good” as it were.
Most of this difficulty is ultimately fair. The majority of it is possible to overcome by simple trial and error and good reaction times, but there are some aspects that I feel artificially inflate some of it:
I think the absurd tracking of some enemies and bosses is a bit too much. It’s not fun to perfectly dodge out of the way of an attack, only for the enemy to instantly turn 180° in a single frame, or suddenly slide 5 meters towards you during the last hit of a combo. I know that the idea is to mostly parry enemies and this is meant to stop you from just spamming the dodge button, but I think it goes a little too far. It’s not helped by the fact that the parry window is extremely precise. What’s more is that you can’t spam the parry like you can in Sekiro, you really have to deliberately hold the button down for about half a second for each parry you do, which can be very daunting when some bosses have 12-hit combos. However I think my biggest gripe with the combat system is the complete lack of poise. Everything else I can excuse, but this is just not great design. Especially for heavier, slower weapons, the fact that not even the charge-R2 has any poise makes some encounters feel ludicrously difficult.
There is also the fact that you actually have to unlock a lot of basic quality of life features in the game like stringing together dodges, weapons degrading slower, decreasing the amount of incoming damage when blocking, etc. If you don’t understand this system, you’re going to have a rough time. I’ll get more into it later but I think that this could’ve been smoothed out a bit.
Finally, there are no optional side paths or alternative encounters you can do, meaning: If you get stuck on a boss, you are STUCK. There is no real way to come back with better gear and a higher level. If you get walled off by a boss, the only way through is to break that wall with your head. For some people, this is the quint-essential Souls-experience. And while I certainly enjoy learning a boss’ move-set if it’s fun and the boss is good, this can turn into a torturous experience when it isn’t.
And this leads me to the biggest criticism I have for the game:
WORLD & LEVEL DESIGN
So, I don’t know how controversial this opinion will be, but my biggest gripe far and away (that isn’t related to the nebulous concept of difficulty) is the fact that this game’s world design and structure are 100% linear. There are no secret areas, no secret bosses, no optional side paths, hell not even a quick diversion from the main path. You really do follow a straight line from beginning to end. I understand that Lies of P isn’t Dark Souls. I understand that this game isn’t meant to be a deep, cryptic and completely authentic experience in the same way as the Souls games, more than it focuses on combat above all else. I understand that the main idea was to create a satisfying and weighty combat system with lots of enemy variety and mechanical complexity. But despite me understanding all of this, it doesn’t change the fact that this is only half of the Souls-like experience for me.
Let’s imagine two typical Souls-players playing Elden Ring. Player A plays these games less for the challenge and boss fights, and more for the experiential side of it. They scour the map for optional areas, explore every nook and cranny and systematically become more powerful as a result of their spelunking. Player B will instead start a new character, pick the big stick weapon, and will run in a straight line towards Stormveil Castle without exploring the world at all, with the goal of fighting Margit with an under levelled weapon for an hour until they finally do it. Player A carefully explores each level, grabs every item they find, talk to every NPC to come across and engage in all the activities of each level. Player B instead runs past everything, engaging with nothing that isn’t absolutely necessary and focus all of their attention on the boss fights. [That is not meant as a qualitative statement btw, both approaches are equally valid.]
Lies of P is definitely a game meant for Player B more than it is for Player A. That is not to say that Player A won’t have fun here. I had a ton of fun moving through the levels and fighting all the smaller bad guys and occasional mini-bosses. But I really missed the feeling of finding something that the devs deliberately hid from me, like Ash Lake in Dark Souls or the Upper Cathedral Ward in Bloodborne. There is only a single, very small optional area in the game, although it really is more of a side-path if anything, and it’s not that easy to miss if you pay at least a little attention to the side quests in this game. The only thing to do there is to loot a few items and then leave again. If you’re the type of player that just wishes for those good old Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls 1 days, and you’re really just looking for that experience to fill this Metroidvania-world-design shaped void that those games left, you’re gonna be sorely disappointed.
All of this is not to say that there isn’t beauty and wonder and interesting things to be found in Krat, the city/land that Lies of P takes place in. The art direction is truly fantastic here, and easily rivals the likes of FromSoftware, Bethesda, CD Projekt Red, etc. The city of Krat feels equal parts real and fantastical. A mixture of early 1900’s belle-epoch era France, with some cultural influence from a steam-punk-ified Italy. Somewhere in between beautiful historical snapshot and fantastical, larger-than-life energy, Krat is as idiosyncratic as it is familiar. From your usual, Yharnam-esque cityscape, to forest paths ending in a cathedral, a large puppet factory, a shopping mall to a grandiose opera house, to a grand exhibition, a poison swamp, a deserted island and much more. The world’s levels are varied and beautiful and fit incredibly well into the vibe the game creates. While, yes, the fact that every level does follow another in a straight line is a bit disappointing, it needs to be pointed out that the amount of levels is quite impressive. This game is quite a bit longer than you’d imagine, I would say it feels similar in length to Sekiro or Bloodborne (without DLC) and considering that it’s nothing short of impressive how solid the quality stays throughout.
While the general world design is more or less a straight line, the individual levels fare a bit better. There is enough variety here to make every locale feel distinct and memorable. Perhaps one of the best things about Lies of P’s level design is how enemy placement generally works. There isn’t a single spot in the whole game that feels like the enemies were put there haphazardly. Each and every enemy encounter feels purposeful and curated. There is no “100 Taurus Demons in Lost Izalith” situation here. It’s also impressive how seamlessly areas connect to each other, despite how linear they are. Playing through Lies of P, you’re basically walking in a circle around the whole municipality, and the game goes out of its way to create beautiful vistas that give a feeling of how far you’ve travelled already.
Sadly I do have to criticise how formulaic some of the actual design for most levels is. Every level feels the exact same when it comes to how you actually progress through them. I know this sounds like a weird complaint so let me explain:
Imagine every level as a circle with a specific starting point, where you complete one rotation, which unlocks a shortcut to the starting point, which in turn lets you progress further without losing any progresss you already cleared, itself introducing another circle you have to complete to get back to the checkpoint, and so on. Standard stuff, and honestly by itself there is nothing wrong with this design - especially since Lies of P is very reminiscent of Demon’s Souls when it comes to HOW those shortcuts look like. In Dark Souls or Bloodborne, you’re typically either opening a one-way-door or activate an elevator. That’s it. The Souls games rarely get more creative than that, other than Demon’s Souls. In the latter, you’d have more unconventional ideas for shortcuts, like redirecting water in a mine to flood an area that is filled with lava, making the lava harden and cool off enough for you to easily get back to the shortcut AND progress further. Lies of P takes a lot of cues from this approach in particular, like pushing a brazier down a hallway filled with toxic sludge, burning it and freeing the way to the boss, and I love that. What I don’t love as much is how literally every single level works this exact same way. Every single level works by this formula. Fight enemies, find the shortcut, progress. Repeat until you find the boss. There are no levels where the challenge is to get through in a single run, there are no areas where you can take either one of two paths, no areas which you can skip by knowing the geometry very well, etc. It all feels a bit… formulaic. There are also only a tiny handful of little secrets you can find within levels, and almost all of them require you to come back later in your playthrough, even though nothing in the main story OR the world design suggests that you should ever have to come back to previous locations. This honestly feels like a weird, vestigial element from Souls games that simply doesn’t fit the formula they made for themselves.
All of this would be a problem in a lesser game, but luckily Lies of P has such a strong vision of what it wants to achieve that it’s very obvious that all of this, the level design, the world, the story, literally everything in this game, is second to what this game does best above all others; the combat.
COMBAT
Let’s begin with the absolute basics. Lies of P is what I would call a “true” or “orthodox” Souls-like. And what I mean by that is that, instead of being simply inspired or influenced by the flow and rhythm or Souls combat, this game tries to fully emulate the “Souls” experience as closely as possible, while putting its own spin on it, of course. This isn’t just “take an ARPG and make it a bit Souls-y”, no, these guys truly did their homework regarding what makes this combat tick.
Lies of P generally takes elements from all of FromSoftware’s Souls-games, but the backbone of the experience is growing from the spine of two games in particular; Bloodborne and Sekiro. This decision is easily understandable, as both of them are generally regarded as having the best combat systems within the genre. Sekiro in particular seems to have been the foundation on which they built the rest. Let me explain.
Lies of P, much like Sekiro, sees its most important combat mechanic in the form of “deflection”. In the last 5 or so years, Sekiro has popularised this mechanic so much that I’m almost certain that even if you never played that game, you have definitely played at least one game with that mechanic in there. Wo-Long, Metroid Dread, Ghost of Tsushima, Grime, Jedi: Fallen Order, Thymesia, etc. And those are just the most popular examples within that genre. And much like Sekiro, it is absolutely essential that you learn this ability in Lies of P. But this game puts a few twists on this system.
First off, deflecting isn’t your only option, you also have the ability to simply block attacks. The catch is that this game starts you off with what would be hard-mode in Sekiro, aka playing without Kuro’s Charm. This means that blocking instead of perfectly deflecting attacks will give you chip damage for every attack not deflected. This alone might be reason enough for some people to call this game harder than Sekiro, but the devs aren’t being unreasonable here. Instead, they give you something very similar to the “rally” system in Bloodborne, which allowed you to recover some health after being hit by an enemy but attacking them back, which in turn allowed you to always stay a bit more aggressive and in-your-face. But here in Lies of P, this only applies if you block incoming attacks instead of deflecting them. So essentially, even if you’re not perfect at dodging or deflecting every single attack in the game, this does not mean that this will always result in you losing a set amount of health for it. This is a perfect addition to the core combat and feeds into its design goals, namely taking Souls-combat back to its methodical and deliberate roots. This game does not like it when you’re greedy at all. Instead it wants you to very carefully pick your attack timings, and let enemy aggression be your best weapon.
Deflecting attacks and getting your own in - especially charged heavy attacks - will eventually result in the enemy’s posture breaking, which will allow you to land a critical hit. A perfect deflection seems to me to be about as effective as half a charged R2 or Fable art, so if you’re a deflect-god, you’re going to be constantly breaking the enemy’s guard as a reward. But this isn’t the only benefit. You can actually destroy enemy weapons in this game. Sadly this isn’t true for every enemy in the game, but the general rule seems to be that if they’re holding an actual weapon that isn’t part of their body or is somehow ethereal/energy based, then you are able to destroy it by deflecting it enough (and/or through a status effect called “corrosion”, although you’ll still need to land at least a couple of deflects for it to work). Admittedly, it does require a lot of skill for this to even become a very noticeable mechanic. On my first playthrough, I don’t think I managed to break a single enemy weapon other than perhaps the most minor of fodder-types. On my NG+ run however, I broke their weapons left and right. It is genuinely one of the most satisfying feelings in any of these games and I seriously hope FromSoftware are taking notes here. The catch here is that your weapons are just as prone to break mid-combat as your enemies’. For this the game gives you an infinitely usable grindstone, which restores your weapon’s durability relatively quickly by holding down the button. Outside of boss fights, this is barely even a mechanic worth bringing up, but during boss fights or otherwise intense encounters this can get quite tricky to manage.
While we’re on the topic of weapons, let’s talk about one of the best and most creative weapon systems I’ve ever seen in any game period. I think I still prefer Bloodborne’s trick weapons ever so slightly but this is about as close as it gets. Every weapon in this game is made up of 2 parts; the “blade”, and the “hilt”. “Blade” in this case simply simply means “part that does damage”, they don’t have to be literal blades. They range from traditional(-ish) swords and daggers to superheated “1000° red hot knife vs butter” type cleavers, a poisoned crystal spear, an electric buzzsaw, a clock hand, a drill bit, a multi-pronged spear made out of a city sign, etc. You can pick any of these “blades” and put them on any hilt. The hilts are what determines the weapons move-set and scaling, so in essence, this is your actual weapon. The “blades” just determine which type of damage is being dealt. What’s better is that scaling in this game ONLY affects the damage you’re dealing with a weapon. There are NO hard stat requirements for ANY weapon in the game. Even if you’re a full-on Strength build, you can still use and experiment with all kinds of Dexterity or Advance based weapons. I’ll go a bit more in detail concerning stats in a later section, but this is all you need to know as far as weapons go.
Sadly, all of this isn’t quite as flexible as it sounds due to the game splitting up ALL attack motions into 2 camps: Thrust and Slash. Weapons are either good at thrusting, good at slashing, or both. If the blade-type isn’t proficient in the movement-type the hill prefers, the weapon becomes unusable as a whole. The problem could be something like you really liking a certain hammer-“blade” and wanting to put it on a specific hilt, but the hilt features one or two thrust moves, so now it’s useless. Maybe this could be fixed by allowing the movesets of hilts themselves to be customised or something like that. But this is a relatively minor complaint.
A thing that really bums me out and really hurts overall build variety is how exceedingly rare upgrade materials are across the board. Lies of P is unbelievably stingy when it comes to weapon upgrades, and doubly so with cranks, which allow you to alter a weapon hilt’s scaling. Seriously, these cranks are ludicrously rare. You only get like 4-5 cranks per affinity per playthrough, which would be ok if there weren’t certain weapons that want 2 cranks from you. This is compounded by the fact that they don’t really seem to be able to, say, turn a Strength-based weapon into a Dex-based weapon, more than they are meant to simply enhance a weapon’s scaling. So, basically, turn a weapon that scales with A in Dex to one that scales with S. Make a weapon that’s already good even better.
On any single playthrough, you won’t get to upgrade more than perhaps 4-5 weapons fully when there are close to 40 weapons in this game. This seems incredibly at odds with the “pick up and experiment” nature of the rest of the game. Even more so when you remember that you’re allowed to basically infinitely change your character stats after a certain point, even though those stats are arguably far less important to the damage you’re dealing than the state of your weapon. In my opinion, Lies of P’s upgrade system should work a lot more like Capcom’s recent Resident Evil 4 Remake, in which you can sell back your upgraded weapons and receive back almost all funds you put into upgrading it. It would gel amazingly well with the idea of you not needing to fuck around with arcane upgrade tables and simply get good at the video game. But instead we got a needlessly convoluted and gatekeep-y system that really didn’t need to be as restrictive as it ended up being. It very much seems like a purely vestigial design element from FromSoftware’s Souls games, which have a MUCH larger focus on exploration and character building.
One final, perhaps kind of weird complaint I have regarding the game’s weapon systems is related to the various boss weapons in this game; and no, it’s not that they’re underwhelming or bad or underpowered. In fact, the opposite is true. I think the boss weapons are a little too good. And no, this isn’t a “waaaah nerf the OP weapons so the casuals can’t play my hard game!!!” type complaint either; my problem is that they’re so good, and so fun and are so universally fantastic to use that, at some point, I had to practically force myself to use the vast majority of “normal” weapons. It felt like I was deliberately played on “underwater” mode, if that makes any sense. One weapon in particular, a sort of Katana you get some time after the half-way point, is so unbelievably strong and versatile that it’s objectively the best weapon in the game. Like, it’s really not even debatable. This single weapon has so many different abilities and perks, multiple attack types, 2 separate parry options, a ranged attack AND insane closing speed. It’s not really the feeling of “this weapon is soo strong that it feels like cheating”, it’s more of “wow all other weapons just seem kinda boring in comparison”. So perhaps the better way to phrase this would be to say, the normal main weapons need a lot more flash and stage-presence to be able to keep up with the boss weapons.
But the main weapons are of course not the only part of this combat system. Lies of P’s protagonist, much like Sekiro, has a prosthetic arm, which is called “Legion”. And where Sekiro’s prosthetic arm often felt more like an afterthought, Legion is a fully implemented mechanic which you can theoretically beat the whole game with. Much like the weapons, Legion has many different forms that scale off different stats and have different abilities. Starting with the clearly Sekiro-inspired grappling hook to a flame thrower, acid launcher, anti-personnel mine deployer or even just a straight up grenade launcher. It’s a fantastic addition to the main combat loop, especially when fully upgraded.
And you’d be remiss if you completely ignored the many, many consumable and throwable items this game offers to struggling players. Other than Dark Souls, throwable items like firebombs are actually really good in Lies of P, and can often make the difference in beating specific boss fights that may have been a little too tough otherwise. They’re clearly meant to be more of a compromise for the fact that you don’t have ANY ranged combat abilities outside of 2 Legion variants - and even those only have very short range. You’re completely free to ignore them, but they can make a lot of fights in the game a lot more manageable.
So, you can tell that this game really does give you a lot of tools and options to tackle any situation in front of you, and as you might have gathered from the section about difficulty before, that isn’t without reason. This game really is quite hard. And it is more so than most FromSoft games because you truly are required to “get good”. There is no way around the boss fights in this game other than learning their movesets, getting better at the combat system and being on your A-game. There aren’t any cheese strats for any boss in this game that I’m aware of. They really do want you to sit down and truly learn their moves.
Luckily those boss fights are exceptionally good for the most part, and I do mean that in the most literal form possible. They truly are the odd one out from just about any other Souls-like out there. No other Souls-like has boss fights that are even remotely on this level. In terms of general overall quality of these fights, I think that Lies of P is absolutely comparable to even FromSoftware themselves. Where FromSoft will always have 2-3 bosses per game that I absolutely fucking hate, I cannot say the same here. And, on the flip side, as far as highlights go it 100% can compete with the original, and I would say it handily surpasses Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 1 and maybe even Dark Souls 2, it’s roughly on the same footing as Bloodborne (without DLC) and only behind Elden Ring, Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro. For what is, again, their FIRST attempt at ANY video game, this is maddeningly impressive. Ever played a game that was so good it made you angry? Like “there HAS to be something wrong here, no way that this really is this good”.
I think there are only 2 (3 if we’re being technical) bosses that kinda rub me the wrong way. I mean both Black Rabbit Brotherhood fights, and the Door Guardian. The Black Rabbit Brotherhood are widely considered the worst boss in this game, and it’s easy to see why, since both fights are simply very poorly balanced gank fights in which the challenge is more about constantly running around the arena trying to avoid two enemies who simultaneously attack you. Honestly a fairly standard “bad Souls boss”. It’s a trap even FromSoftware step into often enough. What I think is a genuinely even more flawed boss however, is the Door Guardian. A hulking brute with a massive (unbreakable) weapon that inflicts the “Shock” special status effect on you with every single hit. Special status effects apply instantly and remain for a given amount of time, depending on how much build up an attack has. I really dislike all of these “special” status effect, but Shock is by far the worst. It reduces your stamina regeneration by something ridiculous like 80%, and the bar takes WAY too long to go down. In effect, this forces you to back off and simply wait. And that is just terribly boring. You can’t attack, you can’t deflect, you can’t dodge, you can only walk slowly and wait.
Luckily, these are just about the only bad ones I can remember, and when this game’s bosses are good, they are REALLY good.
I can’t talk about all of them or I’d be here all day, but my top 3 are Laxasia the Complete, Nameless Puppet and Romeo, King of Puppets. Each one of them feels like something you’d see in a Dark Souls DLC, which is about the highest praise I can physically give them. They genuinely gave me the feeling that someone finally cracked the code, finally understood what makes Souls boss fights so good, so thrilling. I also particularly like the “real first” boss, the Scrapped Watchman. I touched on it in the beginning, but this fight was made made me “get” Lies of P, and got me excited for the full release after the demo.
So, the bosses are fantastic, and the combat system on the side of the player is generally great. But I always say that a combat system can only ever be as good as the enemies you use it against. So how does this game stack up with the general enemies? The mobs? The ads?
Fucking fantastic, that’s how. Once again, this development team seem to have cracked the FromSoft code, and filled this whole game to the brim with so many unique, twisted and lively enemies from the lowliest grunts to terrifying mini-bosses who make your life a living hell. Each and every one of these is fantastically animated, their attack animations are (mostly) telegraphed very well, and their hitboxes and frame-data is very polished. Of course, there are minor hiccups here and there, like a bit too many enemies having awkward “ice-skating” animations, where they’ll inch toward you during attack animations without actually moving their feet, enemies can attack through walls like in Dark Souls but you can’t, and some of them have some pretty absurd stats even on normal NG, but it needs to be once again stated that there truly is NO Souls-like on this level out there. These enemies are generally fantastic to engage with, and are even more varied.
There are literally hundreds of enemies in this game, and they’re all very unique and deliberately animated. This might sound overwhelming, but there is a system to this.
Enemies come in 3 types; Puppet, Carcass and Human - although the latter are so rare and specific that they admittedly barely count. Puppets are the most common enemy type you will find in the game, and are the main antagonistic force of Lies of P’s story - or, so you are being led to believe at first. Later, you will encounter zombie-like enemies that are what happens to victims of the Petrification Disease when not properly disposed of. The few remaining humans in this game are highly trained Stalkers, vigilantes who either fight against the puppet frenzy, or use the chaos to pillage the town.
Each one of these has multiple subdivisions that feature unique attack animations or elemental affiliations, and are (mostly) specific to the area you find them in. The game also does a fantastic job at slowly introducing them to you one after the other, so you never get overwhelmed by too many new enemies, and you’re also never running into the feeling that you’ve seen the current enemies too much already. Again, even FromSoftware needs to take a look at this and perhaps think about it a bit. While humans really only come in the form of “NPC fights” (like Bloodborne’s “Hunters” or Dark Souls’ “Phantoms”) or full on boss fights, puppets and carcasses come in all shapes and sizes from small, weak fodder scrubs, to your average standard “knight” type enemy to terrifying and ferocious mini-bosses that are - for the most part - 100% unique to the area you find them in. There are individual enemies without health bars or names that only appear a single time in the entire game that are more thought out and mechanically interesting than some full on boss fights in some Souls games. This keeps things really fresh as (at least on your first playthrough) you never quite know what to expect from any level. Later on, these 2 categories will even start fusing with each other, creating many different forms of zombie-puppets, who will take on aspects of both.
I will admit that I’m not the biggest fan of the Stalker enemies. They're clearly intended to be equivalent to Bloodborne's Hunters specifically. They do have similar abilities to the player and some of them are more fun to fight than others but they all share the same design issues where they all have plenty of poise while you have none, they can attack non stop and some of their attacks can be suspiciously hard to parry, implying that maybe they're not all super polished. But on the other hand, they can all be easily backstab-cheesed if you can't be bothered to learn their move set. Overall they're fine. Not particularly bad but not my favourite either.
Back to the 3 big groups; each of these enemy types has a certain elemental weakness; Puppets hate electricity, Carcasses hate fire, and humans hate acid. This is what makes putting points into Advance actually very worthwhile. So if you’re struggling with any specific area, it’s wise to bring weapons that have damage type most enemies in the area are weak to. And ultimately, you’re going to want your character the right way for that. But building your character isn’t only about which stats you level, you get an entire new system additionally to that.
P-ORGAN & RPG SYSTEM
So, Lies of P has a skill tree system called the “P-Organ”, and it’s pretty interesting. Yes, that really is what it’s called. No, I’m not sure whether the dev team were aware of how this would sound to westerners. If I remember correctly, the “Fable arts” were also originally called “P-Energy”, so maybe they really did not consider how ridiculous a name that would be.
Gameplay wise, I think it’s generally a cool addition to the core loop, and I like how you’re progressively unlocking everything with certain upgrade items - called Quartz - you could potentially miss, so not every character will look the same by the end, but there are some elements that are a bit strange, and I’m not just talking about the name.
It works like this:
You have a tree of badges you can unlock. Each badge contains a skill or QoL improvement like “Gain +1 amulet slot”, “Gain +1 use of healing flask”, “Deal more damage with Fable attacks”, etc, and is made up of 2-4 nodes, each representative of 1 quartz. To unlock these skills, simply trade in enough quartz. What makes this especially cool is that each node also contains a skill additionally to the main skill you’re in the process of unlocking. So if you have a badge with 4 nodes, you effectively have 5 new abilities for the price of one. Each of these nodes can be fitted with an ability from 1 of 4 classes; Attack, Survival, Ability and Item. You can only pick one of them per badge, so you have to pick one of each class for each badge. Simple enough.
My problems with it mostly stem from how many of these options are totally useless, and how a lot of the ones that aren’t as useless are unlockable abilities in the first place, instead of coming with the base character. The most obvious one would be the fact that you need to unlock the ability to string together dodges. To be quite fair, you can unlock this ability very early on, but I still think that this really should be part of the core move-set. Another one would be the ability to shortly stagger smaller enemies upon a successful deflection. While this might not be as necessary to returning players, I think that the fact that SO many people struggle so much with literally the most fundamental aspect of the entire combat system might have something to do with the fact that deflecting enemies really doesn’t reward you anywhere near as much as it does with all of these quality of life improvements already unlocked.
It doesn’t necessarily break the game or anything like that, but it is something a sequel or future patch could solve. In the past, another ability you had to actually unlock was the ability to quickly roll out of the way after being knocked to the ground. If you hadn’t unlocked this ability, certain enemies like the big, burning shovel wielding robots could stun-lock and keep you grounded indefinitely. Clearly the devs were listening to criticism back then, so perhaps this will get updated in the future as well.
Before we move on to this game’s story and themes, I want to briefly go into more detail concerning the RPG systems of this game. I think that this is perhaps where future games in the franchise might cut even more access fat from this experience. And what I mean by that is; I really think that the choice to feature stats in this game was a mistake. I think that this game would’ve benefitted much more from a more in-depth skill tree which would maybe actually give you new abilities. Similarly to the upgrade system (although not to the same extent) I regard the fact that you still have to level up with XP farmed from enemies to increase certain stats so you do a tiny bit more damage with a certain weapon as a purely vestigial element. This isn’t organic to Lies of P, it’s the remains of a much more RPG-focused game called “Dark Souls” that got carried over. Weapons don’t require stats. Stats make barely a difference when it comes to damage, at least much less than upgrading weapons. There are no spells, and no special abilities that are tied to stats - so why even feature them at all?
I think the fact that my least favourite aspects of this game are all elements that strike me as vestigial is a testament to the fact how good and creative the team at Neowiz really is. If my main criticism of your Souls-clone is “it’s too much like Dark Souls”, then you’re doing something right.
STORY
Finally, I want to talk about the story and themes of Lies of P. Just a few things right off the bat: I am not all that familiar with the actual Pinocchio stories written by Carlo Collodi. I know of them, I am aware that there are a few differences between that version and the one popularised by Disney, especially when it comes to tone and themes. All I know is that this game heavily references the writings of Collodi in its text, and as such I don’t feel qualified to really go into detail concerning that. Instead, I’ll just talk freely about the things that jumped out at me, and whether I liked them or not.
As far as this game’s main plot goes, it’s surprisingly decent. I’m saying surprising because my interest and investment in the story were cultivated despite a rather amateurish way of actually conveying most information to you, and despite it all being unfortunately very predictable. It’s much stronger with its themes and ideas though.
The opening hours of Lies of P are definitely really good at creating a strong sense of suspense and shock right at the start. The team here definitely took a solid chunk out of FromSoft’s playbook for environmental story telling. The cold, dark and damp Krat Central Station you saw as you stepped out of the train cart you first awoke in. The slow but devastating reveal of just massive the casualties of the puppet frenzy truly were. It all works rather well by itself. So it’s a shame that the devs seemingly felt like this wasn’t enough to fully convey the game’s story and plot, and perhaps they were right in that regard. However, the truth is that all of the expositional dialogue and character quips really aren’t playing to Neowiz’ strengths. And I’m not only talking about Gemini here, who already is rather infamous within the Lies of P community as perhaps the most annoying character in the whole game. I find that a lot of the actual dialogues and monologues you’re being treated to simply lack depth and refinement. Much of it is overly quippy and in stark contrast to the very orthodox Souls-ian atmosphere the devs try to conjure. In general and in summary you could say that the actual written word is perhaps the weakest part of Lies of P’s writing.
Upon beating the tutorial boss and finally standing in front of Hotel Krat’s mighty doors, we are met with a question by the hotel’s automatic security system: “Are you human?”
And this is where the other big signature game mechanic, and arguably the most important story element comes into play: P is the only puppet in the world that has the ability to lie. And to enter Hotel Krat, we must put that ability to the test. No matter how you feel about telling lies, here it is most often the most advantageous choice to make, but more on that later.
Entering the hotel we finally meet Sophia, this game’s Fire Keeper, or Emerald Herald, or Maiden in Black, or what have you. She will be our guide and method of levelling up. (at least for now) Sophia also informs us of our next immediate goal; saving Gepetto. We learn that Gepetto is the creator of ALL puppet technology in Krat, and as such is the only person that could possibly put a stop to all of this… and if you’ve played even a single Souls game in your life, you already know from this moment on that Gepetto will be revealed to be the final antagonist. But like so often, the journey is more important than the destination, so let’s put this aside for now, and continue with the other important Hotel Krat NPCs. Most importantly you have Eugenié, a friendly blacksmith and tinkerer who gladly offers her services, loves some small talk and thinks the world of you. Next, you have “old friend to Gepetto” Lady Antonia, an aging but still elegant dame of status, who will provide us with hints and stories about Krat and its people. Next is Lady Antonia’s puppet butler, Polendina, who serves as your typical shopkeep. While these are all the people you can talk to at first, this hub area will receive more people as time goes on, most importantly, the eccentric inventor, business owner, personal friend to Gepetto and richest man in town Lorenzini Venigni and his puppet butler Pulcinella, the sketchy treasure hunter Alidoro and… uh, some soldier from another town whose name I keep forgetting because she really isn’t all that important or does anything noteworthy.
Back to the plot; Sophia tells us that we must save Gepetto from Elysion Boulevard, one of the city’s seedier corners. Though whatever social inequity may have once put a stranglehold on this part of town is now long gone along with most human life. It is on the bridge over to Krat City Hall we discover our first Stalker, the Mad Donkey. Threatening Gepetto before our very eyes, naturally we must deliver this man a hefty dose of demise. This is where we understand that Gepetto regards us more like a son than a regular puppet, and he expresses how deeply important we are to him. Despite this, his very next action is to send us on a mission to retrieve Venigni from the Puppet Factory, since he might know how to stop the puppet frenzy - or at least, who’s behind it.
After successfully saving Venigni from the factory, we learn that a very special puppet seems to be behind it all - the King of Puppets. The king seems to be some sort of alpha-puppet that can command the other via the Ergo in the air - which is essentially crystallised life-energy that can be harnessed to power machinery with it. Before we get to him we must quickly make a detour to the city’s big cathedral just outside of town. This is where we meet the other main enemy type in this game for the first time; carcasses. Like I mentioned a while ago, this is what happens to people who die of the petrification disease who aren’t properly disposed of. I have to admit, I can’t really remember the exact plot reasons we need to come here specifically, but admittedly that isn’t super important. The area is cool, creepy and has some neat design.
I’ll fast forward to after we’ve beaten both the Cathedral area, as well as Malum District, simply because both don’t really seem to be terribly important when it comes to the actual plot. (Also, Malum District is a really short level) There are of course various NPC interactions, side quests and the like, as well as the introduction to Krat’s issues outside of the puppet frenzy, but the actual story doesn’t seem to progress until we’ve defeated the Black Rabbit Brotherhood, which might take the title for most annoying fight in the game, but that’s an aside. Two interesting things happen here. For one, we find a picture of a young teenage boy that looks a lot like us… to an eery degree. More importantly, we take an elevator up, and up, and up and after a while we begin to hear a familiar piece of music; it’s the Hotel Krat OST. We’ve managed to loop back around to the start. Normally this would be extremely impressive and probably my favourite moment in the game, but sadly the extremely linear nature of the game makes it a bit less impressive, had it been something you could’ve missed entirely. But there’s a reason for it being like this, because the next section of the game is locked behind a closed door in the hotel, which leads to Rosa Isabelle Street, which itself leads to the Opera house, where the King of Puppets resides.
So, by the time you’re walking down Rosa Isabelle Street you’ve almost certainly sussed out that Gepetto has to be behind all of this. Yes, the King of Puppets is the one leading them, but Venigni even says that this all seems like a bit much, even for such an advanced puppet. Keep that in mind as we go forward. So, we finally reach The King of Puppets, who has an elaborate puppet performance ready for us. We see a puppet-Gepetto stand in front of another puppet who looks exactly like us. He seems to take out our heart and place it into another puppet, which causes the puppet to get up and dance a little. Jeez, I wonder what this might symbolise! This initiates the 2-phase fight against the King of Puppets, who first appears as a massive, hulking mech that spins around, slams its massive arms into the ground and even fires some Ergo grenades and whatnot. The second phase is where it gets interesting. Out of the mech climbs another puppet, much smaller. In fact, he’s exactly our size, and he looks somewhat similar. His name is now Romeo, King of Puppets. Much later we learn that this was once our best friend in the whole world, who attempts to call out to us during the fight, but we can’t understand his language - yet. The fight is brilliant by the way, my favourite in the whole game. It really tests every single ability that the player is expected to have by this point, and it’s where the game’s combat truly clicked for me.
So, we’ve reached the halfway point of the game. After taking down the King, we step outside the arena to find our old man just standing there. He praises and rewards us, and unsurprisingly tells us that we need to do a lot more to fix all this. We’re supposed to find the Alchemists, because he suspects they are behind this. The Alchemists are a guild of quasi-scientists operating within Krat, and are defined by their utter lack of respect for human life and decency. Naturally we don’t believe a word he says but, we indulge, as the game must progress. So, off we go. Our first new direction is to head towards the Grand Exhibition Gallery. On the way there we also go through Lorenzini Arcade, which isn’t terribly important or anything, but it’s a really cool and interesting area, and one of my favourites in the game. Great environmental story telling and level design here!
Here at the Gallery is where we run into my biggest issue with this game’s story. The gallery itself is fine, if a bit short, and works great as a level. I also really like the boss, Champion Victor, who is a human but genetically modified via Ergo. He seems to be similar to those carcass monsters, but of sound mind and ready to defend the way forward. After an exhilarating fight, we suddenly get interrupted by a fierce looking knight figure, who impales Victor with a sword in the back. A shadowy figure speaks to us from the balcony above. He introduces himself as Simon Manus, head of the Alchemist guild and just flat out admits to facilitating the Petrification Disease throughout the town, and just being the villain in general. Basically, his deal is that he wants to make humans immortal by experimenting on them with the petrification disease - which would also make them incapable of lying, apparently. Honestly, I really dislike this villain reveal this late in the game. First off, it’s incredibly transparent that Simon is a red herring. There is no way that Gepetto isn’t the main villain, or at least the one responsible for the puppet frenzy, and it’s wild that the devs seem to think that simply introducing Simon at this point in the story is enough to confuse the player or make them reconsider their opinions. He isn’t foreshadowed what so ever (at least as far as I can tell) and the Alchemists aren’t even mentioned until shortly before you meet him. It’s made worse by the fact that all other NPCs completely buy the idea that he is responsible, and that your main mission has become to hunt this guy down. It really feels like the game does not respect your intelligence concerning this matter.
And this is where the plot of the game begins to break a bit, because now your next few activities are informed by Venigni going “Hmm, how might we get to the Isle of Alchemists?? Well, how about you go check out (Insert Area)? Maybe there’s something there??”. It feels more like a contrivance to get you where the devs want you to go, rather than a satisfying result of the actions you’ve taken thus far. It’s a good thing the levels are as solid as they are, and that enemy design and bosses are still going strong by that point, because the story definitely lost me by this point. What’s worse is that a lot of what you’re going through here until the final level feels a bit… uninspired? The first level is a big old swamp level, which admittedly is one of the more fun takes on the idea, but it’s not the best level in the game either. The boss here, Green Monster of the Swamp, gave me mixed feelings as well, because the first phase of the fight is really cool, but the second phase sees Scrapped Watchmen return for some reason. To be fair, it’s not just a reskin, they did give it some new moves and a new aesthetic. The fight itself is still enjoyable, but to see repeats of main bosses so shortly after the halfway point was a bit disconcerting. And not without reason, it turns out, because the next 2 bosses are ALSO reskins of main bosses you’ve fought before. One, a rematch against the Black Rabbit Brotherhood down in the depths of the Relic of Trismegistus, which funnily enough is another extremely short level that seems to only exist as a prelude to fighting these Melvins. And in contrast to Green Monster, the only notable difference here is that the big brother enemy does have a single new attack. This is the least excusable moment in the whole game as far as I’m concerned. And we’re not done, because before this we get to explore the first level again. Luckily, this is barely comparable to its earlier iteration, since the entire town is utterly destroyed by massive Ergo crystals emerging from the ground, which opens up massive rifts in the floor and generally dramatically changes the landscape. As for the boss… it’s literally the tutorial boss again, once again, with maybe one or two extra attacks. I’m not sure why exactly the last 2-3 hours of this game was dominated by repeated content, but luckily none of this is really egregious or bad. The gameplay is great, and even if I kinda logged out of the story by this point, the core gameplay loop was more than enough to keep me interested. And luckily right about here is where the story manages to pick up the pace again. Turns out, while we were gone the Alchemists raided Hotel Krat and kidnapped Gepetto, because he apparently stole some ancient relic from them, which they desperately need back. As expected, all the other NPCs in the game still suffer from a severe case of dumb-brain and still haven’t figured out that Gepetto is the main guy to watch out for, so they beg you to go and safe him. Through your travels through the reskin-lands, you managed to find everything you need to track down the Alchemists. But before that, we need to speak with Venigni again, because he has something interesting for us; a decoded message from the King of Puppets, but Venigni can’t understand most of it, and gives it to us. And this is where it happens; the big baddy of this game is finally, officially revealed to us… it’s Simon Manus!… no, I’m kidding, it’s obviously fucking Gepetto. Who would’ve thought huh? No way to predict this! So we tell Venigni, and he surprisingly doesn’t seem to care all that much? He mainly tells us that we still need to save Gepetto so he can fix what he started.
So we arrive at the final level, Arche Abbey, which is very, very long. The area begins with a big desert area we have to walk through, which gives the time to slowly dump some exposition on our heads via some Ergo ghosts of the past. We see visions and hear voices from back when we were still human. I didn’t mind it a lot, since it gives a lot of context to the things you’ve seen. Like your previous friendship with Romeo, your complete lack of a relationship with Gepetto, since he was always working and didn’t have time for P, your eventual infection with the petrification disease, which led to your untimely demise and of course, your real name: Carlo.
So, P, or Carlo, fights his way through Arche Abbey, until we meet the mysterious knight figure we met alongside Simon. She blocks our path and acts like the big wall of the end game. And my god, a wall she is. This is easily the hardest fight in the whole game and it’s not even close. She doesn’t have a lot of lore as far as I can tell, and seems to basically just be an enhanced human made by Simon. After finally defeating her after, like, 50 tries or something, we find Sophia’s true body here. It’s too complicated to get into the full backstory here, but in short, she is the daughter of Simon’s previous boss, whom he succeeded in leading the Alchemists. To oversimplify, Sophia is a “Listener” which means she can control Ergo and communicate with puppets. Simon wants to abuse this power for his own means, but Sophia won’t let him. So he traps Sophia in this tower until he’s able to break her. But you come along and have the choice of ending her suffering. Doing this can potentially unlock the true ending, but more on that in a bit.
So, finally onto the top of the Abbey we get to confront Simon, but not before bailing out Gepetto from jail. After telling him what a piece of shit dad he is, we go and beat Simon’s ass. Which is easier said than done, considering the guy’s colossal second phase health bar and the fact he can use three different projectile attacks at the same time. Here, Simon explains his plan a bit more in detail; basically, the petrification disease traps the body and time of an individual in place, forcing the life energy in them to crystallise.. sound familiar? This infinite existence somehow also prohibits people from lying, which seems to be the big motivator for Manus, who for some reason really can’t stand the concept of lying. The reason he kidnapped Gepetto was the latter’s stealing of the Hand of God, an ancient relic that has mystical properties, apparently including turning Simon into a god. In either case, we finally defeat this asshole and are done with the game.
Or are we?
After Simon is defeated, the game doesn’t stop. Instead, we need to take an elevator down, way down, beneath the foundation of the abbey. Here, Gepetto waits for us, and explains to us that all of this, everything he and you did was to be able to bring Carlo back to life as a real boy. So, what the fuck is really going on? What did Gepetto do?
This is where we need to discuss the nature of Ergo and lying, a specific side quest and the endings of the game in detail.
SPOILER WARNING FOR THE ENDINGS START HERE.
There is a side quest in the game that revolves around a weird little character called Arlecchino. He contacts us a total of three times throughout the game, always via public telephone booths. If we pick up, he asks us a riddle, always something to do with topics that deal with your humanity. As the game progresses though, Arlecchino becomes increasingly disturbing in his questions and demeanour. He hints at the fact that he has killed a bunch of people, and when Venigni begins to talk about the fact that his parents were murdered by a crazed puppet many years ago, things begin to click. Yes, it was indeed he who killed Venigni’s parents. Why, you ask? Well, it has everything to do with what Ergo is. All of Arlecchino’s questions work towards one central question: What is a puppet? And the answer is truly horrifying.
A puppet IS a human.
A puppet is an inanimate object animated by Ergo, which is the crystallised life energy of people who have died. Yes, basically, puppets run on the souls of the dead. At some point in his new existence, his Ergo awakened and he realised that he is a human no different from those made of flesh and blood. It seems that puppets have no actual memory of their past, but a longing sensation remains. One day, Arlecchino, driven mad by his subconscious realisation that he is in fact human, spots a happy Venigni family - the parents of Lorenzini and engineers of the first mass produced puppets. He murders them in cold blood and leaves their son behind, who vows to make sure something like this may never happen again, and invents the very same failsafe which the King of Puppets later manages to undo.
So, puppets are humans. Or, more succinctly, Ergo, the energy that animates them, is the equivalent of the human soul. THAT is what Gepetto discovered. It turns out, despite his profound distrust and hatred for them, he used to be an Alchemist as well. In fact, he seems to have been the most important Alchemist of all. He discovered that human life clings to this world in the form of Ergo, and that this material can be used to create artificial humans. The radical invention that will change society forever is the previously mentioned P-Organ; a mechanical heart, that harnesses the power of ego.
Much later in the timeline, the Petrification disease first spreads slowly through the town, which is deemed by the Alchemists to be a result of long-term overexposure to Ergo. The disease eventually infects Carlo, who perishes from it. This is what breaks Gepetto. He becomes consumed by a mad desire to reunite with his son. Now, Gepetto wasn’t a great dad. He committed his son into a boarding school at a young age, and barely even really knew his son. Carlo never thought very highly of Gepetto, and it’s possible he died full of resentment for this father. But Gepetto doesn’t blame himself for this - not outwardly, at least. To him, the real culprits were the Alchemists, who wouldn’t stop experimenting on Ergo and the petrification disease. In fact, it seems the fact that his son was so estranged to him is what makes it all the worse, and all the more necessary to bring Carlo back. At first, he simply attempts to transfer Carlo’s soul into a puppet body, but this doesn’t really work. The puppet body nearly destroys Carlo’s Ergo - it seems that puppets only run on trace amounts of Ergo, compared to the vast stores of Ergo in a fully human soul. So Gepetto begins to work on a new P-Organ; one that not only runs on Ergo, but is able to absorb it as well, presumably enough to fully rebuild Carlo’s mind. This enhanced P-Organ is stored away in a new puppet body, locked away in some train cart at Krat Central Station. Hmm.
Anyway, over the next few years Gepetto cooperates with Lorenzini Venigni to mass produce puppets and refine the technology further and further. They come up with a concept called the “Grand Covenant”, which restricts the puppets’ autonomy and enforces a set of rules they have to follow unconditionally. For Venigni, the point of this it to prevent something like Arlecchino’s murder spree from ever happening again. The rules are, in order of priority: 1 - All puppets must obey their creator's commands. 2 - A puppet may not harm a human. 3 - A puppet must protect and serve humans and the city of Krat. 4 - A puppet cannot lie.
But Gepetto included another rule in secret, a “rule 0” as it were, one that overrides all other rules:
0 - The creator’s name is Giuseppe Gepetto.
Gepetto then proceeds to take Romeo’s ergo, who also died from the disease, and makes him the King of Puppets. This special puppet has the ability to control all others via the Grand Covenant. And then, one day it happens:
Gepetto instructs Romeo to kill ALL people infected with the petrification disease, who extends this order to every puppet under the covenant. The problem; basically every person in the city is infected, even if they don’t show symptoms. Because, as we established already, this isn’t just a random illness that spreads by virus or something like that. It’s your body’s inherent reaction to overexposure of Ergo. Now, you might think that all of this is in service of stopping the Alchemists and thwarting their plans. And the fact that Gepetto even stole the Arm of God, which they desperately need to fulfil their plans, might even be a good argument for this. But if you’ve learned one thing from interacting with this dickhead is that he is anything but an altruist. He has but one desire, which dominates every facet of every single action of his: To see his son again.
Like we said, the puppet kill every human being with traces of infection. But every human in the city is potentially infected because every human in the city had the same amount of exposure. Also, if you think about it… aren’t these people just walking stores of Ergo? What if the puppets killed the people and absorbed the Ergo? And what if that very special P-Organ that allowed YOU to absorb THEIR ergo, was crafted for this very specific purpose?
And this is where the story of Lies of P suddenly turns exceedingly dark and horrifying. ALL of this, every single dead body, ever destroyed building, every ruined life was all in service just so Gepetto got to see Carlo again. And this is why Gepetto TRULY stole the Arm of God… not to stop the Alchemist, but to have the power to resurrect his son. Simon used the Arm to direct massive quantities of Ergo into one place, and Gepetto is using that very same Ergo to give the arm the power to resurrect Carlo. Initially, Gepetto simply wanted to steal the arm and then get back to P sitting in the train cart, but then gets besieged by the Mad Donkey and his ilk.
So, this explains close to everything we need to make sense of the endings, but there’s one more thing.
We haven’t really talked about one core mechanic of this game: Your ability to lie.
P can tell lies to people. Whether or not he is able to convince people he’s telling the truth seems entirely secondary to the fact that he is capable of lying. In terms of gameplay, on the surface at least, this feels surprisingly barebones with not much depth to it. It really does not happen that often, and it almost never has any direct gameplay implications, but that’s because it’s not really about the act of lying and its consequences, but rather what it means to you, a character who has to find their own humanity - and that’s the key word right here: Humanity.
Humans can lie, puppets can not. And, considering this is a Pinnochio story, our goal is of course to become a real boy. And we do this by maxing out our humanity.
“Humanity” is an invisible game mechanic that never gets explained to you, and is something you have to figure out by yourself. Throughout the game you’ll be met with choices, most of them dialogue based, and of those the majority will be about lying. Every time you lie, you raise your humanity, so basically, lying is universally good in Lies of P. But lying isn’t the only way to increase your humanity. In most cases, especially when it comes to dialogue options, the “human” option is almost always very straight forward. Whether it telling people they’re still beautiful, or telling a distressed young woman that the doll she desperately wants to be her daughter really is her sweet little baby, or telling a solider that her partner died in combat, when he actually turned into a zombie… those sweet little white lies seem to make P connect more to other humans. He understands that needlessly hurting those who already suffer so much is a cruel thing to do. There is also the way to max out your humanity by listening to the many records you can find in the game, although I wasn’t a huge fan of this, personally. I guess if you’re gonna make me listen to an entire 5 minute song in your game to marginally increase my chances of getting the true ending, you better make sure that all of the songs are masterpieces. Let’s just say that the majority of songs weren’t really my taste. There are outliers, I like most of the songs that don’t have vocals, and dislike most songs that do. A neat idea, but I would’ve preferred a little more thought went into it.
While we’re at it, let’s very briefly address this game’s overall OST. It’s no Bloodborne or Hotline Miami, but there are some nice tracks here. As far as the records go, my favourite has to be Misty E’ra. A nice little smooth jazz tune that doesn’t overstay its welcome and has some genuinely nice, melancholic atmosphere. The rest I can honestly take or leave. As far as boss soundtracks go, I have to admit I didn’t find a lot of them very memorable. That’s not to say that they’re bad, simply not really all that noteworthy. There are some outliers, like Romeo King of Puppets, Fuoco and Laxasia, which were the only ones I felt like they warranted a listen outside of the game.
Now with this out of the way, let’s get back to the elevator on top of the Abbey that took us down into the depths, to our final confrontation with Gepetto.
So, this game has three endings.
“REAL BOY”
The first one, the “bad” ending as far as I’m concerned, has you giving up your P-Organ and surrender it to Gepetto, so he can use the Arm of God and finally revive Carlo - only, is this what you really want? You aren’t Carlo. You never were. You’re P. You’re a puppet that physically resembles Gepetto’s son, and you even carry his heart with you, but you don’t have his memories, his emotions, his thoughts and feelings. Whatever “you” currently inhabits this puppet body right now will be gone. What’s worse is that if you DO decide to go with this ending, and you decide to visit Hotel Krat, you’ll find that ALL NPCs have been replaced by puppets, who say the same line of dialogue over and over again. It’s bloody terrifying and heart breaking. Gepetto didn’t learn anything. He killed whoever survived this whole ordeal and plans to rebuilt society with nothing but puppets.
“FREE FROM PUPPET STRING”
So, obviously we can’t do this, so instead we’ll refuse to give Gepetto our heart. Naturally, he’s furious and shows his true face. He never cared about YOU. He only cared about the heart you carry around. And now he’s gonna take it by force.
This is when he pulls out his suitcase and assembles from it Carlo’s old puppet body - the first one he built before you. This is another hot contender for best boss fight in the game. This Nameless Puppet reminds me a lot of Lady Maria from Bloodborne, and also in a way of Gehrman, who similarly decides to fight you, should you refuse his offer of freeing you from the dream. It is extremely fast, powerful and has a shitton of moves but there’s no fight in the game that’s this fun to master.
After a hard fought battle, we’re about to lose the fight in the cutscene even though we beat his ass in the actual game (kinda hate this trope, ngl) when suddenly Gepetto jumps between us when the Nameless Puppet is about to destroy Carlo’s heart. Sacrificing himself, Gepetto is able to save our life. After quickly taking out the enemy puppet, Gepetto lies on the floor, lamenting how deeply disappointed he is in us. He calls us a useless puppet and dies. Wow. Goddamn. I mean it’s preferable to the other ending, but not by much. At least we are free now, I guess. But we won’t find peace, not unless we manage to really max out our humanity, build connections to people, find our own meaning and become ourselves. Our OWN real boy.
“RISE OF P”
So, if you consistently lie in this game, and do good things for NPCs, and listen to all the music, and find the painting, you’ll be able to become properly human. While there is no way to directly check your humanity meter, there are a couple of things you can watch out for. The first indication will happen after taking out the King of Puppets, which, should you have done the minimum in terms of gaining humanity, will cause your hair to grow longer, and your face to look slightly older. Sophia will comment on it, stating that whatever you did so far, you should keep doing. There’s also the cat Spring at Hotel Krat, who keeps wandering about the premises. Depending on how much humanity you have, she’ll either dislike you, and hiss at you when you have no humanity, progressively warming up more and more to you, until, when you’re fully human, she’ll let herself be picked up and petted and kissed. I just wanted to mention this because it’s awesome and I love cats and I love being able to pet cats in games. The moment when I could pick up Spring and she’d cuddle with me was the greatest moment in this game for me, unironically.
Later, when you find the painting in Gepetto’s room, you’ll notice that there’s a small branch growing from the boy’s nose. This nose grows with every bit of humanity you gain, most noticeably whenever you lie - no idea where they got the inspiration for this from! Eventually, this branch will turn into a golden staff-type weapon, which grows in power with your humanity. The moment you’re actually able to pick it up, you officially have enough humanity to trigger the true ending.
This is one prerequisite you need for the best ending, the other one is to make sure to grant Sophia her freedom. If you did everything right, your hair will turn white and you’ll have become fully human. Now just go ahead, kill the Nameless Puppet, and here we go.
At first the ending is identical to the Free From Puppet String ending, up until the moment where Gepetto talks to us for the last time. Instead of stating his disappointment, he sees us shed a single tear for him, which in turn causes him to apologise for everything before dying.
P goes outside, enjoying a warm sunset on the highest peak of the Abbey. He approaches a puppet that looks a lot like Sophia. He kneels down and transfers his Ergo into this new puppet, which causes him to break down, and her to wake up. But P didn’t die, apparently, as we can see his face twitching slightly when puppet-Sophia touches him. Embracing each other, the sun rises behind them, heralding a new age.
But we’re not done yet… looks like we have a post-credit cutscene!?
We open on a figure sitting in a train, presumably going towards Krat. He is named “Paracelsus” and seemingly talks about our adventure, and how we’re “a new brother… a new type of humanity”. He apparently came here with the intent of retrieving the Arm of God. That, and a certain someone. A little girl with shining red shoes named Dorothy. I’ll let you figure out that one on your own.
CONCLUSION:
So, this was Lies of P! I genuinely can’t remember when I played a game that so thoroughly subverted my expectations not only for itself, but for the entire genre it inhabits. Like I said, I used to be extremely dismissive of just about any Souls-like not made by FromSoftware and this game has definitely showed me that I really shouldn’t be.
It is unbelievable how much quality there is to be found here. How much love and care and attention. It’s not perfect, by any means. There are some serious flaws here and there, and at the end of the day, I think I would still play some Souls games over this. But if this game is just the start of Neowiz, and we can expect similar or even better quality going forward, I think we might be looking at a new industry titan in the making.
If you have even a fleeting interest in Souls games, or are simply looking for a really cool, albeit very tough gaming experience, look no further than that. Lies of P will definitely earn a spot on my end of the year list, and I predict it’s gonna be somewhere in the top 3.
God, this game is so good and interesting I don’t even know how to end the review properly. There are still SO many things I’d love to talk about, but this review is already among the longest I have ever written.
Now the choice is up to you:
Lie or Die!
2022
Moonscars often comes tantalisingly close to being a really competent game but then, just as quickly, will make some really clumsy mistakes that could’ve been easily avoided with more care and effort. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes even quite good, the potential is here, but the execution is sadly lacking.
5 / 10
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Man, I just don’t seem to have any luck with Metroidvanias as of late. Over the course of the last two years I must’ve played well over 10 of them, and I’m sad to say that the vast majority of them really aren’t anything to write home about. It’s gotten so common I’ve come to use the term “Midroidvania” to refer to the majority of them. And with that I don’t mean to simply shit on the (mostly independent) developers working in that genre; but rather I want to acknowledge that making one of these is HARD. There are so many individual elements you need to get just right. A good MV has to have a great world to explore, good combat and platforming mechanics, a good art style and good music to begin with. If even one of those core aspects doesn't fully connect with a player it can destroy the entire experience before it even fully started.
The best one I played last year was probably Ender Lilies (which I’ve spoken about in a review here), and that one was admittedly mostly pretty good, albeit with some definite room for improvement. The rest of them, while not terrible, were either too linear and short, or would try and force in some really unfitting game mechanics that did not complement the MV structure what so ever. Others yet were MVs only insofar you unlock abilities that let you bypass obstacles which you couldn’t before, while barely engaging with what are in my opinion the most interesting aspects of the genre; exploration, backtracking and environmental story telling. The last Metroidvania I played I would call a genuinely fantastic game front to back is Blasphemous; and it’s precisely the game that Moonscars seems to take heavy inspiration from.
Moonscars, like Blasphemous, is a Metroidvania set in a dark, (presumably) post-apocalyptic, medieval European inspired world filled with castles, caves, ghouls, ghosts and goblins, populated by weirdos who speak in riddles and with imagery drawing heavily from Christian iconography. It’s thick with atmosphere and asks the player to really take in the environments, and to wallow in the melancholy that the world presents.
But where Blasphemous is a game which masterfully weaves together an imaginative, rich world full of incredibly dense and cryptic lore, with great, fluid combat, great exploration and some of the best art and music in gaming period, Moonscars, in an attempt to more-or-less copy this entire formula wholesale, never really gets to define itself as its own unique experience, and also fumbles some of these aspects to the detriment of the whole game. The developers here were so busy creating an experience similar to Blasphemous, it feels like their inspiration became their literal blueprint, and this will become apparent the more we get into the nitty gritty.
Before I get more into the negative aspects of Moonscars, I want to highlight a few things I enjoyed about it first, and why - despite criticising this game quite harshly at times - I would still consider this an overall decent experience that’s at least worth a try if you’re a fan of the genre.
Let’s start with the fact that Black Mermaid (the dev studio) is a very small, newly established team from Moldova with no prior experience in making games, meaning that this is their first game they ever made. And considering that, it’s a very impressive feat that the game came out as solid as it did. I really want to again hammer home the point that I do NOT intend to shit on a small Eastern European studio with a number of employees smaller than that of a regular dentist’s office. Instead I want to offer constructive criticism where it makes sense.
Perhaps the strongest aspect of this game would have to be the combat. Here, it’s definitely the closest to actually feeling like a really solid game, making it feel like this is where most of the time and effort went. The animations on Grey Irma (the player character) look fluid and deliberate, and at times come very close to Blasphemous, with the difference that Moonscars actually manages to give the attacks and movements even stronger feeling of weight and impact. There is more inertia involved, which feels different from Blasphemous’ more “arcady” movement. The combat can be best described as “2D Souls-lite”, meaning you have your typical high-commitment attack animations which can’t be cancelled, an I-frame dodge, a parry, a magic/mana bar which lets you use spells, having to retrieve your XP on death aka “corpse running”, etc. You get the idea. In general it feels very close to Blasphemous, but I will utter my hottest take in the entire review right now; I think that Moonscars’ combat has the potential to be even more fun than Blasphemous. At least, I found myself slip into “the zone” a lot more often with Moonscars, than it did with the other one. You have more movement options, you’re faster, you have more attacks and you also die quicker. You have a Hollow Knight-esque heal that replenishes whenever you deal or receive damage, but you can use it a LOT faster and more efficiently than in that game. At first I thought that this was stupidly overpowered, with you being able to instantly heal basically whenever you want, but you can still be attacked and, like in Hollow Knight, you heal from the same mana pool that you use your spells with, which are going to become your main source of damage over time. There are also the so called “special weapons” (more like special attacks) you’ll occasionally find by beating certain enemies of completing certain tasks, but I’m afraid I’ll have to save talking about them until we get to the “bad” portion of the game, since this aspect is sadly the biggest flaw with Moonscars’ combat. Finally, the enemy design is really cool for the most part, and their variety is, overall, sufficient. It’s not fantastic, and there were times (especially towards the end) where I felt like I saw the same few enemy types over and over again but with slightly different attack animations, but it definitely gets the job done much more than other games in the Metroidvania genre. The same can be said for boss fights. They’re solid, some are even pretty good. I’d say their biggest problem is that they all feel somewhat similar, like, they’re all testing very similar skills, just in different permutations. But yeah, overall this is where the game is strongest.
Let’s talk about the level and world design. Both aspects are done rather well for the most part, and certainly better than other’s in the genre I’ve played, but already there’s a lot of room for improvement here. More on that later though. As for the good bits, the levels are all very pretty. The artists took meticulous care in illustrating the backgrounds and all the individual elements. The lighting is quite beautiful for the most part and I think the levels all do a very good job of leading you through them without making you go down a specific path. Sometimes they do get a little too linear for my taste but it’s fine. Short cuts are frequent and see more usage than checkpoints, which are surprisingly few and far between across the whole world, which in my opinion is a good thing. Using shortcuts over checkpoints is always a great way of cultivating an actual understanding of the map in the player, since it reduces the necessity for fast travel.
The music is also very nice, even if it’s a little understated at times. It’s melancholic, sad and bleak, but never without a glimmer of hope in there, somewhere, reminiscent of FromSoftware’s Souls games. The biggest compliment I can give it is that it always felt fitting to the environments, and that sometimes it’s really serene and beautiful, even if it feels like it’s kinda everything to draw attention away from itself.
A thing I found particularly impressive was the fact that the entire game works without a single loading screen, instead seamlessly transitioning between stages. It really seems to be one, massive, contiguous map, making it feel very similar to the original Dark Souls in that regard. You can go from the very first frame of the game all the way to the credits without ever leaving the actual gameplay - safe for some very scarce cutscenes. This makes for really great traversal, never taking you out of the action, no matter where you go. I always love when games are able to do this, it makes the whole act of going through a place so much more authentic.
All that said, I’m afraid this is where I’m kinda running out of things to praise. Do not get me wrong, so far this is all incredibly impressive and ambitious for such a small team with so little experience. If nothing else this really highlights their potential and makes me very interested in whatever they’re doing in the future. But now we have to get into what they need to work on and do differently the next time.
Without further ado, let’s get right into my least favourite aspect of Moonscars: it’s story - or rather, its presentation thereof. You know what, scratch that, just the writing in general.
In the broadest possible sense I would describe this game’s style of writing as: Death Stranding / Metal Gear meets Dark Souls / Blasphemous. Meaning, you’ll get absolutely drowned in expositional dialogue (more often monologues), characters will never stop talking at you but they only speak in the most arcane way possible, which means none of it will make any sense to you at all. You get buried in utterly meaningless world salads. This is bad enough when it comes to story moments or boss monologues or whatever, but in Moonscars, literally none of the characters EVER stop talking. I am seriously not exaggerating when I say that this game has perhaps the biggest ratio of unnecessary dialogue to gameplay I have ever seen. They NEVER stop talking. It’s mental. One of the most egregious examples of this comes in the form of the “memory mould” interactions. These things basically work like the consumable Soul-items from Dark Souls, which give you XP when used. Usually with these games, you just gulp them down and that’s it. But in this game, instead, you have to go to an NPC who will greet you with 3 entire boxes of dialogue each time, then you’ll have to give her one (for a pitiful amount of XP no less) but you only get it if you listen to TWENTY fucking boxes of dialogue - PER MEMORY MOULD. This is absurd to the point of parody. Was there truly no one in the development team who realised how utterly fucking grating this would be?
Given the way I just went off about the writing in this game you might not believe me, but I don’t even mind having to listen to a lot of dialogue if it’s any interesting. I love the Metal Gear series, and I particularly love the fact that they talk so much, because if it’s not actually interesting it’s at least funny or zany. Here, everything is just boring and nondescript. It’s as if the devs were deathly afraid to break out of the mould (pardon the pun) that Dark Souls set for the genre.
It’s quite sad that Moonscars is so afraid of actually just saying what it wants to say. Because despite the game’s best efforts of making itself as incomprehensible as humanly possible, I was able to pick up on something resembling themes here. Of course you have the setting, which frames the story as the experience of a clay statue, mixed with a surprising amount of dialogue that explicitly discusses Grey Irma’s identity as a woman. In fact, there seems to be a lot of imagery and symbolism relating to womanhood, menstruation and childbirth/raising children. It’s almost as though underneath all the rubble of forcibly abstruse walls of text, there might be something of an interesting story developing. It’s very unfortunate then, that this game chose this particular style of plot structure, because now I will never bother to find out anything, simply because the act of engaging with this story feels almost punishing.
Sadly we’re not quite done yet, as another problem that compounds with this comes in the form of really questionable translation. It’s been a bit too long since I’ve beaten it to accurately remember the exact wording of some of the badly translated lines, but I can recall at least a few phrases. For example, at one point King Drahan is referred to as “the only legit ruler of the land”, when they clearly meant to say “the legitimate king”. In general, people in the game would often use wildly inauthentic language, like using modern slang like “for real”, or “that’s cool” or similar things like that; and if this felt at all intentional I wouldn’t even point this out. But it’s fairly obvious that they tried to go for your typical pseudo-medieval Ye Olde English in the same style of Dark Souls and Blasphemous, but whoever was in charge of the translation into English sadly doesn’t seem to be fluent enough to competently write in that style. I did also very briefly check out the German translation (I speak German natively) just out of sheer curiosity, and unsurprisingly this translation is much worse. Spelling errors, grammatical errors and even some core elements of the story get translated extremely weirdly. Like, “Ichor” is translated to “Sekret”, which means “secretion” and has nothing to do with Ichor, the Blood of the Gods - in fact, it doesn’t really have a German translation as such. It’s usually just called “Blut der Götter / Götterblut”.
So this has been by far the game’s biggest flaw as I’m concerned, but sadly there is more we need to talk about.
Let’s continue with the fact that Moonscars is, at its core, extremely linear with no real instances of optional side paths, secret areas, secret bosses or anything at all really. The most you’re getting is getting to explore the individual levels relatively freely, although even here you’re led by the nose for most of it. What’s stranger is that you don’t don’t even really have to go back to previous areas at all if you don’t want to. In fact, the devs just don’t seem all that interested in making you actually explore the world they created. The only instance where you’re given the option to go back and explore is to gather a whole bunch of lost earrings. And it’s honestly pretty boring. Finding these is necessary to complete a side quest, but they only spawn in Ravenous Moon mode.
I haven’t talked about it yet because it didn’t really fit into the rest of the text yet, but to briefly explain it: The Moon Phase mechanic is a bit like Demon’s Souls “World Tendency” and is almost certainly inspired by it.
[For those that don’t know what that is: In Demon’s Souls, you have 2 forms. Human and Soul. If you die in human form at any point in a level, your so called “World Tendency” goes down one step towards Black, aka “Black World Tendency”, for that level. If you kill a boss, a Red Phantom or help another player do the same your tendency will instead shift to “White”. This works in a 7-tier system, where it goes from -3 to +3. -3 represents “Pure Black”, +3 represents “Pure White”. In Pure Black, enemies will deal increased damage, have increased health, will spawn in higher numbers but will also drop more souls and better items. In Pure White, the opposite is true. There are also specific events that will ONLY happen during either Pure Black or Pure White tendency.]
Basically, Moonscars tries to implement a similar system, with Ravenous Moon mode being the equivalent of Pure Black World Tendency. If you die a certain amount of times, the moon will become red and enemies will deal increased damage and have increased health, but will also drop more XP. You can also just switch it on or off at the Checkpoint with a consumable - at least at first. In Demon’s Souls, this would add new stuff to levels you’ve already been through, maybe include some otherwise unobtainable weapons or spells, etc. Here, it’s really just to increase enemy strength and so you can find those ear rings. It feels woefully half-baked, and like they just implemented it without thinking about how this would translate into an actual gameplay mechanic.
That tangent out of the way, let’s get back to the world design. This world consists of only 5 areas. The tutorial area village, the obligatory castle level, 2 (technically 3) separate underground sections and the top of the castle. In terms of variety in level structure, to say that this is the barest of minimums is to be euphemistic. It makes the world feel incredibly tiny. It would be one thing if the story of this game truly revolved specifically around the castle, but instead it’s about the fate of the whole kingdom and life and the universe and god and everything. And as such it just feels weird that the entirety of this game’s world-defining plot takes place entirely within the castle. As a matter of fact, only 4 out of the 5 areas in the game see actual continued usage. Once you’ve cleared the tutorial, you literally never have to go back there, not even to collect ear rings. I know this seems like a weird complaint, but to me having to go back to the tutorial area later in the game is a staple of the genre. It connects the beginning of the story to its end, and it recontextualises your journey, shows how far you’ve come. I 100% expected to emerge out of some underground passage and end up in the village at some point in the game, but that moment never came.
The lack of more individual areas would be excusable if the already existing ones would try and stand apart even the tiniest bit, but sadly they all follow the same design philosophy from start to finish, but game design wise as well as aesthetically. All areas sadly feel overly similar in terms of vibe and structure. Sure, the castle level is a bit more vertically inclined than the lower areas, and you have some very, VERY subtle colour palette swaps between levels, but the vast majority of the aesthetic design of the areas boils down to a lot of grey, black, white and red. At first this is cool and gives the game a strong sense of style, even if it’s a little cliché. But after the first couple of hours, you realise that the entire game looks like this, and it begins to get stale very quickly. Every area effectively feels the same. And, while I did compliment the game for this earlier, the more you play this game the more apparent it becomes just what a massive influence Blasphemous was on any level, especially in terms of art direction. It often crosses the line from “inspired by” to “derivative of”.
But for the strangest thing about this game is that it almost seems like it doesn’t even really want to be a Metroidvania game at all. As strange as it sounds, it almost feels like the initial idea for Moonscars was going to be just a linear 2D action platformer, maybe like the older Castlevania games, and then they tried to tape a Metroidvania system onto it. What do I mean by that?
Let’s start with the fact that, unlike practically any other MV out there, you get only a single ability in the whole game that (very slightly) changes your core moveset and allows you to access previously unreachable areas, and comes in the form of a long dash. This dash is utterly useless outside of the very specific interactions it was designed for, and would be the most disappointing thing about this game, if the other “””abilities””” you got weren’t even lamer. They’re not even abilities, they’re glorified keys. One lets you bypass some weird roots that simply open up when you approach them, and the other’s a literal key. That’s it. No double jump, no hook shot, no phasing through walls, etc. Nothing else changes about your core move set, and you never get to explore places you couldn’t reach before. Again, it’s as if the devs of this game were actively trying to make a Metroidvania game with implementing as few of the typical genre elements as possible. While that could potentially make for an interesting project, the way they handled it here, this game just feels unfinished. Like it’s gesturing towards an idea of a fully formed game, but was never finished.
Another thing I need to briefly address is Moonscars’ so called “special weapon” system. Except they’re more like “special attacks”. And they’re horrible. Seriously, they might be the worst thing about this game. I’m not exaggerating here, literally every single one of these is bad at best, and life-threateningly terrible at worst. Trying to actually use these is a surefire way to die in this game. They’re all infuriatingly slow - one special attack takes as long as about 5 normal attacks and does about half the damage - and they have no hyper armour either. They’re just straight up death traps and I cannot believe they exist in a finished game. There is only a single one that I found at least somewhat practical, and that’s the Harpoon, which is the only ranged option out of these. And believe me, I tried all of them, mostly out of sheer disbelief that they would ALL be this terrible. It’s abundantly clear that these things did not receive enough play testing before release.
And that kinda leads right into the next point; the fact that Black Mermaid’s QA department was either asleep at the wheel or simply nonexistent entirely. This game clearly did not receive a whole lot of play-testing before it got released. There are so, so many little glitches and bugs all over it. There are so many little things that would be impossible to keep in had they been noticed by a competent team of play testers. It begins with the controls feeling extremely unreliable in platforming sections, where platforms moving sideways will actually propel you forward if you land on them with too much speed. Or sometimes, they’ll simply slip away from underneath your feet as if inertia wasn’t a thing in this universe. Sometimes you briefly get stuck on level geometry on the floor and then get yeeted 50 meters to the right because the game stored that momentum. Sometimes you can just slide through wall-spikes and completely cheese the fuck out of a platforming sections. Or one of my favourites: Sometimes when I killed enemies, they would simply freeze in the air and stay there, like a statue with floating limbs, until I reloaded the area. But it’s not just related to bugs, it’s also the aforementioned special attacks, the platforming, the walls of text, the overly linear structure, etc. It’s very obvious that this game did not receive the care and attention it would’ve deserved before release. At least 50% of its problems could’ve been avoided with 10 dedicated play-testers playing through the game a couple of times, or hell, even just a couple of staff members. Honestly some of these oversights are so obvious and apparent that this is the only acceptable explanation for me. They simply never checked for this.
Ultimately, this sadly is a very mediocre game on all fronts. It has barely any original ideas here outside of its narrative - which as we discussed is barely even comprehensible. It’s very short and its world feels rather diminutive. It took me less than 10 hours to beat this, and that’s even though I did all side content I found. This needn’t be a problem in principle, but Moonscars does feel like it’s trying to trick you into thinking that it’s bigger than it actually is. It’s combat is solid but even here there are severe shortcomings. The bosses are neat but are about the only thing I can’t find some critical flaw with.
This review ended up a lot more negative than I originally intended, because I was going into this with the idea of primarily pointing out the good things about it. But the more I thought about it and the more distance I had to it, the more I realised that this simply is not a very good game, and I’m not sure if I would recommend it to fans of Metroidvanias. I’ve definitely played worse games than this, even within the genre, but only a few. Meanwhile, just about every other MV I’ve played is a more competently put together game than this, even the ones I really didn’t like that much, like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night or The Messenger. Despite me not really looking to play those again either, I would much quicker recommend these to you if you’re looking for a new experience.
I’m not saying that there’s nothing to get out of this game; if you somehow manage to crack the code and actually understand what the fuck this game’s story is actually about, you might even enjoy it. You might really enjoy the combat as long as you never touch the special attacks. Maybe you’ll simply get something out of its minimalistic art style. Personally, I think I won’t play this game again any time soon, but I will keep my eyes peeled for whenever Black Mermaid should come up with a new game. Because what Moonscars does show is potential. The potential to mould a fantastic game out of the shards of a mediocre one.
I hope I didn’t come across as an asshole in this review, and I once again want to make clear that I 100% support small indie studios like Black Mermaid and want to see them succeed. But I also have to be honest when I see a game that simply doesn’t work, and I want to help as best as I can by providing constructive but honest criticism where it fits.
Good luck for your next game BM, I’m sure it’ll turn out better!
5 / 10
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Man, I just don’t seem to have any luck with Metroidvanias as of late. Over the course of the last two years I must’ve played well over 10 of them, and I’m sad to say that the vast majority of them really aren’t anything to write home about. It’s gotten so common I’ve come to use the term “Midroidvania” to refer to the majority of them. And with that I don’t mean to simply shit on the (mostly independent) developers working in that genre; but rather I want to acknowledge that making one of these is HARD. There are so many individual elements you need to get just right. A good MV has to have a great world to explore, good combat and platforming mechanics, a good art style and good music to begin with. If even one of those core aspects doesn't fully connect with a player it can destroy the entire experience before it even fully started.
The best one I played last year was probably Ender Lilies (which I’ve spoken about in a review here), and that one was admittedly mostly pretty good, albeit with some definite room for improvement. The rest of them, while not terrible, were either too linear and short, or would try and force in some really unfitting game mechanics that did not complement the MV structure what so ever. Others yet were MVs only insofar you unlock abilities that let you bypass obstacles which you couldn’t before, while barely engaging with what are in my opinion the most interesting aspects of the genre; exploration, backtracking and environmental story telling. The last Metroidvania I played I would call a genuinely fantastic game front to back is Blasphemous; and it’s precisely the game that Moonscars seems to take heavy inspiration from.
Moonscars, like Blasphemous, is a Metroidvania set in a dark, (presumably) post-apocalyptic, medieval European inspired world filled with castles, caves, ghouls, ghosts and goblins, populated by weirdos who speak in riddles and with imagery drawing heavily from Christian iconography. It’s thick with atmosphere and asks the player to really take in the environments, and to wallow in the melancholy that the world presents.
But where Blasphemous is a game which masterfully weaves together an imaginative, rich world full of incredibly dense and cryptic lore, with great, fluid combat, great exploration and some of the best art and music in gaming period, Moonscars, in an attempt to more-or-less copy this entire formula wholesale, never really gets to define itself as its own unique experience, and also fumbles some of these aspects to the detriment of the whole game. The developers here were so busy creating an experience similar to Blasphemous, it feels like their inspiration became their literal blueprint, and this will become apparent the more we get into the nitty gritty.
Before I get more into the negative aspects of Moonscars, I want to highlight a few things I enjoyed about it first, and why - despite criticising this game quite harshly at times - I would still consider this an overall decent experience that’s at least worth a try if you’re a fan of the genre.
Let’s start with the fact that Black Mermaid (the dev studio) is a very small, newly established team from Moldova with no prior experience in making games, meaning that this is their first game they ever made. And considering that, it’s a very impressive feat that the game came out as solid as it did. I really want to again hammer home the point that I do NOT intend to shit on a small Eastern European studio with a number of employees smaller than that of a regular dentist’s office. Instead I want to offer constructive criticism where it makes sense.
Perhaps the strongest aspect of this game would have to be the combat. Here, it’s definitely the closest to actually feeling like a really solid game, making it feel like this is where most of the time and effort went. The animations on Grey Irma (the player character) look fluid and deliberate, and at times come very close to Blasphemous, with the difference that Moonscars actually manages to give the attacks and movements even stronger feeling of weight and impact. There is more inertia involved, which feels different from Blasphemous’ more “arcady” movement. The combat can be best described as “2D Souls-lite”, meaning you have your typical high-commitment attack animations which can’t be cancelled, an I-frame dodge, a parry, a magic/mana bar which lets you use spells, having to retrieve your XP on death aka “corpse running”, etc. You get the idea. In general it feels very close to Blasphemous, but I will utter my hottest take in the entire review right now; I think that Moonscars’ combat has the potential to be even more fun than Blasphemous. At least, I found myself slip into “the zone” a lot more often with Moonscars, than it did with the other one. You have more movement options, you’re faster, you have more attacks and you also die quicker. You have a Hollow Knight-esque heal that replenishes whenever you deal or receive damage, but you can use it a LOT faster and more efficiently than in that game. At first I thought that this was stupidly overpowered, with you being able to instantly heal basically whenever you want, but you can still be attacked and, like in Hollow Knight, you heal from the same mana pool that you use your spells with, which are going to become your main source of damage over time. There are also the so called “special weapons” (more like special attacks) you’ll occasionally find by beating certain enemies of completing certain tasks, but I’m afraid I’ll have to save talking about them until we get to the “bad” portion of the game, since this aspect is sadly the biggest flaw with Moonscars’ combat. Finally, the enemy design is really cool for the most part, and their variety is, overall, sufficient. It’s not fantastic, and there were times (especially towards the end) where I felt like I saw the same few enemy types over and over again but with slightly different attack animations, but it definitely gets the job done much more than other games in the Metroidvania genre. The same can be said for boss fights. They’re solid, some are even pretty good. I’d say their biggest problem is that they all feel somewhat similar, like, they’re all testing very similar skills, just in different permutations. But yeah, overall this is where the game is strongest.
Let’s talk about the level and world design. Both aspects are done rather well for the most part, and certainly better than other’s in the genre I’ve played, but already there’s a lot of room for improvement here. More on that later though. As for the good bits, the levels are all very pretty. The artists took meticulous care in illustrating the backgrounds and all the individual elements. The lighting is quite beautiful for the most part and I think the levels all do a very good job of leading you through them without making you go down a specific path. Sometimes they do get a little too linear for my taste but it’s fine. Short cuts are frequent and see more usage than checkpoints, which are surprisingly few and far between across the whole world, which in my opinion is a good thing. Using shortcuts over checkpoints is always a great way of cultivating an actual understanding of the map in the player, since it reduces the necessity for fast travel.
The music is also very nice, even if it’s a little understated at times. It’s melancholic, sad and bleak, but never without a glimmer of hope in there, somewhere, reminiscent of FromSoftware’s Souls games. The biggest compliment I can give it is that it always felt fitting to the environments, and that sometimes it’s really serene and beautiful, even if it feels like it’s kinda everything to draw attention away from itself.
A thing I found particularly impressive was the fact that the entire game works without a single loading screen, instead seamlessly transitioning between stages. It really seems to be one, massive, contiguous map, making it feel very similar to the original Dark Souls in that regard. You can go from the very first frame of the game all the way to the credits without ever leaving the actual gameplay - safe for some very scarce cutscenes. This makes for really great traversal, never taking you out of the action, no matter where you go. I always love when games are able to do this, it makes the whole act of going through a place so much more authentic.
All that said, I’m afraid this is where I’m kinda running out of things to praise. Do not get me wrong, so far this is all incredibly impressive and ambitious for such a small team with so little experience. If nothing else this really highlights their potential and makes me very interested in whatever they’re doing in the future. But now we have to get into what they need to work on and do differently the next time.
Without further ado, let’s get right into my least favourite aspect of Moonscars: it’s story - or rather, its presentation thereof. You know what, scratch that, just the writing in general.
In the broadest possible sense I would describe this game’s style of writing as: Death Stranding / Metal Gear meets Dark Souls / Blasphemous. Meaning, you’ll get absolutely drowned in expositional dialogue (more often monologues), characters will never stop talking at you but they only speak in the most arcane way possible, which means none of it will make any sense to you at all. You get buried in utterly meaningless world salads. This is bad enough when it comes to story moments or boss monologues or whatever, but in Moonscars, literally none of the characters EVER stop talking. I am seriously not exaggerating when I say that this game has perhaps the biggest ratio of unnecessary dialogue to gameplay I have ever seen. They NEVER stop talking. It’s mental. One of the most egregious examples of this comes in the form of the “memory mould” interactions. These things basically work like the consumable Soul-items from Dark Souls, which give you XP when used. Usually with these games, you just gulp them down and that’s it. But in this game, instead, you have to go to an NPC who will greet you with 3 entire boxes of dialogue each time, then you’ll have to give her one (for a pitiful amount of XP no less) but you only get it if you listen to TWENTY fucking boxes of dialogue - PER MEMORY MOULD. This is absurd to the point of parody. Was there truly no one in the development team who realised how utterly fucking grating this would be?
Given the way I just went off about the writing in this game you might not believe me, but I don’t even mind having to listen to a lot of dialogue if it’s any interesting. I love the Metal Gear series, and I particularly love the fact that they talk so much, because if it’s not actually interesting it’s at least funny or zany. Here, everything is just boring and nondescript. It’s as if the devs were deathly afraid to break out of the mould (pardon the pun) that Dark Souls set for the genre.
It’s quite sad that Moonscars is so afraid of actually just saying what it wants to say. Because despite the game’s best efforts of making itself as incomprehensible as humanly possible, I was able to pick up on something resembling themes here. Of course you have the setting, which frames the story as the experience of a clay statue, mixed with a surprising amount of dialogue that explicitly discusses Grey Irma’s identity as a woman. In fact, there seems to be a lot of imagery and symbolism relating to womanhood, menstruation and childbirth/raising children. It’s almost as though underneath all the rubble of forcibly abstruse walls of text, there might be something of an interesting story developing. It’s very unfortunate then, that this game chose this particular style of plot structure, because now I will never bother to find out anything, simply because the act of engaging with this story feels almost punishing.
Sadly we’re not quite done yet, as another problem that compounds with this comes in the form of really questionable translation. It’s been a bit too long since I’ve beaten it to accurately remember the exact wording of some of the badly translated lines, but I can recall at least a few phrases. For example, at one point King Drahan is referred to as “the only legit ruler of the land”, when they clearly meant to say “the legitimate king”. In general, people in the game would often use wildly inauthentic language, like using modern slang like “for real”, or “that’s cool” or similar things like that; and if this felt at all intentional I wouldn’t even point this out. But it’s fairly obvious that they tried to go for your typical pseudo-medieval Ye Olde English in the same style of Dark Souls and Blasphemous, but whoever was in charge of the translation into English sadly doesn’t seem to be fluent enough to competently write in that style. I did also very briefly check out the German translation (I speak German natively) just out of sheer curiosity, and unsurprisingly this translation is much worse. Spelling errors, grammatical errors and even some core elements of the story get translated extremely weirdly. Like, “Ichor” is translated to “Sekret”, which means “secretion” and has nothing to do with Ichor, the Blood of the Gods - in fact, it doesn’t really have a German translation as such. It’s usually just called “Blut der Götter / Götterblut”.
So this has been by far the game’s biggest flaw as I’m concerned, but sadly there is more we need to talk about.
Let’s continue with the fact that Moonscars is, at its core, extremely linear with no real instances of optional side paths, secret areas, secret bosses or anything at all really. The most you’re getting is getting to explore the individual levels relatively freely, although even here you’re led by the nose for most of it. What’s stranger is that you don’t don’t even really have to go back to previous areas at all if you don’t want to. In fact, the devs just don’t seem all that interested in making you actually explore the world they created. The only instance where you’re given the option to go back and explore is to gather a whole bunch of lost earrings. And it’s honestly pretty boring. Finding these is necessary to complete a side quest, but they only spawn in Ravenous Moon mode.
I haven’t talked about it yet because it didn’t really fit into the rest of the text yet, but to briefly explain it: The Moon Phase mechanic is a bit like Demon’s Souls “World Tendency” and is almost certainly inspired by it.
[For those that don’t know what that is: In Demon’s Souls, you have 2 forms. Human and Soul. If you die in human form at any point in a level, your so called “World Tendency” goes down one step towards Black, aka “Black World Tendency”, for that level. If you kill a boss, a Red Phantom or help another player do the same your tendency will instead shift to “White”. This works in a 7-tier system, where it goes from -3 to +3. -3 represents “Pure Black”, +3 represents “Pure White”. In Pure Black, enemies will deal increased damage, have increased health, will spawn in higher numbers but will also drop more souls and better items. In Pure White, the opposite is true. There are also specific events that will ONLY happen during either Pure Black or Pure White tendency.]
Basically, Moonscars tries to implement a similar system, with Ravenous Moon mode being the equivalent of Pure Black World Tendency. If you die a certain amount of times, the moon will become red and enemies will deal increased damage and have increased health, but will also drop more XP. You can also just switch it on or off at the Checkpoint with a consumable - at least at first. In Demon’s Souls, this would add new stuff to levels you’ve already been through, maybe include some otherwise unobtainable weapons or spells, etc. Here, it’s really just to increase enemy strength and so you can find those ear rings. It feels woefully half-baked, and like they just implemented it without thinking about how this would translate into an actual gameplay mechanic.
That tangent out of the way, let’s get back to the world design. This world consists of only 5 areas. The tutorial area village, the obligatory castle level, 2 (technically 3) separate underground sections and the top of the castle. In terms of variety in level structure, to say that this is the barest of minimums is to be euphemistic. It makes the world feel incredibly tiny. It would be one thing if the story of this game truly revolved specifically around the castle, but instead it’s about the fate of the whole kingdom and life and the universe and god and everything. And as such it just feels weird that the entirety of this game’s world-defining plot takes place entirely within the castle. As a matter of fact, only 4 out of the 5 areas in the game see actual continued usage. Once you’ve cleared the tutorial, you literally never have to go back there, not even to collect ear rings. I know this seems like a weird complaint, but to me having to go back to the tutorial area later in the game is a staple of the genre. It connects the beginning of the story to its end, and it recontextualises your journey, shows how far you’ve come. I 100% expected to emerge out of some underground passage and end up in the village at some point in the game, but that moment never came.
The lack of more individual areas would be excusable if the already existing ones would try and stand apart even the tiniest bit, but sadly they all follow the same design philosophy from start to finish, but game design wise as well as aesthetically. All areas sadly feel overly similar in terms of vibe and structure. Sure, the castle level is a bit more vertically inclined than the lower areas, and you have some very, VERY subtle colour palette swaps between levels, but the vast majority of the aesthetic design of the areas boils down to a lot of grey, black, white and red. At first this is cool and gives the game a strong sense of style, even if it’s a little cliché. But after the first couple of hours, you realise that the entire game looks like this, and it begins to get stale very quickly. Every area effectively feels the same. And, while I did compliment the game for this earlier, the more you play this game the more apparent it becomes just what a massive influence Blasphemous was on any level, especially in terms of art direction. It often crosses the line from “inspired by” to “derivative of”.
But for the strangest thing about this game is that it almost seems like it doesn’t even really want to be a Metroidvania game at all. As strange as it sounds, it almost feels like the initial idea for Moonscars was going to be just a linear 2D action platformer, maybe like the older Castlevania games, and then they tried to tape a Metroidvania system onto it. What do I mean by that?
Let’s start with the fact that, unlike practically any other MV out there, you get only a single ability in the whole game that (very slightly) changes your core moveset and allows you to access previously unreachable areas, and comes in the form of a long dash. This dash is utterly useless outside of the very specific interactions it was designed for, and would be the most disappointing thing about this game, if the other “””abilities””” you got weren’t even lamer. They’re not even abilities, they’re glorified keys. One lets you bypass some weird roots that simply open up when you approach them, and the other’s a literal key. That’s it. No double jump, no hook shot, no phasing through walls, etc. Nothing else changes about your core move set, and you never get to explore places you couldn’t reach before. Again, it’s as if the devs of this game were actively trying to make a Metroidvania game with implementing as few of the typical genre elements as possible. While that could potentially make for an interesting project, the way they handled it here, this game just feels unfinished. Like it’s gesturing towards an idea of a fully formed game, but was never finished.
Another thing I need to briefly address is Moonscars’ so called “special weapon” system. Except they’re more like “special attacks”. And they’re horrible. Seriously, they might be the worst thing about this game. I’m not exaggerating here, literally every single one of these is bad at best, and life-threateningly terrible at worst. Trying to actually use these is a surefire way to die in this game. They’re all infuriatingly slow - one special attack takes as long as about 5 normal attacks and does about half the damage - and they have no hyper armour either. They’re just straight up death traps and I cannot believe they exist in a finished game. There is only a single one that I found at least somewhat practical, and that’s the Harpoon, which is the only ranged option out of these. And believe me, I tried all of them, mostly out of sheer disbelief that they would ALL be this terrible. It’s abundantly clear that these things did not receive enough play testing before release.
And that kinda leads right into the next point; the fact that Black Mermaid’s QA department was either asleep at the wheel or simply nonexistent entirely. This game clearly did not receive a whole lot of play-testing before it got released. There are so, so many little glitches and bugs all over it. There are so many little things that would be impossible to keep in had they been noticed by a competent team of play testers. It begins with the controls feeling extremely unreliable in platforming sections, where platforms moving sideways will actually propel you forward if you land on them with too much speed. Or sometimes, they’ll simply slip away from underneath your feet as if inertia wasn’t a thing in this universe. Sometimes you briefly get stuck on level geometry on the floor and then get yeeted 50 meters to the right because the game stored that momentum. Sometimes you can just slide through wall-spikes and completely cheese the fuck out of a platforming sections. Or one of my favourites: Sometimes when I killed enemies, they would simply freeze in the air and stay there, like a statue with floating limbs, until I reloaded the area. But it’s not just related to bugs, it’s also the aforementioned special attacks, the platforming, the walls of text, the overly linear structure, etc. It’s very obvious that this game did not receive the care and attention it would’ve deserved before release. At least 50% of its problems could’ve been avoided with 10 dedicated play-testers playing through the game a couple of times, or hell, even just a couple of staff members. Honestly some of these oversights are so obvious and apparent that this is the only acceptable explanation for me. They simply never checked for this.
Ultimately, this sadly is a very mediocre game on all fronts. It has barely any original ideas here outside of its narrative - which as we discussed is barely even comprehensible. It’s very short and its world feels rather diminutive. It took me less than 10 hours to beat this, and that’s even though I did all side content I found. This needn’t be a problem in principle, but Moonscars does feel like it’s trying to trick you into thinking that it’s bigger than it actually is. It’s combat is solid but even here there are severe shortcomings. The bosses are neat but are about the only thing I can’t find some critical flaw with.
This review ended up a lot more negative than I originally intended, because I was going into this with the idea of primarily pointing out the good things about it. But the more I thought about it and the more distance I had to it, the more I realised that this simply is not a very good game, and I’m not sure if I would recommend it to fans of Metroidvanias. I’ve definitely played worse games than this, even within the genre, but only a few. Meanwhile, just about every other MV I’ve played is a more competently put together game than this, even the ones I really didn’t like that much, like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night or The Messenger. Despite me not really looking to play those again either, I would much quicker recommend these to you if you’re looking for a new experience.
I’m not saying that there’s nothing to get out of this game; if you somehow manage to crack the code and actually understand what the fuck this game’s story is actually about, you might even enjoy it. You might really enjoy the combat as long as you never touch the special attacks. Maybe you’ll simply get something out of its minimalistic art style. Personally, I think I won’t play this game again any time soon, but I will keep my eyes peeled for whenever Black Mermaid should come up with a new game. Because what Moonscars does show is potential. The potential to mould a fantastic game out of the shards of a mediocre one.
I hope I didn’t come across as an asshole in this review, and I once again want to make clear that I 100% support small indie studios like Black Mermaid and want to see them succeed. But I also have to be honest when I see a game that simply doesn’t work, and I want to help as best as I can by providing constructive but honest criticism where it fits.
Good luck for your next game BM, I’m sure it’ll turn out better!
2018
Fugue In Void has a few interesting ideas, but ends up yet another extremely self-indulgent walking simulator that is shockingly bereft of substance. Where other, better examples of the genre have interesting things to say and things to show, this game simply insists on its profundity while never doing anything that warrants it.
4 / 10
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So, this is a weird one. Typically, when I review games on this platform, no matter how good or bad or inconsistent, they are still games. They have a beginning and end, goals, missions, enemies, etc. No matter how god or bad, I’m still able to criticise something on those merits. With Fugue In Void, it’s different. This is not a game. Or, at least, I don’t think it’s trying to be one. At most, it could be considered a so called “art house game”. But really, it’s more of an ““interactive”” art / architecture installation, although that part might be debatable too. So why do I feel the need to review this? Well, for one, sometimes I do enjoy a good walking-simulator / indie-avantgarde-lookatmeiamsosmart pseudo-game if it has something interesting going on. You know, stuff like Proteus, The Beginner’s Guide, Kairo, Mirrormoon EP, etc. So it’s not like I completely lack the framework of talking about something like this. Second - and really, most importantly - this “game” costs 6 whole, real life, human dollars on Steam. That is pretty wild, considering that most of the pieces in this genre tend to be either free-to-play or extremely cheap, and also considering that FIV does have some performance issues as well.
Since this game isn’t even an hour long, I’ll try to be as brief as possible, since I don’t wanna talk longer about a game than it took me to beat it [EDIT: well, that didn’t work lol], so I’ll cut to the chase. It’s extremely obvious that FIV takes heavy inspiration from one game in particular, and that is NaissanceE. Made by Spanish developer Mavros Sedeño in 2014, NaissanceE is a walking-simulator / first-person platformer set inside a colossal megastructure, itself deeply influenced by Tsutomu Nihei’s 1998 manga “BLAME!”, and is one of my favourite games ever made - not because of any amazing design elements or particularly crazy ideas, more than it has a specific idea about an experience it wants to deliver and does so damn near flawlessly. It is a game fundamentally built on the idea of the purpose of architecture, the feeling of being dwarfed by structures built BY humans but not FOR them. It’s about navigating the dream-like spaces of the near-infinite, about taking the abstract concepts of BLAME! and infusing them with meaning by turning them into gameplay elements. FIV on the other hand, feels like it doesn’t even really know what it tries to go for.
I want to quickly point out the things I did like about it. The architecture on display is fairly impressive and I especially enjoyed the abstract, experimental drone-heavy soundtrack. There are some moments which manage to elicit the same kind of beautiful alienation you’d experience with its role model, NaissanceE, although sadly this happens more on the latter’s back, rather than through the unique merits of FIV. The visual language that’s being used feels very cryptic and interesting, and I like how much the visuals of this game play with texture and plasticity. The atmosphere is, overall, sufficient. But that’s pretty much it. With a game this short, I’m struggling to find more to talk about.
So, before I we get more into it, I have to criticise how terrible accessibility has been handled here. I have seen very few games with so little regard for it. First off, considering the amount of bright, flashing lights used here, the fact that there is no epilepsy warning whatsoever strikes me as very irresponsible. Second, while understand the decision to not include a save system in this game - since it’s meant to be a thing you experience in one sitting - I do NOT understand the complete lack of any pause option. I’m sorry dev, but the experience your “game” provides is not worth letting my pizza burn in the oven or letting the postman leave with my package because I couldn’t open the door. It’s not like it serves any particular gameplay purpose or anything, it really seems like this is simply the dev’s method of forcing you to stay in front of the computer for the whole duration. What’s worse though, is the fact that this decision comes with the added side effect that you can’t change ANY settings in the game whatsoever. None. Nothing. You can’t chose performance mode, you can’t change the FOV, lighting, mouse acceleration, key binds, you can’t even turn off (or even reduce) the fucking motion blur, which is a cardinal sin for me personally, since I get severe headaches from it. The ONLY thing you’re allowed to change is the resolution, and that’s only on the launcher that pops up before the game starts. Honestly, I’m not even sure how to even properly quit the game, I had to use the Task Manager to simply close the program. The launcher even features 2 entirely fake options, one being “graphical quality”, with precisely one option to chose, namely “fancy”. (which, I assume includes the motion blur)
So, finally, onto the actual ”game”. Starting with a 10-minute long, uninterruptible AND unskippable cutscene (I guess “abstract imagery in video form” is more accurate) when the entire experience isn’t even an hour long is certainly one hell of a move. One could even describe it as “radical” - but only if one were to misunderstand the meaning of the word. The animations are certainly beautiful, and the use of different textures and surfaces is interesting. In terms of abstract / applied art, or viewed as a virtual gallery / art exhibition it may or may not challenge our perception of how these things might work; however with a game, this approach strikes me as deeply regressive and antithetical to what is truly avant-garde within the field of game design. Interactivity is to me the core, the beating heart of what actually differentiates games as art from other media. That is not to say that all games have to work the same way, or even feature traditional gameplay. Again, I have a massive soft spot for more abstract experiences like this, from tiny indie games like Proteus, Babbdi and of course NaissanceE, to massive AAA experiences like Death Stranding. I love radical, abstract games that challenge what the medium is even capable of. This is not it. This is essentially an architectural exhibition masquerading as a video game, and that would be fine if it would at least commit to it.
Structurally, FIV simply leads you through a couple of short walking-sections, interspersed with longer sections (at least they FEEL a lot longer) in which you can’t move and are forced to watch the infuriatingly slow-moving animations of shadows and light moving across the screen. Similarly, the character’s movement speed is agonisingly sluggish. There is a sprint option, but it feels like what the default walking speed ought to have been. I will never understand why devs in this genre insist upon turtle-speed being the definitive experience. What’s worse is that the walking sections are on a timer, meaning if you DO find yourself in the position where you want to stop and stare just a little longer - which seems like its entire raison d’être - you better not take too long. The game this reminds me the most of is Awkward Dimensions Redux, and seeing how that one may just take the title for “the worst game I have ever played” this comparison truly does it no favours what so ever. It’s even down to both apparently having been “inspired by [the dev’s] dreams” and both having zero interest in your role as the player. To them, you as the player exist merely to experience THEIR vision. YOU are only here to enjoy whatever THEY dictate your experience to be. For me good art - doubly so when it comes to games - is, to me, a conversation. A back and forth between artist and beholder, dev and player, etc. The artist creates a work, and the beholder imbues it with meaning. Much like Awkward Dimensions Redux, this game feels more like someone strapping you to a chair and making you watch their holiday pictures. This feeling only worsens when you realise that there are invisible walls everywhere, including the sides of stairs and even the smallest ledges so there’s absolutely no way you’re not going through this thing in the exact manner the dev intended. It’s as if the game actively fights you on every step when trying to participate in the experience, trying to make it your own.
I wish I could at least compliment the game on its aesthetic and the feeling that the colossal, brutalist architecture commends, but that would be very disingenuous, since its visual identity does draw so heavily from NaissanceE it feels like I’m actually complementing THAT game. Even its visually most impressive moment - a short section where you walk through a colourful desert with a humongous structure looming over your head - is taken straight out of NaissanceE, except that game did it so much better, letting you take your time and really reflect on what you’re experiencing in this moment, something Fugue In Void seems to be hellbent on preventing.
From a look at Moshe Linke’s (the dev) homepage, it seems that he specialises in these architecture-based walking simulators, making me think that perhaps he has a background in that field. That is perfectly fine, and please do not understand this as me saying that all games need to follow similar formulas or can’t get weird with their structure. I LOVE when games get weird and experimental. It’s one particular phrase from Linke’s website that really irks me in the context of this game. He states that his work is “A fusion between art and games”; and THAT is precisely the problem. Games already ARE art. Games do not need to be “fused with art”. The very concept of interactivity, and games’ ability to enter a direct conversation with their beholder imbue them with a power completely alien to other media. And this is precisely what strikes me as pretentious; that Linke - and many other developers within this subcategory - seems to think that his curtailing of video games’ unique abilities and strengths by attempting to approximate the experience of a virtual art gallery in the same way that mid-2000’s AAA developers sought to make gaming more “cinematic” by spending all of their budget on creating as many, overly long cutscenes as possible. Games do not need to be “like other media”.
Now, my tone here may strike you as harsh, but I feel like that, if you’re out here asking for 6$ for your highly avant-garde virtual architecture installation / dream journal, when there are plenty of similar experiences out there that are way more interesting, offer way more in terms of deconstructing the concept of gaming, are way more interested in your actions and feelings and also typically cost no money (or at least, way less) then I feel like you really ought to have something to offer that warrants that price. I’ve played plenty of shitty walking simulators made by people that enjoy the smell of their own farts and I rarely feel like I have to call them out.
Ultimately, rating this game is very difficult. I did enjoy the music and the imagery, which is the bulk of the experience, but I really dislike almost everything else. I wouldn’t say I hated the experience as such - it’s way too short for it to warrant active hate - and I think that in the context of an actual art installation, where, for example, all of these levels were individual things you could pick from a list, wearing a VR headset in a large atelier or studio or museum or whatever, might’ve been really interesting. But I simply think that - IF you are going to put your work on Steam - this type of experience must accommodate the fact that they are meant to be played at home. After work. After being done with your day, when you just want to turn on your PC and play something fun or interesting. And that’s not impossible. NaissanceE managed. Dear Esther, Gone Home, Yume Nikki, Scanner Sombre, Journey, etc, all of them managed. And yes, these games all attempt to work as games much more than Fugue in Void does, but they are also aware that they are, at the end of the day, also consumer products, and if you expect the same amount or even MORE money than the games mentioned above, you should expect the same level of scrutiny. Here’s hoping that Linke can make “Neon Entropy” into something more interesting, whenever it’ll be finished.
4 / 10
4 / 10
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So, this is a weird one. Typically, when I review games on this platform, no matter how good or bad or inconsistent, they are still games. They have a beginning and end, goals, missions, enemies, etc. No matter how god or bad, I’m still able to criticise something on those merits. With Fugue In Void, it’s different. This is not a game. Or, at least, I don’t think it’s trying to be one. At most, it could be considered a so called “art house game”. But really, it’s more of an ““interactive”” art / architecture installation, although that part might be debatable too. So why do I feel the need to review this? Well, for one, sometimes I do enjoy a good walking-simulator / indie-avantgarde-lookatmeiamsosmart pseudo-game if it has something interesting going on. You know, stuff like Proteus, The Beginner’s Guide, Kairo, Mirrormoon EP, etc. So it’s not like I completely lack the framework of talking about something like this. Second - and really, most importantly - this “game” costs 6 whole, real life, human dollars on Steam. That is pretty wild, considering that most of the pieces in this genre tend to be either free-to-play or extremely cheap, and also considering that FIV does have some performance issues as well.
Since this game isn’t even an hour long, I’ll try to be as brief as possible, since I don’t wanna talk longer about a game than it took me to beat it [EDIT: well, that didn’t work lol], so I’ll cut to the chase. It’s extremely obvious that FIV takes heavy inspiration from one game in particular, and that is NaissanceE. Made by Spanish developer Mavros Sedeño in 2014, NaissanceE is a walking-simulator / first-person platformer set inside a colossal megastructure, itself deeply influenced by Tsutomu Nihei’s 1998 manga “BLAME!”, and is one of my favourite games ever made - not because of any amazing design elements or particularly crazy ideas, more than it has a specific idea about an experience it wants to deliver and does so damn near flawlessly. It is a game fundamentally built on the idea of the purpose of architecture, the feeling of being dwarfed by structures built BY humans but not FOR them. It’s about navigating the dream-like spaces of the near-infinite, about taking the abstract concepts of BLAME! and infusing them with meaning by turning them into gameplay elements. FIV on the other hand, feels like it doesn’t even really know what it tries to go for.
I want to quickly point out the things I did like about it. The architecture on display is fairly impressive and I especially enjoyed the abstract, experimental drone-heavy soundtrack. There are some moments which manage to elicit the same kind of beautiful alienation you’d experience with its role model, NaissanceE, although sadly this happens more on the latter’s back, rather than through the unique merits of FIV. The visual language that’s being used feels very cryptic and interesting, and I like how much the visuals of this game play with texture and plasticity. The atmosphere is, overall, sufficient. But that’s pretty much it. With a game this short, I’m struggling to find more to talk about.
So, before I we get more into it, I have to criticise how terrible accessibility has been handled here. I have seen very few games with so little regard for it. First off, considering the amount of bright, flashing lights used here, the fact that there is no epilepsy warning whatsoever strikes me as very irresponsible. Second, while understand the decision to not include a save system in this game - since it’s meant to be a thing you experience in one sitting - I do NOT understand the complete lack of any pause option. I’m sorry dev, but the experience your “game” provides is not worth letting my pizza burn in the oven or letting the postman leave with my package because I couldn’t open the door. It’s not like it serves any particular gameplay purpose or anything, it really seems like this is simply the dev’s method of forcing you to stay in front of the computer for the whole duration. What’s worse though, is the fact that this decision comes with the added side effect that you can’t change ANY settings in the game whatsoever. None. Nothing. You can’t chose performance mode, you can’t change the FOV, lighting, mouse acceleration, key binds, you can’t even turn off (or even reduce) the fucking motion blur, which is a cardinal sin for me personally, since I get severe headaches from it. The ONLY thing you’re allowed to change is the resolution, and that’s only on the launcher that pops up before the game starts. Honestly, I’m not even sure how to even properly quit the game, I had to use the Task Manager to simply close the program. The launcher even features 2 entirely fake options, one being “graphical quality”, with precisely one option to chose, namely “fancy”. (which, I assume includes the motion blur)
So, finally, onto the actual ”game”. Starting with a 10-minute long, uninterruptible AND unskippable cutscene (I guess “abstract imagery in video form” is more accurate) when the entire experience isn’t even an hour long is certainly one hell of a move. One could even describe it as “radical” - but only if one were to misunderstand the meaning of the word. The animations are certainly beautiful, and the use of different textures and surfaces is interesting. In terms of abstract / applied art, or viewed as a virtual gallery / art exhibition it may or may not challenge our perception of how these things might work; however with a game, this approach strikes me as deeply regressive and antithetical to what is truly avant-garde within the field of game design. Interactivity is to me the core, the beating heart of what actually differentiates games as art from other media. That is not to say that all games have to work the same way, or even feature traditional gameplay. Again, I have a massive soft spot for more abstract experiences like this, from tiny indie games like Proteus, Babbdi and of course NaissanceE, to massive AAA experiences like Death Stranding. I love radical, abstract games that challenge what the medium is even capable of. This is not it. This is essentially an architectural exhibition masquerading as a video game, and that would be fine if it would at least commit to it.
Structurally, FIV simply leads you through a couple of short walking-sections, interspersed with longer sections (at least they FEEL a lot longer) in which you can’t move and are forced to watch the infuriatingly slow-moving animations of shadows and light moving across the screen. Similarly, the character’s movement speed is agonisingly sluggish. There is a sprint option, but it feels like what the default walking speed ought to have been. I will never understand why devs in this genre insist upon turtle-speed being the definitive experience. What’s worse is that the walking sections are on a timer, meaning if you DO find yourself in the position where you want to stop and stare just a little longer - which seems like its entire raison d’être - you better not take too long. The game this reminds me the most of is Awkward Dimensions Redux, and seeing how that one may just take the title for “the worst game I have ever played” this comparison truly does it no favours what so ever. It’s even down to both apparently having been “inspired by [the dev’s] dreams” and both having zero interest in your role as the player. To them, you as the player exist merely to experience THEIR vision. YOU are only here to enjoy whatever THEY dictate your experience to be. For me good art - doubly so when it comes to games - is, to me, a conversation. A back and forth between artist and beholder, dev and player, etc. The artist creates a work, and the beholder imbues it with meaning. Much like Awkward Dimensions Redux, this game feels more like someone strapping you to a chair and making you watch their holiday pictures. This feeling only worsens when you realise that there are invisible walls everywhere, including the sides of stairs and even the smallest ledges so there’s absolutely no way you’re not going through this thing in the exact manner the dev intended. It’s as if the game actively fights you on every step when trying to participate in the experience, trying to make it your own.
I wish I could at least compliment the game on its aesthetic and the feeling that the colossal, brutalist architecture commends, but that would be very disingenuous, since its visual identity does draw so heavily from NaissanceE it feels like I’m actually complementing THAT game. Even its visually most impressive moment - a short section where you walk through a colourful desert with a humongous structure looming over your head - is taken straight out of NaissanceE, except that game did it so much better, letting you take your time and really reflect on what you’re experiencing in this moment, something Fugue In Void seems to be hellbent on preventing.
From a look at Moshe Linke’s (the dev) homepage, it seems that he specialises in these architecture-based walking simulators, making me think that perhaps he has a background in that field. That is perfectly fine, and please do not understand this as me saying that all games need to follow similar formulas or can’t get weird with their structure. I LOVE when games get weird and experimental. It’s one particular phrase from Linke’s website that really irks me in the context of this game. He states that his work is “A fusion between art and games”; and THAT is precisely the problem. Games already ARE art. Games do not need to be “fused with art”. The very concept of interactivity, and games’ ability to enter a direct conversation with their beholder imbue them with a power completely alien to other media. And this is precisely what strikes me as pretentious; that Linke - and many other developers within this subcategory - seems to think that his curtailing of video games’ unique abilities and strengths by attempting to approximate the experience of a virtual art gallery in the same way that mid-2000’s AAA developers sought to make gaming more “cinematic” by spending all of their budget on creating as many, overly long cutscenes as possible. Games do not need to be “like other media”.
Now, my tone here may strike you as harsh, but I feel like that, if you’re out here asking for 6$ for your highly avant-garde virtual architecture installation / dream journal, when there are plenty of similar experiences out there that are way more interesting, offer way more in terms of deconstructing the concept of gaming, are way more interested in your actions and feelings and also typically cost no money (or at least, way less) then I feel like you really ought to have something to offer that warrants that price. I’ve played plenty of shitty walking simulators made by people that enjoy the smell of their own farts and I rarely feel like I have to call them out.
Ultimately, rating this game is very difficult. I did enjoy the music and the imagery, which is the bulk of the experience, but I really dislike almost everything else. I wouldn’t say I hated the experience as such - it’s way too short for it to warrant active hate - and I think that in the context of an actual art installation, where, for example, all of these levels were individual things you could pick from a list, wearing a VR headset in a large atelier or studio or museum or whatever, might’ve been really interesting. But I simply think that - IF you are going to put your work on Steam - this type of experience must accommodate the fact that they are meant to be played at home. After work. After being done with your day, when you just want to turn on your PC and play something fun or interesting. And that’s not impossible. NaissanceE managed. Dear Esther, Gone Home, Yume Nikki, Scanner Sombre, Journey, etc, all of them managed. And yes, these games all attempt to work as games much more than Fugue in Void does, but they are also aware that they are, at the end of the day, also consumer products, and if you expect the same amount or even MORE money than the games mentioned above, you should expect the same level of scrutiny. Here’s hoping that Linke can make “Neon Entropy” into something more interesting, whenever it’ll be finished.
4 / 10
2020
Teardown is perhaps the ultimate example of how a game with great mechanics, cool aesthetics and a really unique idea can be utterly destroyed by terrible design and execution. How you can make a game with this concept this mind-numbingly boring and repetitive is beyond me.
3 / 10
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I remember hearing about this one years ago, and thinking that the concept sounded really cool. Being able to destroy literally every single object in a game world sounds awesome. It would be far from the first game to play around with this concept, in fact just last year I played “Perfect Vermin”, a free game which similarly features fully destructible objects which you can blow into increasingly smaller bits with a giant mallet. The big difference being that Perfect Vermin is actually a competent game, instead of a glorified tech demo. Admittedly, the tech that Teardown demos is much more elaborate. However, it’s not much of a video game. I’m really glad that I got it on PS+ for free, if I had paid actual money for this, I’d be pretty miffed, considering it costs something like 30 $/€ normally.
Before I go into anything else in more detail, I will mention that - as of now - I could not bring myself to actually finish this game’s campaign, I dropped it after mission 8 or so. Typically, I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing an actual review/critique about a game I’m only about halfway through, but in this case I feel like it is warranted, since there truly doesn’t seem to be all that much to it beyond what the game presents you with in the first couple of missions. What’s more is that, to be fair, the campaign mode isn’t really what this game is about. At least, that’s what you would assume, based on all the extra modes, but we’ll get to that.
From what I’ve read from interviews with the dev team and other reviewers on various platforms, Teardown’s development started with what ultimately became it’s most recognisable aspect and selling point, the fully destructible environments, and got built up from there. In case you’re unfamiliar, the game uses voxel-based tech similar to Minecraft, only the voxels are way smaller and as such allow for more complexity when you break the game objects up into their individual voxel components. Think of a building made of LEGO that can break up into all the individual pieces, with different materials like bricks, wood or rock having different properties. Now, credit where it’s due, this system works very well - for the most part. The way that individual voxels all break apart and remain as smithereens in the environment, which can themselves be crushed down more and more, is really impressive. The way different materials react to different stimuli is also very well made. The sledge hammer (your starting weapon) can break up wood, glass, dirt and other “softer” materials, while not really doing anything against metal or buildings made of brick and mortar. For that, you’ll need something with more damage potential, like an explosive propane tank, or a big vehicle that you can crash into it, or one of the tools you’ll unlock during your playthrough, ranging from blowtorches and spray cans to rocket launchers and canisters of nitroglycerin. It mostly makes sense, and blowing shit up and watching all the little pieces fly everywhere is very cool. What’s especially impressive is how nicely fire works in this game, how well it spreads by itself, how realistic it looks and just how natural it feels. Teardown also just looks very good in general. The best way to describe it would be something like “Minecraft with shaders”. I’m sure you know what I mean. The lighting is great and the game runs at a very stable 60fps pretty much no matter what’s happening on screen. The background music within the levels is a little… understated, but it’s pretty chill and works well as your typical “music to study to” or whatever.
So, what’s the problem here? If I had to sum up my problems up into a single phrase, it’d be that: Teardown has no idea what kind of game it wants to be. If you haven’t played this game for yourself you might think “What are you talking about? It’s obviously a demolition simulator where you can blow shit up.” Yes, that’s what you would think. But it’s not. In actuality, this game, whose entire mechanical framework is ostensibly built upon destroying objects, is really more of a heist game. And sadly, not a very good one at that. You’re basically playing Thief with destructible environments. This game, whose entire marketing, online-presence and trailers ALL make it seem like this game is primarily about messing around with a pretty advanced physics engine, the game whose name is literally “TEARDOWN” really just wants you to to steal documents or cars. That’s got to be the biggest bait and switch I’ve seen since the days of MGS2, but not in a good way. And this is where I have to come back to what I said before about how the devs started with the physics engine and tried to build their way up from there, because they clearly didn’t really know how to construct an actual game around that concept. Again, you might think to yourself “This doesn’t sound so bad, that sounds kinda fun!” But the problem is less that the devs made a very strange decision to merge two very different game experiences with each other, it’s more that they clearly didn’t know how to design an actually fun heist game in the first place.
The weird thing is, the game’s first mission even starts out with you simply demolishing some building, handing you a couple of tools and letting you go crazy with them. Just try them out. Whenever you’re finished destroying the building you’ve been tasked with, you jump into your escape vehicle. The second mission does the same, with additional objectives thrown into the mix. It’s starting with the third mission that things take a very weird turn. So, up until now you’ve been given basically complete freedom in how to tackle your missions. Take however long you need, do what you want, just get it done. But starting now, the game begins introducing increasingly annoying gameplay elements and rules that run completely antithetical to the experience I just described. For starters, you’re not really tasked with destroying buildings anymore, rather you’re supposed to steal documents, cars, safes, valuables, etc. Very occasionally this also includes raising a building, but - for reasons that will become apparent shortly -this becomes less and less relevant the further the game goes. I realise this is beginning to sound very abstract, so let me give you an example:
A typical Teardown mission will look like this: You’re tasked with stealing 3 documents as your main objectives. Each of these documents are stored in different locations throughout the level, often as far away from each other as possible. Beyond that you typically also have optional objectives, which are mostly just more valuables to steal, let’s say 2 additional documents in this case. The mission takes place within a closed off, but openly designed space, and lets you tackle any objective first if you want to. There is no time limit, and there are no enemy NPCs (as far as I can tell, like I said I haven’t finished the campaign) But here’s the thing: Each and every one of these objects is trapped with a 60 second timer that ends with you getting arrested - and that goes for the whole run. Yes, you have to steal all 3 objects within 60 seconds starting from the first one and get to your escape vehicle before the timer runs out. The alarm cannot be deactivated by any means. The idea here is to utilise your ability to destroy the environment to create an “optimal path”, as it were. Except that all the buildings in most levels are now also equipped with fire alarms, meaning they’re heavily restricting your ability for maximising destruction, subsequently robbing you from what is by far the most entertaining aspect of this game. So you want me to destroy everything.. but not too much? So, what this boils all down to is this: You load into the level, you do nothing but scouting for the first 5 minutes and just study the map on where everything is. Then you go and, with pinpoint precision, create a little path of destruction (but not too much!!) with your frustratingly underpowered tools for usually 15-30 minutes depending on the level only to THEN rush the actual “game” part within 60 seconds. Only, if you made the mistake of not quick saving before actually starting your run, and you make some tiny mistake or the physics decide to fuck you over - and they WILL - you get to do it all over again. Yes, the entire thing. If you actually decided to use the spray paint like a good little boy to mark your optimal path or whatever, guess what, that’s gone too.
I wish I could at least compliment Teardown on being a somewhat decent destruction simulator, but even there I have to qualify my statements a bit. The controls for grabbing and throwing objects don’t work very well and I feel like explosives are way too underpowered. Generally, I’m not sure why this game seems to shun the idea of grand scale destruction for its own sake, but I feel like I’m repeating myself. What’s worst is the fact that any building - literally no matter how much you’ve already destroyed and burned it - will absolutely, categorically refuse to fall over if there’s so much as a single line of voxels forming a pillar still standing. The way the game just switches to Minecraft-physics for this is just jarring. The game already features relatively realistic gravity for any object that is already detached from a larger structure, so I just don’t understand it. It ruins the whole experience - even more than the things I already mentioned.
So the missions aren’t great. The story mode isn’t the only mode this game comes with. What about creative mode? Surely this could salvage this? Maybe, I don’t know. I might know if they didn’t make the harebrained decision to make you unlock both all levels AND tools in the story mode before you got to properly use it. Seeing how I don’t feel compelled to go and play this game’s terrible missions any more than I already forced myself, I guess I’m not qualified to really talk about it. Just when you thought they couldn’t make any more calls like that. I know there are even more aspects to the game, like a co-op mode or something but again, it really isn’t giving me any actual incentive to go and find out.
Ultimately I don’t even really know what else to say about Teardown. It’s a game that should’ve been great, a game all about appeasing that most primal parts of our brains that just want to see things go boom. It’s a game I really wanted to love, I wanted to have a great time with it. But instead, it’s a half-hearted tech demo that is so shockingly bereft of any solid gameplay foundation to stand on that it barely even meets the requirement for me to call it a “video game”.
I really can’t say much more than this: There is potential here, and I hope that the dev team behind it can utilise more of it in the future. If they use the tech from this project and attach it to a game that actually fits it thematically, they could have a hit here. But there is a lot of work to be done. Might just be that they have to (pardon the pun) tear this whole thing down and start from scratch.
3 / 10
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I remember hearing about this one years ago, and thinking that the concept sounded really cool. Being able to destroy literally every single object in a game world sounds awesome. It would be far from the first game to play around with this concept, in fact just last year I played “Perfect Vermin”, a free game which similarly features fully destructible objects which you can blow into increasingly smaller bits with a giant mallet. The big difference being that Perfect Vermin is actually a competent game, instead of a glorified tech demo. Admittedly, the tech that Teardown demos is much more elaborate. However, it’s not much of a video game. I’m really glad that I got it on PS+ for free, if I had paid actual money for this, I’d be pretty miffed, considering it costs something like 30 $/€ normally.
Before I go into anything else in more detail, I will mention that - as of now - I could not bring myself to actually finish this game’s campaign, I dropped it after mission 8 or so. Typically, I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing an actual review/critique about a game I’m only about halfway through, but in this case I feel like it is warranted, since there truly doesn’t seem to be all that much to it beyond what the game presents you with in the first couple of missions. What’s more is that, to be fair, the campaign mode isn’t really what this game is about. At least, that’s what you would assume, based on all the extra modes, but we’ll get to that.
From what I’ve read from interviews with the dev team and other reviewers on various platforms, Teardown’s development started with what ultimately became it’s most recognisable aspect and selling point, the fully destructible environments, and got built up from there. In case you’re unfamiliar, the game uses voxel-based tech similar to Minecraft, only the voxels are way smaller and as such allow for more complexity when you break the game objects up into their individual voxel components. Think of a building made of LEGO that can break up into all the individual pieces, with different materials like bricks, wood or rock having different properties. Now, credit where it’s due, this system works very well - for the most part. The way that individual voxels all break apart and remain as smithereens in the environment, which can themselves be crushed down more and more, is really impressive. The way different materials react to different stimuli is also very well made. The sledge hammer (your starting weapon) can break up wood, glass, dirt and other “softer” materials, while not really doing anything against metal or buildings made of brick and mortar. For that, you’ll need something with more damage potential, like an explosive propane tank, or a big vehicle that you can crash into it, or one of the tools you’ll unlock during your playthrough, ranging from blowtorches and spray cans to rocket launchers and canisters of nitroglycerin. It mostly makes sense, and blowing shit up and watching all the little pieces fly everywhere is very cool. What’s especially impressive is how nicely fire works in this game, how well it spreads by itself, how realistic it looks and just how natural it feels. Teardown also just looks very good in general. The best way to describe it would be something like “Minecraft with shaders”. I’m sure you know what I mean. The lighting is great and the game runs at a very stable 60fps pretty much no matter what’s happening on screen. The background music within the levels is a little… understated, but it’s pretty chill and works well as your typical “music to study to” or whatever.
So, what’s the problem here? If I had to sum up my problems up into a single phrase, it’d be that: Teardown has no idea what kind of game it wants to be. If you haven’t played this game for yourself you might think “What are you talking about? It’s obviously a demolition simulator where you can blow shit up.” Yes, that’s what you would think. But it’s not. In actuality, this game, whose entire mechanical framework is ostensibly built upon destroying objects, is really more of a heist game. And sadly, not a very good one at that. You’re basically playing Thief with destructible environments. This game, whose entire marketing, online-presence and trailers ALL make it seem like this game is primarily about messing around with a pretty advanced physics engine, the game whose name is literally “TEARDOWN” really just wants you to to steal documents or cars. That’s got to be the biggest bait and switch I’ve seen since the days of MGS2, but not in a good way. And this is where I have to come back to what I said before about how the devs started with the physics engine and tried to build their way up from there, because they clearly didn’t really know how to construct an actual game around that concept. Again, you might think to yourself “This doesn’t sound so bad, that sounds kinda fun!” But the problem is less that the devs made a very strange decision to merge two very different game experiences with each other, it’s more that they clearly didn’t know how to design an actually fun heist game in the first place.
The weird thing is, the game’s first mission even starts out with you simply demolishing some building, handing you a couple of tools and letting you go crazy with them. Just try them out. Whenever you’re finished destroying the building you’ve been tasked with, you jump into your escape vehicle. The second mission does the same, with additional objectives thrown into the mix. It’s starting with the third mission that things take a very weird turn. So, up until now you’ve been given basically complete freedom in how to tackle your missions. Take however long you need, do what you want, just get it done. But starting now, the game begins introducing increasingly annoying gameplay elements and rules that run completely antithetical to the experience I just described. For starters, you’re not really tasked with destroying buildings anymore, rather you’re supposed to steal documents, cars, safes, valuables, etc. Very occasionally this also includes raising a building, but - for reasons that will become apparent shortly -this becomes less and less relevant the further the game goes. I realise this is beginning to sound very abstract, so let me give you an example:
A typical Teardown mission will look like this: You’re tasked with stealing 3 documents as your main objectives. Each of these documents are stored in different locations throughout the level, often as far away from each other as possible. Beyond that you typically also have optional objectives, which are mostly just more valuables to steal, let’s say 2 additional documents in this case. The mission takes place within a closed off, but openly designed space, and lets you tackle any objective first if you want to. There is no time limit, and there are no enemy NPCs (as far as I can tell, like I said I haven’t finished the campaign) But here’s the thing: Each and every one of these objects is trapped with a 60 second timer that ends with you getting arrested - and that goes for the whole run. Yes, you have to steal all 3 objects within 60 seconds starting from the first one and get to your escape vehicle before the timer runs out. The alarm cannot be deactivated by any means. The idea here is to utilise your ability to destroy the environment to create an “optimal path”, as it were. Except that all the buildings in most levels are now also equipped with fire alarms, meaning they’re heavily restricting your ability for maximising destruction, subsequently robbing you from what is by far the most entertaining aspect of this game. So you want me to destroy everything.. but not too much? So, what this boils all down to is this: You load into the level, you do nothing but scouting for the first 5 minutes and just study the map on where everything is. Then you go and, with pinpoint precision, create a little path of destruction (but not too much!!) with your frustratingly underpowered tools for usually 15-30 minutes depending on the level only to THEN rush the actual “game” part within 60 seconds. Only, if you made the mistake of not quick saving before actually starting your run, and you make some tiny mistake or the physics decide to fuck you over - and they WILL - you get to do it all over again. Yes, the entire thing. If you actually decided to use the spray paint like a good little boy to mark your optimal path or whatever, guess what, that’s gone too.
I wish I could at least compliment Teardown on being a somewhat decent destruction simulator, but even there I have to qualify my statements a bit. The controls for grabbing and throwing objects don’t work very well and I feel like explosives are way too underpowered. Generally, I’m not sure why this game seems to shun the idea of grand scale destruction for its own sake, but I feel like I’m repeating myself. What’s worst is the fact that any building - literally no matter how much you’ve already destroyed and burned it - will absolutely, categorically refuse to fall over if there’s so much as a single line of voxels forming a pillar still standing. The way the game just switches to Minecraft-physics for this is just jarring. The game already features relatively realistic gravity for any object that is already detached from a larger structure, so I just don’t understand it. It ruins the whole experience - even more than the things I already mentioned.
So the missions aren’t great. The story mode isn’t the only mode this game comes with. What about creative mode? Surely this could salvage this? Maybe, I don’t know. I might know if they didn’t make the harebrained decision to make you unlock both all levels AND tools in the story mode before you got to properly use it. Seeing how I don’t feel compelled to go and play this game’s terrible missions any more than I already forced myself, I guess I’m not qualified to really talk about it. Just when you thought they couldn’t make any more calls like that. I know there are even more aspects to the game, like a co-op mode or something but again, it really isn’t giving me any actual incentive to go and find out.
Ultimately I don’t even really know what else to say about Teardown. It’s a game that should’ve been great, a game all about appeasing that most primal parts of our brains that just want to see things go boom. It’s a game I really wanted to love, I wanted to have a great time with it. But instead, it’s a half-hearted tech demo that is so shockingly bereft of any solid gameplay foundation to stand on that it barely even meets the requirement for me to call it a “video game”.
I really can’t say much more than this: There is potential here, and I hope that the dev team behind it can utilise more of it in the future. If they use the tech from this project and attach it to a game that actually fits it thematically, they could have a hit here. But there is a lot of work to be done. Might just be that they have to (pardon the pun) tear this whole thing down and start from scratch.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the best 2D-Mario game in a long time, perhaps ever. A game full of creativity and love for its own design. Despite not fully abandoning all the design decisions that made past entries so underwhelming, this is a shot in the arm that the (2D-) Super Mario series desperately needed. Wowie-zowie!
9 / 10
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There is no video game character as ubiquitous as Super Mario. There may be game franchises that are more profitable but in terms of sheer recognisability and cultural impact, there is nothing that comes even close. Even your grandma knows what a “Mario” is. 99% of people have never played a single Super Mario game in their life, and yet most of those very same people will at the very least know his name. This is how iconic of a franchise Super Mario is. So it always surprised me how exceedingly stale this franchise became over the years - that is, if we’re talking about the original, “true” Super Mario series, also known as the “2D-Mario games”.
I’m saying this because I think that the 3D-Mario games don’t really share this issue. While they aren’t necessarily perfect either, it’s fairly obvious that these games tend to receive a lot more care and attention by their developers than their 2D counterparts. The “Galaxy” games are, in my opinion, perhaps the best third-person platformers ever made. Odyssey, while flawed, was some of the most fun I had with the Mario franchise in a long time. So why do the 2D games fail to live up to this standard?
I’d say the biggest problem lies with how unambitious this series has become. Structurally speaking, there’s been basically no change between the original Super Mario Bros. from 1984 for the NES and games as recent as New Super Mario Bros. U from 2012. That’s not to say that there aren’t genuinely fantastic games from back in the day, like Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros 2 (aka “SMB USA" in Japan). The thing is, these games went out of their way to experiment with the structure and flow of the genre they had just recently helped create. Mario didn’t just make for a good platforming game; it literally invented the genre. It defined what it means to be a platforming game. And yet, since the 90’s the Mario team hasn’t tried to really go back and improve on the formula even once. Granted, there was a 10+ year break between the last real 2D-Mario game, which was “SMW2: Yoshi’s Island” and New Super Mario Bros, the game which would usher in the so called “revival” of the series. Except I would call it more of a “zombiefication”. While it was brought back to life, this series became a casualised shadow of itself. While the NSMB games are fine, they feel like they barely scratch the surface of what Mario games could be. At the most, they’ll add one or two new power ups, maybe let you play as a “new” character, and they never get even remotely challenging. Now, I don’t need Mario games to be super hard or whatever, but it’s almost shocking just how tame the general level design of the NSMB era tends to be. No matter which of these games, be it Nintendo DS, Wii or Wii U, these games only offer the bare minimum of what a good platforming game should. Every level looks the same, the art direction is boring, the music is bubbly and uninteresting, the backgrounds are dull and lifeless. And, like I said before, the levels rarely - if ever - demand that you actually have to try for any of them. It’s like you’re playing on autopilot. Contrast this to other, contemporary platforming games like Donkey Kong Country, Super Meat Boy, Celeste, Shovel Knight, etc. All of these games have fantastic art direction, great level design, awesome music, a nice atmosphere and they don’t skimp out on anything in terms of challenge or gameplay to achieve their vision. The NSMB games instead feel like they’re going out of their way to be as nondescript and uninteresting as possible. It’s as if they’re trying to be as casual as they possibly can be. It’s still the exact same “go from left to right and maybe jump occasionally” design that the very first SMB game had.
Super Mario Maker and it’s sequel, SMM2 certainly were very interesting games, and managed to build a very dedicated, creative and talented community around themselves. While both of them did have their share of issues as well (mostly with how agonising finding the levels you actually wanted to find remains to this day) they showed fans weren’t just hungry for interestingly designed Mario levels, they were outright ravenous. Of course the vast majority of levels are random BS created by 6 year old “little Timmy” and that’s fine. But the amount of levels that absolutely DESTROYED Nintendo at their own craft was truly shocking. So many fantastically designed levels, so many creative ideas and so many new techniques that were developed as part of this. Of course I’m not expecting quite the same level of dedication and challenge that were on display here, but the fact that both SMM games featured by far the best Mario levels I’ve ever played to a staggering degree is certainly saying a lot. By this point in time, it was clear that the 2D Mario series was in a deep identity crisis, with the last actual 2D Mario game before SMM being rather mediocre at most, and the best things about both SMM’s being specifically the parts that Nintendo didn’t get to design.
And this is where we can finally talk about Super Mario Bros. Wonder! I’m sorry it took me so long to get to the meat of it, but I felt like I had to set the stage to really explain just why this game is such a pleasant surprise. It’s such a breath of fresh air in a series beginning to grow mould from getting so stale. Now, I’m the first to admit that this game still has flaws, and that it’s not perfect by any means. It’s still overly easy for most of its runtime. It still has some of those extremely uninteresting and stale design elements that made the older titles almost feel patronising in a lot of ways. Boss fights, as per usual with Mario, are still extremely boring. Although, more accurately, it’s mostly just one boss fight that keeps repeating and repeating while only incrementally changing each time you do it again. I literally had to look up what Bowser even looked like during the final boss fight because it was so incredibly forgettable. So yeah, still doesn’t have the best boss fights.
What it does have is a sheer unbelievable amount of creativity and love for itself. Where older Mario games seemingly couldn’t contain their lack of passion, this is the most heartfelt and loving any Mario game has felt in decades, perhaps ever. It’s certainly the best and most out-there 2D-Mario game we’ve gotten since Yoshi’s Island. This is the first and only 2D title I played in the entirety of the last 20 years that can hold a candle to the 3D games. It should be mentioned that you shouldn’t go into this game expecting a grand, Outer Wilds-esque masterpiece of game design that transcends the boundaries of space and time or whatever. But if you’re going into this simply for a fun, whimsical platforming game with barely any fat on it and some of the funniest and most charming design decisions of the last 20 years, you’re gonna love it.
Structurally speaking, this game isn’t all that different from its predecessors. You’re still following a (more or less) linear sequence of moving from one world to the next, with the classic Grassy Plains, Snowy Mountain, and Lava, but you have some more creative settings as well, like a sugary desert, a deep, poisonous mushroom cave and a super weird waterfall / space area? Within these worlds, however, you can pick and choose which levels to do first - or at all. If you don’t care about doing a particular level, you don’t really have to do it. Although I’d be surprised, since I can honestly say that I enjoyed pretty much each and ever level in this game. There are only a handful of levels I’d describe as forgettable or uninteresting. The overall goal, of course, is to stop Bowser, and to do that, you’re gonna have to clear all the worlds and get the magic McGuffin item to beat him. Standard stuff.
Another return from previous games is the option of playing characters other than Mario, though the amount of different characters is higher than ever. Next to the classic Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Daisy, etc. you can also play as one of 4 differently coloured Yoshi or Nabbit. While I haven’t played around with the latter yet, the Yoshi don’t take any damage from enemies or stage hazards like fireballs, but they also can’t make use of other power ups. I assume that Nabbit comes with a similar trade-off. I’ve seen people call this the “easy mode”, but I don’t think that’s quite accurate. Again, Yoshi can’t make use of any power ups, meaning you might have to find alternate ways of progressing through a level where you would’ve needed a power up to progress otherwise.
Let’s finally talk about what actually makes this game so interesting and fun: the levels! The level selection on display here is, almost certainly, the best the 2D-Mario franchise ever had to offer. Each and every level feels distinct and unique, even within the respective worlds. In previous games, worlds had one single art style they’d use for every single level within that world. All of them looked exactly alike, almost as if the actual devs at Nintendo had to use the same simplistic tools as SMM players when creating them. The art direction is great, while it doesn’t quite reach the heights of gems like Celeste or Hollow Knight, the 2.5D aesthetic has rarely looked so good as it does here. What’s more is that they just feel really distinct from one another. While the overall art direction and level design are obviously very important, I think one of the biggest factors for making it so wonderful (pun intended) is the inclusion of this game’s signature mechanic; the Wonder Flower!
The Wonder Flower is an amazing design idea, only surpassed by its immaculate implementation. What would’ve ended up a simple power up in lesser Mario games is a full on new mechanic that completely changes how the level’s design and even simply playing through them works. I seriously hope that this catches on and gets expanded upon and refined in the future, because it’s a really great idea, and I’d hate to see them abandoning it in the next title. So what does it do? Basically, it completely changes the level you’re playing right now in a staggering number of ways. They’re always hidden somewhere in the level, sometimes fairly obviously, other times pretty deviously. Essentially, every single level in the game - which are already all unique and interesting enough to begin with, mind you - gets a transform-mode that either radically changes the level structure, introduces a new weird and zany mechanic like turning the entire level into silhouettes, or having the enemies perform a musical number, or some other, unpredictable weird shit that makes you heart jump with joy. Maybe you’re getting turned INTO the level itself, or you have to survive a stealth-horror section as a Goomba. Maybe the gravity changes every 5 seconds, maybe the the level turns into a rhythm game, or maybe you’re just getting super intense acid-flashback-type visuals that make your forget you’re playing a children’s game. Sometimes the Wonder mode is just a few rooms, other times it goes for the entire remaining level, and even wilder yet, sometimes it goes even BEYOND the regular level. Believe it or not, but this has been maybe 10% of what the Wonder Flower can potentially do, and I won’t go into more detail because I don’t wanna risk spoiling it for you. I’ve basically only described the kind of things I saw in the FIRST WORLD. What’s more is that finding the flowers isn’t necessary - they’re 100% optional. While they do give you a Wonder Seed (this game’s story collectible) for completing them, you also get them for simply beating a level, so if - for some weird reason - you don’t wanna do them, you don’t have to. They’re only here for your entertainment, or maybe give you a reason to replay a level if you didn’t find the flower. And the best thing about it; every single Wonder Flower section is completely, 100% unique to the level you find it in. This would’ve been crazy if it had only been every 3rd or 4th level, but it really is in EVERY single level that isn’t some specific challenge course or something like that. They are easily the best part of this game and if this had been the only addition it would already be a very good game. But there’s a whole bunch more.
As per usual, there are also a bunch of new power-ups at your disposal. Most notably and obviously, the Elephant Fruit, which as the name suggests turns you into an Elephant. The Elephant form gives you a short range melee attacks which can break blocks and destroy enemies, but you also get the ability to carry water around (which admittedly is a bit under-utilised outside of 2 specific worlds) and also grow twice the size of regular Mario. Next up is the Bubble Flower which might have the most potential for completely breaking the game with the ability to create bubbles on which you can jump - yes, you can create your own platforming elements. While this is limited to the levels you can find it in, I’m hoping we see it return in Super Mario Maker 3 - if it ever gets announced. Finally, we have the Drill Flower, which turns you into a drill, letting you burrow into the ground or the ceiling, which lets you bypass a lot of obstacles or crawl into hidden spaces on the map. The devs got pretty creative with hiding some stuff outside your immediate view, so make good use of it.
Lastly, as far as new mechanics go, SMBW introduces a badge-system, like you’d see in Hollow Knight for example. Badges are little extra powers you can equip before starting any level, or after you died. They come in all different shapes and sizes, some fairly straightforward and others require you to really think about their usage. Others are just silly and goofy, like the Spring badge, which turns you into a spring, meaning you literally can’t stop jumping. But most are more praxis oriented. Some of my favourites include the “Walllclimb”, which lets you jump UP a wall once instead of away from it, which can be incredibly useful in tight platforming sections. Or take the Floating High Jump, which gives you what would usually be Peach’s signature ability, letting you float very shortly after jumping, or the Timed High Jump, which gives you the typical triple-jump power from the 3D Mario games. My favourite by far however would be the Boosting Spin Jump badge which transforms the little spin that Mario can do in mid-air into an actual double jump. I don’t need to explain how incredibly useful this can be in basically any situation. And those are just the basic action badges, there are also badges that give you passive abilities like surviving falling down a pit, lava or poison lake once, or a badge that adds “!” Blocks all over the map, or a “Sensor” badge which points out secrets and hidden blocks. There are honestly so many of these and I haven’t even really played around with 50% of them. I think that this badge system was one of the best ideas they ever had in the 2D-Mario series and I hope that this becomes a main staple of the genre. It makes levels so much more repayable, and it also allows players a much greater form of expression, especially in co-op.
Speaking of which, let’s get into one of the more experimental features of this game. I’ve seen people online describe this as “Dark Souls style co-op” and while this is obviously an immense oversimplification and a case of people once again reverting to comparing something to Dark Souls simply because it did something vaguely similar, I can actually kinda see what they mean. If you go online, you’ll see Dark Souls-style phantoms all across the world, both in the overworld and in the actual levels. If anyone is playing through a level at the same time as you, you’ll play together in a form of indirect co-op, meaning that other players only show up as the aforementioned phantoms, which are intangible and can’t directly engage with you. However, if you were to die while they were in their general vicinity, you go into a ghost-form and have about 5 seconds to touch one of these phantom-players. If you do, congratulations, you just got another shot at beating the level! Alternatively, players can put down little cardboard cutouts (called “Standees”) of themselves that serve the same function. Also, players have the ability of dropping any extra power-ups they might be carrying around to other players who might need it more. While this has the potential of turning which are already rather easy levels into a complete joke, I really think that this form of optional, indirect co-op is such a unique and fun idea. I didn’t think Mario really needed something like this, but I’m happy to be wrong in this regard. Once again, if for some reason you don’t like this, you can simply turn it off by going offline. I personally really enjoyed it, as it gave me the feeling of participating in a community activity of some sort.
Sadly, SMBW despite being the best Mario game in a while still isn’t perfect, and the majority of its flaws come in the form of design elements that were in previous games and should’ve been abandoned for this one. Like I mentioned in the beginning, the game does feel overly easy. I barely - if ever - felt truly challenged by any of the main story’s levels, not even the final set of levels felt like something I had to actually, actively think about. The same sadly also goes for the post-game activities, which are surprisingly very meagre this time around. There are a hand-full of special levels you can complete by finding little teleport gates in each world. If you do this, and then also collect ALL Wonder Seeds in the game, you get to play a special “final-final” level, which is admittedly pretty darn tough, but still feels a bit underwhelming in terms of serious post-game content. I would’ve preferred it if we’d gotten an entire world made up of only such super-hard levels, or at least something that captures a similar feeling of forward progression. I also have to admit to finding a lot of the world-design a bit tame. Where the games actual content and mechanics are brimming with crazy ideas, the setting in which all takes place is weirdly restrained and temperate. And, like I mentioned in the beginning as well, the boss fights are bad. Like, even for Mario these boss fights feel laughably uninspired and declawed. I honestly don’t understand why they still bother with making them when they clearly don’t want to put anything remotely resembling a challenging boss fight into their games. I seriously wish they just weren’t here. Finally, and this honestly almost doesn’t really count enough for me to cite as a criticism, but those talking flowers are kinda annoying. I have no idea what they were going for with them. Luckily you can just turn off their voices in the settings though, so it’s not really a problem.
Luckily, that really is just about all I can actually criticise this game for before I just start nitpicking. It truly, honestly is the best 2D-Mario game that came out in 20 years. I mean, damn, maybe it really is the best I’ve ever played. It’s hard to say, I’d have to systematically go through the older titles again to be sure. The only ones I would say come close are Super Mario World and maybe Yoshi’s Island. Perhaps, if I’m remembering correctly, Super Mario Bros 3? It’s been so long since I played any one of these, I didn’t have a strong desire to replay them since my childhood. This one however, I see myself replaying in the future not too far off.
There are still so many things I haven’t talked about, like the music, all of the new and zany enemies they introduced here, the crazy level design ideas, the way how even the backgrounds and foregrounds are sometimes worked into the actual level design, the amazing sound design, and honestly I feel like just quantitatively naming every single one of them wouldn’t do it justice. It’s a game that’s meant to be experienced for yourself.
If you’re like me, and you’ve lost faith in the 2D-Mario series and want nothing more than reliving those memories from back in the day when Super Mario World was the greatest game you’ve ever played, give this one a shot. It’s wonderful.
9 / 10
9 / 10
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There is no video game character as ubiquitous as Super Mario. There may be game franchises that are more profitable but in terms of sheer recognisability and cultural impact, there is nothing that comes even close. Even your grandma knows what a “Mario” is. 99% of people have never played a single Super Mario game in their life, and yet most of those very same people will at the very least know his name. This is how iconic of a franchise Super Mario is. So it always surprised me how exceedingly stale this franchise became over the years - that is, if we’re talking about the original, “true” Super Mario series, also known as the “2D-Mario games”.
I’m saying this because I think that the 3D-Mario games don’t really share this issue. While they aren’t necessarily perfect either, it’s fairly obvious that these games tend to receive a lot more care and attention by their developers than their 2D counterparts. The “Galaxy” games are, in my opinion, perhaps the best third-person platformers ever made. Odyssey, while flawed, was some of the most fun I had with the Mario franchise in a long time. So why do the 2D games fail to live up to this standard?
I’d say the biggest problem lies with how unambitious this series has become. Structurally speaking, there’s been basically no change between the original Super Mario Bros. from 1984 for the NES and games as recent as New Super Mario Bros. U from 2012. That’s not to say that there aren’t genuinely fantastic games from back in the day, like Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros 2 (aka “SMB USA" in Japan). The thing is, these games went out of their way to experiment with the structure and flow of the genre they had just recently helped create. Mario didn’t just make for a good platforming game; it literally invented the genre. It defined what it means to be a platforming game. And yet, since the 90’s the Mario team hasn’t tried to really go back and improve on the formula even once. Granted, there was a 10+ year break between the last real 2D-Mario game, which was “SMW2: Yoshi’s Island” and New Super Mario Bros, the game which would usher in the so called “revival” of the series. Except I would call it more of a “zombiefication”. While it was brought back to life, this series became a casualised shadow of itself. While the NSMB games are fine, they feel like they barely scratch the surface of what Mario games could be. At the most, they’ll add one or two new power ups, maybe let you play as a “new” character, and they never get even remotely challenging. Now, I don’t need Mario games to be super hard or whatever, but it’s almost shocking just how tame the general level design of the NSMB era tends to be. No matter which of these games, be it Nintendo DS, Wii or Wii U, these games only offer the bare minimum of what a good platforming game should. Every level looks the same, the art direction is boring, the music is bubbly and uninteresting, the backgrounds are dull and lifeless. And, like I said before, the levels rarely - if ever - demand that you actually have to try for any of them. It’s like you’re playing on autopilot. Contrast this to other, contemporary platforming games like Donkey Kong Country, Super Meat Boy, Celeste, Shovel Knight, etc. All of these games have fantastic art direction, great level design, awesome music, a nice atmosphere and they don’t skimp out on anything in terms of challenge or gameplay to achieve their vision. The NSMB games instead feel like they’re going out of their way to be as nondescript and uninteresting as possible. It’s as if they’re trying to be as casual as they possibly can be. It’s still the exact same “go from left to right and maybe jump occasionally” design that the very first SMB game had.
Super Mario Maker and it’s sequel, SMM2 certainly were very interesting games, and managed to build a very dedicated, creative and talented community around themselves. While both of them did have their share of issues as well (mostly with how agonising finding the levels you actually wanted to find remains to this day) they showed fans weren’t just hungry for interestingly designed Mario levels, they were outright ravenous. Of course the vast majority of levels are random BS created by 6 year old “little Timmy” and that’s fine. But the amount of levels that absolutely DESTROYED Nintendo at their own craft was truly shocking. So many fantastically designed levels, so many creative ideas and so many new techniques that were developed as part of this. Of course I’m not expecting quite the same level of dedication and challenge that were on display here, but the fact that both SMM games featured by far the best Mario levels I’ve ever played to a staggering degree is certainly saying a lot. By this point in time, it was clear that the 2D Mario series was in a deep identity crisis, with the last actual 2D Mario game before SMM being rather mediocre at most, and the best things about both SMM’s being specifically the parts that Nintendo didn’t get to design.
And this is where we can finally talk about Super Mario Bros. Wonder! I’m sorry it took me so long to get to the meat of it, but I felt like I had to set the stage to really explain just why this game is such a pleasant surprise. It’s such a breath of fresh air in a series beginning to grow mould from getting so stale. Now, I’m the first to admit that this game still has flaws, and that it’s not perfect by any means. It’s still overly easy for most of its runtime. It still has some of those extremely uninteresting and stale design elements that made the older titles almost feel patronising in a lot of ways. Boss fights, as per usual with Mario, are still extremely boring. Although, more accurately, it’s mostly just one boss fight that keeps repeating and repeating while only incrementally changing each time you do it again. I literally had to look up what Bowser even looked like during the final boss fight because it was so incredibly forgettable. So yeah, still doesn’t have the best boss fights.
What it does have is a sheer unbelievable amount of creativity and love for itself. Where older Mario games seemingly couldn’t contain their lack of passion, this is the most heartfelt and loving any Mario game has felt in decades, perhaps ever. It’s certainly the best and most out-there 2D-Mario game we’ve gotten since Yoshi’s Island. This is the first and only 2D title I played in the entirety of the last 20 years that can hold a candle to the 3D games. It should be mentioned that you shouldn’t go into this game expecting a grand, Outer Wilds-esque masterpiece of game design that transcends the boundaries of space and time or whatever. But if you’re going into this simply for a fun, whimsical platforming game with barely any fat on it and some of the funniest and most charming design decisions of the last 20 years, you’re gonna love it.
Structurally speaking, this game isn’t all that different from its predecessors. You’re still following a (more or less) linear sequence of moving from one world to the next, with the classic Grassy Plains, Snowy Mountain, and Lava, but you have some more creative settings as well, like a sugary desert, a deep, poisonous mushroom cave and a super weird waterfall / space area? Within these worlds, however, you can pick and choose which levels to do first - or at all. If you don’t care about doing a particular level, you don’t really have to do it. Although I’d be surprised, since I can honestly say that I enjoyed pretty much each and ever level in this game. There are only a handful of levels I’d describe as forgettable or uninteresting. The overall goal, of course, is to stop Bowser, and to do that, you’re gonna have to clear all the worlds and get the magic McGuffin item to beat him. Standard stuff.
Another return from previous games is the option of playing characters other than Mario, though the amount of different characters is higher than ever. Next to the classic Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Daisy, etc. you can also play as one of 4 differently coloured Yoshi or Nabbit. While I haven’t played around with the latter yet, the Yoshi don’t take any damage from enemies or stage hazards like fireballs, but they also can’t make use of other power ups. I assume that Nabbit comes with a similar trade-off. I’ve seen people call this the “easy mode”, but I don’t think that’s quite accurate. Again, Yoshi can’t make use of any power ups, meaning you might have to find alternate ways of progressing through a level where you would’ve needed a power up to progress otherwise.
Let’s finally talk about what actually makes this game so interesting and fun: the levels! The level selection on display here is, almost certainly, the best the 2D-Mario franchise ever had to offer. Each and every level feels distinct and unique, even within the respective worlds. In previous games, worlds had one single art style they’d use for every single level within that world. All of them looked exactly alike, almost as if the actual devs at Nintendo had to use the same simplistic tools as SMM players when creating them. The art direction is great, while it doesn’t quite reach the heights of gems like Celeste or Hollow Knight, the 2.5D aesthetic has rarely looked so good as it does here. What’s more is that they just feel really distinct from one another. While the overall art direction and level design are obviously very important, I think one of the biggest factors for making it so wonderful (pun intended) is the inclusion of this game’s signature mechanic; the Wonder Flower!
The Wonder Flower is an amazing design idea, only surpassed by its immaculate implementation. What would’ve ended up a simple power up in lesser Mario games is a full on new mechanic that completely changes how the level’s design and even simply playing through them works. I seriously hope that this catches on and gets expanded upon and refined in the future, because it’s a really great idea, and I’d hate to see them abandoning it in the next title. So what does it do? Basically, it completely changes the level you’re playing right now in a staggering number of ways. They’re always hidden somewhere in the level, sometimes fairly obviously, other times pretty deviously. Essentially, every single level in the game - which are already all unique and interesting enough to begin with, mind you - gets a transform-mode that either radically changes the level structure, introduces a new weird and zany mechanic like turning the entire level into silhouettes, or having the enemies perform a musical number, or some other, unpredictable weird shit that makes you heart jump with joy. Maybe you’re getting turned INTO the level itself, or you have to survive a stealth-horror section as a Goomba. Maybe the gravity changes every 5 seconds, maybe the the level turns into a rhythm game, or maybe you’re just getting super intense acid-flashback-type visuals that make your forget you’re playing a children’s game. Sometimes the Wonder mode is just a few rooms, other times it goes for the entire remaining level, and even wilder yet, sometimes it goes even BEYOND the regular level. Believe it or not, but this has been maybe 10% of what the Wonder Flower can potentially do, and I won’t go into more detail because I don’t wanna risk spoiling it for you. I’ve basically only described the kind of things I saw in the FIRST WORLD. What’s more is that finding the flowers isn’t necessary - they’re 100% optional. While they do give you a Wonder Seed (this game’s story collectible) for completing them, you also get them for simply beating a level, so if - for some weird reason - you don’t wanna do them, you don’t have to. They’re only here for your entertainment, or maybe give you a reason to replay a level if you didn’t find the flower. And the best thing about it; every single Wonder Flower section is completely, 100% unique to the level you find it in. This would’ve been crazy if it had only been every 3rd or 4th level, but it really is in EVERY single level that isn’t some specific challenge course or something like that. They are easily the best part of this game and if this had been the only addition it would already be a very good game. But there’s a whole bunch more.
As per usual, there are also a bunch of new power-ups at your disposal. Most notably and obviously, the Elephant Fruit, which as the name suggests turns you into an Elephant. The Elephant form gives you a short range melee attacks which can break blocks and destroy enemies, but you also get the ability to carry water around (which admittedly is a bit under-utilised outside of 2 specific worlds) and also grow twice the size of regular Mario. Next up is the Bubble Flower which might have the most potential for completely breaking the game with the ability to create bubbles on which you can jump - yes, you can create your own platforming elements. While this is limited to the levels you can find it in, I’m hoping we see it return in Super Mario Maker 3 - if it ever gets announced. Finally, we have the Drill Flower, which turns you into a drill, letting you burrow into the ground or the ceiling, which lets you bypass a lot of obstacles or crawl into hidden spaces on the map. The devs got pretty creative with hiding some stuff outside your immediate view, so make good use of it.
Lastly, as far as new mechanics go, SMBW introduces a badge-system, like you’d see in Hollow Knight for example. Badges are little extra powers you can equip before starting any level, or after you died. They come in all different shapes and sizes, some fairly straightforward and others require you to really think about their usage. Others are just silly and goofy, like the Spring badge, which turns you into a spring, meaning you literally can’t stop jumping. But most are more praxis oriented. Some of my favourites include the “Walllclimb”, which lets you jump UP a wall once instead of away from it, which can be incredibly useful in tight platforming sections. Or take the Floating High Jump, which gives you what would usually be Peach’s signature ability, letting you float very shortly after jumping, or the Timed High Jump, which gives you the typical triple-jump power from the 3D Mario games. My favourite by far however would be the Boosting Spin Jump badge which transforms the little spin that Mario can do in mid-air into an actual double jump. I don’t need to explain how incredibly useful this can be in basically any situation. And those are just the basic action badges, there are also badges that give you passive abilities like surviving falling down a pit, lava or poison lake once, or a badge that adds “!” Blocks all over the map, or a “Sensor” badge which points out secrets and hidden blocks. There are honestly so many of these and I haven’t even really played around with 50% of them. I think that this badge system was one of the best ideas they ever had in the 2D-Mario series and I hope that this becomes a main staple of the genre. It makes levels so much more repayable, and it also allows players a much greater form of expression, especially in co-op.
Speaking of which, let’s get into one of the more experimental features of this game. I’ve seen people online describe this as “Dark Souls style co-op” and while this is obviously an immense oversimplification and a case of people once again reverting to comparing something to Dark Souls simply because it did something vaguely similar, I can actually kinda see what they mean. If you go online, you’ll see Dark Souls-style phantoms all across the world, both in the overworld and in the actual levels. If anyone is playing through a level at the same time as you, you’ll play together in a form of indirect co-op, meaning that other players only show up as the aforementioned phantoms, which are intangible and can’t directly engage with you. However, if you were to die while they were in their general vicinity, you go into a ghost-form and have about 5 seconds to touch one of these phantom-players. If you do, congratulations, you just got another shot at beating the level! Alternatively, players can put down little cardboard cutouts (called “Standees”) of themselves that serve the same function. Also, players have the ability of dropping any extra power-ups they might be carrying around to other players who might need it more. While this has the potential of turning which are already rather easy levels into a complete joke, I really think that this form of optional, indirect co-op is such a unique and fun idea. I didn’t think Mario really needed something like this, but I’m happy to be wrong in this regard. Once again, if for some reason you don’t like this, you can simply turn it off by going offline. I personally really enjoyed it, as it gave me the feeling of participating in a community activity of some sort.
Sadly, SMBW despite being the best Mario game in a while still isn’t perfect, and the majority of its flaws come in the form of design elements that were in previous games and should’ve been abandoned for this one. Like I mentioned in the beginning, the game does feel overly easy. I barely - if ever - felt truly challenged by any of the main story’s levels, not even the final set of levels felt like something I had to actually, actively think about. The same sadly also goes for the post-game activities, which are surprisingly very meagre this time around. There are a hand-full of special levels you can complete by finding little teleport gates in each world. If you do this, and then also collect ALL Wonder Seeds in the game, you get to play a special “final-final” level, which is admittedly pretty darn tough, but still feels a bit underwhelming in terms of serious post-game content. I would’ve preferred it if we’d gotten an entire world made up of only such super-hard levels, or at least something that captures a similar feeling of forward progression. I also have to admit to finding a lot of the world-design a bit tame. Where the games actual content and mechanics are brimming with crazy ideas, the setting in which all takes place is weirdly restrained and temperate. And, like I mentioned in the beginning as well, the boss fights are bad. Like, even for Mario these boss fights feel laughably uninspired and declawed. I honestly don’t understand why they still bother with making them when they clearly don’t want to put anything remotely resembling a challenging boss fight into their games. I seriously wish they just weren’t here. Finally, and this honestly almost doesn’t really count enough for me to cite as a criticism, but those talking flowers are kinda annoying. I have no idea what they were going for with them. Luckily you can just turn off their voices in the settings though, so it’s not really a problem.
Luckily, that really is just about all I can actually criticise this game for before I just start nitpicking. It truly, honestly is the best 2D-Mario game that came out in 20 years. I mean, damn, maybe it really is the best I’ve ever played. It’s hard to say, I’d have to systematically go through the older titles again to be sure. The only ones I would say come close are Super Mario World and maybe Yoshi’s Island. Perhaps, if I’m remembering correctly, Super Mario Bros 3? It’s been so long since I played any one of these, I didn’t have a strong desire to replay them since my childhood. This one however, I see myself replaying in the future not too far off.
There are still so many things I haven’t talked about, like the music, all of the new and zany enemies they introduced here, the crazy level design ideas, the way how even the backgrounds and foregrounds are sometimes worked into the actual level design, the amazing sound design, and honestly I feel like just quantitatively naming every single one of them wouldn’t do it justice. It’s a game that’s meant to be experienced for yourself.
If you’re like me, and you’ve lost faith in the 2D-Mario series and want nothing more than reliving those memories from back in the day when Super Mario World was the greatest game you’ve ever played, give this one a shot. It’s wonderful.
9 / 10
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is a pure thrill ride. A thunderous symphony of pounding machine guns, clashing metal and whirring engines of death. A few relatively unengaging missions notwithstanding, this game just keeps on giving and feels like it never ends. FromSoft don’t miss.
9 / 10
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Dark Souls is my favourite game of all time. As a matter of fact, each and every one of the previous 7 games that FromSoftware have produced in the series variably known as “Souls games”, “Soulsborne”, “Bloodsouls”, etc, are among my favourite games ever made. From Demon’s Souls to Elden Ring, I’ve beaten them all numerous times, with various builds and self-imposed challenges. I’ve even written a review here on Backlogged about DS1 specifically, and what makes me love it so much beyond just mentioning that the game is difficult, which seems to be the only thing most reviewers are capable of mentioning.
So, that being said, it is baffling - mind-boggling even - that this company, despite me being a massive fanboy, has managed to create what is inarguably THE biggest surprise title of the year for me. I know what you’re thinking now: “Of course you’re gonna like it if you’ve enjoyed their previous work, right?” Clearly you know me better than I know myself, because I remember being fairly disenchanted by AC6’s reveal at the Game Awards 2022. Like any good FromSoft / Miyazaki fanboy, I was of course aware of the company’s history previous to their meteoric rise to stardom within the gaming industry. Unlike some of their oldest games (like the King’s Field series) I wasn’t too interested in ever delving deep into all of this stuff - especially Armored Core. Personally, I was never a huge fan of mechs and massive robots beyond accepting them as a staple of anime and gaming culture. So with all of that in mind, seeing that “FromSoft” title card during the game awards, desperately awaiting news of Elden Ring’s upcoming “Shadow of the Erdtree” DLC only to be met with an announcement concerning the revival of a series that hadn’t had any new entries in 15 years was a bit disappointing. I wasn’t even sure I was going to buy it, when every title other FromSoft released up until now was a guaranteed purchase. And to top it off, this game wasn’t even made by Miyazaki. If the legend himself wasn’t even really involved, did this ever stand any chance of actually being good?
I was never happier to have been completely wrong. This is very easily one of the best games released this year, a year stacked with amazing releases. Disregarding all titles not actually from this year, AC6 comes almost shockingly close to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for me, a game which had around thrice the amount of time and MANY times the budget of our beloved robot game. It probably won’t win GOTY, but that’s because this really is not a game for everyone - even though they really went out of their way to make this the most accessible and pick-up-and-play AC title yet. It’s more that this game just lacks that kind of stage presence and mainstream appeal that the Souls series has garnered by this point in time. In case you’re unfamiliar, Dark Souls was by no means the first game in FromSoft’s catalogue to gain them a reputation for their difficult games. While King’s Field was already infamous for seemingly hating the player for trying to, you know, play the game, Armored Core games quickly gained a reputation for being some of the hardest, toughest and unforgiving games out there. But I don’t want to spend too much time in this review talking about the previous titles. You could probably tell from how I worded myself thus far, but in case you couldn’t; this has been my first dance with the Armored Core series, and as such I have no actual first hand experience with the rest of the series. I deliberately didn’t delve into the previous titles in the series because a.) I didn’t want to burn myself out on a series right when the newest entry came around and b.) I wanted to see what this game was like specifically for someone who hadn’t played AC 1 - 5 and all the rest. Some older, longer-established AC fans told me that I NEED to play the older ones, or I will not be able to play it. They even told me horror stories about the so-called “reverse grip”, and how the games are supposedly way, way harder than the Souls games, etc. None of this is true. I was able to play this game with a normal controller grip, like any other normal game.
Speaking of which, let’s head right into the big question that rears its ugly head every time a new FromSoft title gets released:
Does this game is an hard?!??
Of course the answer to what one may find difficult is entirely subjective, and there is no discussion on planet earth that I’m more sick of than debating the need for “easy modes” in Soulsborne or other difficult video games. Of course I cannot definitely answer questions like “is this harder than Elden Ring or Sekiro” or others like this. What I can do is talk about my own experience as a Souls veteran and someone generally enjoys challenging games. I’m not a try-hard who thinks that beating a hard video game is somehow part of my personality, or that I need to beat a game on the hardest possible difficulty to give it a fair shake. I’ll try to get this topic over and done with as fast as possible so we can get to the stuff that’s actually interesting.
So, just how hard is this game? I honestly can’t say I found it significantly more or less difficult than any other game by FromSoftware I’ve played. There is a similar focus on reading enemy movements, judging your own distance and stamina/energy levels, trying to get your own hits in while avoiding theirs. The game is just different in HOW this difficulty manifests itself. As opposed to the generally very open world-structure of Souls games, in which you are expected to journey across a big world, often backtracking multiple times through connected areas, Armored Core generally takes a “mission-based” approach. That means each level is a self-contained map that features classical checkpoints rather than the iconic bonfires we’ve come to know. That of course means that one of the core aspects about any game’s difficulty - the healing system - is a lot different here than it was in Souls. In Souls, the general idea was to give you a (relatively) fixed amount of heals per run from each bonfire, which you can think of as the maximum amount of mistakes you’re allowed to make before you have to restart the run. These runs could be very long, which was balanced by giving you a lot of heals, e.g. (up to) 20 heals in Dark Souls (since you were also meant to traverse the greater world beyond just the levels), around 15 in DS2 and DS3, while DS2 also gave you life gems to compensate how much larger levels tended to be, Bloodborne let you farm heals to make for open world traversal, etc. You get the idea.
Here, in AC6, as mentioned, there are no bonfires. Instead, the game goes for multiple checkpoints in each level, which are often times not too far from each other. These checkpoints restore all your health on death (or reset), including your heals. Armored Cores also have a lot more health than your typical Souls protagonist, relatively speaking. As such, your healing is massively restricted in this game; you’re only ever given access to 3 heals. While you can upgrade the flat amount of health they restore, the number of individual heals cannot be altered. This is perhaps the biggest factor in potentially making this game a lot harder, although it should be mentioned that enemies generally tend to do way less damage to you than regular mobs in Souls games. As a matter of fact, most regular grunt enemies feel barely even like a threat and more like walking targets. Most ads can be destroyed within seconds, and not engaging them in the first place is even easier due to the insane mobility that your robot can potentially have. The real challenge definitely comes from the many, MANY bosses and other AC’s that the planet Rubicon 3 is populated with. And make no mistake, there are some tough fuckers among them. Another thing that might add to this, especially for Souls veterans, is that there are no i-frames in this game. That’s right, one of the core aspects of the Souls combat formula is missing. Dodges exist, but are meant to reposition yourself more than they are meant to dodge something point blank. If you dodge into an attack, you will get hit. And that really does make a difference. Not only is it hard to unlearn dodging right into attacks as the most optimal way to deal with them, some attacks track you so goddamn efficiently that it feels almost impossible to jump out of the way - that might have been unintentional though, as enemy tracking was some of the stuff that was addressed in the latest big patch for the game (as of late September 2023).
So much for how difficult this game might be, now let’s get to how it actually plays.
Unsurprisingly, it plays very differently from Souls. In fact, it barely has anything to do with the aforementioned genre at all. I’m sorry to all the old-school AC fans for continuously comparing this game to a series it has barely anything in common with, but I’d assume that the vast majority of people who got into AC this year did so in a similar manner to me, with no prior experience with AC, but a lot of experience with Souls games. I promise I will only continue to do it where it feels pertinent.
From what I’ve seen, all Armored Core games play rather similarly. They are all 3rd person shooters set in very large, open levels that extensively make use of all 3 dimensions. The games are very fast-paced, demand a lot of spacial and situational awareness from the player, fast reaction times and above all - patience and a willingness to perfect your play style. I’d say the closest comparison (other than similar mech-games) would be something between a non-cover based shooter mixed with a flying simulation game like Ace Combat. This game differentiates itself from the others by giving you some conveniences from the Souls games, like a directional dodge, a better camera system and a hard lock-on (previously the other games only featured an automatic “soft” lock on).
Players are generally given a great amount of mobility, both on the ground as well as in the air. That is, depending on the mech that you build. If you were to break down Armored Core down to a single signature mechanic, the one thing to identify it by, it would have to be its insane focus on customisability. From the speediest, jumpiest light weight build that can zoom around the map at near light-speed, to the heaviest, chunkiest tanks with enough firepower to wipe out a city, you can make any mech you can possibly think of. From long-range to melee, from ground-based speed demon to death-from-above. All pieces have their strengths and weaknesses, and as such, so do the many different combinations thereof. This customisability comes in the form of a staggering amount of individual parts you can unlock through various means. Some you can simply buy in the shop, others you have to find in secret chests hidden in the levels and others you have to unlock by beating one of AC6’s many, many optional challenges like the Arena. This doesn’t just involve the parts concerned with direct gameplay, you can also customise its colour schemes in great detail and even create entirely new decals and logos from scratch. Yeah, they have an actual, full blown image creator in there. Looks like Adobe Indesign comes with a whole video game attached these days. What’s even crazier is just how intuitive it all really is. While each and every single piece has an absurd amount of individual stats and parameters that change how your AC functions, working out how it all comes together is fairly easy. Ultimately, you just have to check whether the number you’re getting is blue or red. Blue = good, red = bad. Simple as.
The single most important piece for any of your mechs is going to be its leg component. They determine speed, jump distance and carrying capacity, the latter being the single most important aspect of your build. But it doesn’t stop there. Some legs are specifically made for jumping a long distance and come in all sorts of weight classes. Others, like the Quad Legs, are quite sturdy and have a lot of carrying capacity but can also levitate in the air for a time, making them great for builds that wanna stay airborne. Or take the tank legs, which suck at flying around and jumping, but give you great mobility on the ground as well as damn near infinite carrying capacity. And that’s just scratching the surface.
In the end, it’s all about what works FOR YOU. It’s not about making the best mech, creating the most broken robot you can possibly make and then go through the whole game with that singular build. While you can absolutely play AC6 that way if you want to, that would be the most boring and uninteresting way to engage with it. Luckily, this game has its ways of making you reconsider your build, and that mostly comes in the form of the many bosses and other ACs.
To those who did already play AC6, stop me if this feels familiar; you’ve played the game for a couple of hours, you’re starting to like your build, you breeze through the game like it’s nothing and then it appears: The hardest, toughest, brickiest brick wall of a boss you can imagine. Just a total dumpster fire. Whatever strategy you had is out the window. There is no chance you’re beating this boss with your current set up. And that’s where the beauty happens; you can simply swap out your build on the fly - more or less. Every time you die, you get the choice of starting again from the checkpoint, starting the whole mission again, or to either customise your current AC, or swap out an entirely new one. Both tweaking your machine as well as swapping out the whole thing are so fun, and really make you consider each and every piece you’re buying. What may be the most brutal and absurd boss for one person may be a walk in the park for another, and that’s all because they just built their mechs differently. This is part of what makes the “difficulty” discussion is especially redundant in this game; how easy or hard this game is depends entirely on you and your choices. An “easy mode” would do nothing to actually change how this game plays and how people perceived its difficulty. And the thing is, after a while this notion of “I have to defeat the boss with my current set up” grows less and less relevant. By this point, I have made 12 different builds, all of which I am actively using. Of course I have my standard, “default” melee build which I use to probe out everything, and which is my go to for most boss fights as I find it the most fun to use. But sooner or later everyone begins to understand that the real fun actually IS the build of the mech itself. The joy of seeing whatever you came up with shredding through enemies… or not. It really is all about the process of creation, and whether those creations can stand up to the toughest machines on Rubicon 3.
This game has a LOT of bosses. If we’re counting the many ACs that you might have to fight both in the story and the arenas, we’re looking at around 50 bosses. Without them, it’s more like 15-20. I wouldn’t really consider the ACs “bosses”, since they behave much more like the player, making them more similar to the typical Soulsborne NPC battle. Well over half of them are Arena-exclusive anyway, so I generally don’t consider them actual boss fights. As far as “actual” boss fights go, they are generally very, very good. I struggle to come up with even one I’d describe as bad. Even the ones I didn’t enjoy quite as much were at least alright compared to FS’s standard. They range from massive, spaceship like combat helicopters like the already infamous tutorial boss to Evangelion-esque fighting robots all the way up to truly gargantuan, country-sized super machines that could crush a city with a single step of their foot, like the absolutely colossal Strider, which is so large it would literally span an entire continent like Limgrave. And, in typical FromSoft fashion, it’ll be the smaller ones that will give you more trouble. In any case, they’re all visually very impressive and provide an immense sense of scale and immensity. It’s easy to forget that even the smallest enemies in this game are still massive when compared to real life. The important bit here is that you likely won’t be able to fight all bosses with the same build. Some bosses will absolutely hard counter certain builds, and it’s on you to figure out which set up might work. All in all in can be said that the boss fights in this game are masterful as always with FromSoft, even though they are very different from Souls bosses.
The same cannot be said for regular enemies, unfortunately. When compared to Soulsborne, they feel like barely even an afterthought. In those games, each and every enemy no matter how seemingly insignificant commanded a certain type of respect from you. Even the lowliest grunt could whoop your ass into the next century if you weren’t careful. Here in AC6 most regular enemies feel like they’re made out of cardboard. They are barely even a nuisance, much less an actual threat. What’s more is that you barely, if ever, have to actually engage with enemies, you can dart right past them almost always. While that has historically also been true for Souls, here it doesn’t even feel remotely challenging. But I think I understand why they did it. You’re expected to clear levels over and over again, trying to S-rank them and do them as fast as possible. You’re not supposed to struggle against the mobs, you’re supposed to be a machine of war. It’s not about taking as little damage as possible, it’s about blowing the absolute fuck out of your enemies. Blow through the little guys, preserve your ammunition and health for the big guys ahead.
This relative lack of deliberate level design with curated challenges speckled throughout is something you just have to accept. It’s not for everyone. It certainly demands a lot less cognitive work from the player. I've seen content creators like Videogamedunkey call this game out as "braindead" but I think that's doing it dirty. I think that the game offers you a very generous amount of customisable difficulty, and I think that's a fantastic, fresh way to address this debate.
Since we already addressed it, let’s move on to the level design.
Like I mentioned, AC6 follows a mission-based gameplay loop that takes you from level to level from a select-screen, instead of following an open world / semi-metroidvania model as the Souls games do. This, coupled with the fact that the sense of scale is entirely different, the players movement isn’t restricted to only 2 dimensions, and the generally much more open design philosophy of this game, explains why levels are the way they are here. While there is a surprising amount of variety within the selection here, generally speaking levels are much, much larger and more open than in Souls, while at the same time remaining completely linear with maybe the occasional treasure chest or combat log to find in some small side path. There are only a handful of instances where levels include actual alternate paths, and even then those are typically tied to certain story moments. Level size ranges from relatively small and claustrophobic areas to levels that are so fucking big that they might fit the entirety of Elden Ring inside them. The Strider is large enough to span an entire continent of that game, with the map that houses it obviously being many times the size of it. But size isn’t everything of course. Design and aesthetics are important too. You obviously don’t really have those typical looping level structures with shortcuts and winding paths and all that, but what you do have are some pretty amazing set pieces.
Missions will generally follow one of two styles. The first would be relatively short, single objective missions that typically revolve around taking out a boss, mini-boss or mob of enemies or retrieve something. These are typically doable in less than 5 minutes, and are overall perhaps the weakest part of the entire game, although that really isn’t saying much. The worst I can say about them is that they feel a little too much like filler, and that they often don’t really do much to advance the plot either. But that is not to say that there aren’t any short missions that are fun, there certainly are. It’s more that - to me at least - the real fun comes from the feeling of flying through absurdly large city scapes and mechanical superstructures at breakneck speed, taking out as many grunts as flawlessly as I can while working towards a bigger goal. The second variant of missions are the ones that take place in much larger, more involved levels which typically involve multiple stages, many different enemy set ups, story moments and typically a big, cinematic boss fight at the end. But of course, there are exceptions. In NG+ missions, you may be tasked with escorting an allied transport airship through a war zone. Or you might be tasked with picking up data storages from a battle field. I will admit that these typically aren’t the most thrilling missions. Of course there are also some missions that are just flat out annoying or uninteresting, like the NEPENTES mission, in which you have to simply jump down a huge hole, dodge some lasers and kill the laser machine in like 2 hits. Or certain missions in which you’re tasked with literally just taking out hoards of trash mobs. The point is, not every mission here is a masterpiece, but that’s fine. If we’re including all NG+ and NG++ exclusive ones, we’re looking at around 60+ missions for the whole game by my count, and I’d say only around 10-15 of them are mediocre or uninteresting.
Now, artistically speaking, this game isn’t all that comparable to the Soulsborne series. Not even close. FromSoftware, for the last 10+ years, have been cultivating a cult following and a not insignificant part of this was their dedication to create incredibly authentic feeling, richly detailed worlds teeming with history and life and dripping with atmosphere. The art direction wasn’t just a neat extra, it was inextricably linked to the very core of their games’ identity. Their games felt heavy, their stories deeply meaningful, like they were about nothing and everything at the same time. They felt like real art. At the very least, you could say that they had a certain prestige. A very serious flair about them. Armored Core doesn’t really have that, not to the same extent. It doesn’t have that weight, that same air of grandeur. But that isn’t to say that AC6 doesn’t do some really cool things with its aesthetic and art direction.
FromSoft always had a fascination with absurdly large architecture, and so do I. Generally, the concept of varying scale seems to be a long running theme with those folks. The monstrously large castles of Elden Ring and the Dark Souls series, the infinite catacombs of the Chalice Dungeons, the sheer might of Ashina atop the highest peak, etc. They love some overwhelmingly massive buildings and structures. And so do i. And it never felt more noticeable than in this game. Everything is so fucking big. It makes me think of Tsutomu Nihei’s “Blame!”, my favourite manga ever made, and it really feels like they may have taken just a smidgen of inspiration from it. This may be very personal, but I feel like there is a bit of cosmic horror baked into this concept of man-made structures being so unfathomably large than you just feel insignificant next to it. When you think about the fact that an Amored Core is itself already about 10-15 meter tall, and you can occasionally see microscopic wreckages of cars or helicopters, and then you stand next to something that makes YOU feel like an ant in comparison, that’s some crazy shit. It’s an intensely powerful feeling of dread. I just love that. The first time I saw that Moon-sized machine at the Coral Convergence, I thought that this was some of the most impressive shit I’ve ever seen. It’s easily as big as the Erdtree, if not larger. But it’s not just about dazzling you with immense size, sometimes all the stars align and certain areas have really good atmosphere. There is a section in the mid game where you have to explore a city drenched in a deep fog that kills all communication with the outside, and I found it somewhere in between weirdly chilling and relaxing. Typically that mission only takes 5 minutes, but I took 30 minutes just to explore all of it, once again highlighting just how massive these levels really are if you take your time.
My weird fascination with colossal buildings and machines out of the way, the actual design isn’t half bad either, at least with the big missions. What’s true for all them is their incredible attention to detail, which isn’t super surprising since FS are known for meticulously adding little extras and nods into their world. What IS surprising about this is that this game really does not expect you to explore every nook and cranny of it. I have to also mention how insanely beautiful the sky boxes tend to be in this game, especially the closer you draw to the coral convergence.
The actual design is, as previously mentioned, typically very straightforward with little to no deviations. More often than not, you’ll have some variable in the mix, like having to avoid giant space lasers, or having to protect an ally, trying to get through undetected, etc. Other times, levels are created as one contiguous, wide open space, and you have to simply fulfil a couple of objectives in any order you wish, like “destroy 5 turrets” or something like that. The game is definitely the least ambitious here, but it really doesn’t have to be. Intricate level design and “Firelink Shrine elevator” moments aren’t why you’re playing this game. You’re playing this game to make your own personalised Bionicle of death and commit war crimes in the name of evil space corporations.
Let’s also briefly talk about the music here. It’s pretty good for the most part, but it’s a far cry from what the Souls series managed to dish out. AC6’s OST is pretty average electronic-synth-wave type music that has a few good tracks on it (“Contact with You”, “Rusted Pride”, “Cries of Coral”, etc.) but I have to admit that I find the production on these tracks not very impressive. They all sound very flat and even have some pretty obvious production mistakes left in there. It generally sounds like there wasn’t quite as much effort put into this than they did on stuff like Elden Ring or Bloodborne. I do enjoy some fan-remixes of certain tunes from the OST though, so there’s that. In general I think that a lot of the tracks here could’ve been far more memorable if the production efforts went a little further.
With the aesthetic components out of the way, let’s talk about the thing that actually ended up making it my surprise title of the year; a very good story.
Now if there’s one thing that Armored Core fans love to praise about these games, it’s definitely not their narrative. I’m sure they are interesting, but from what plot summaries I’ve seen, it’s nothing too special, nothing too daring or out of the ordinary for the mech genre. The plot of AC6 seems to follow this trend - at least at first. The truth is that this game has 3 different endings, with the third and arguably true ending only being available on the third playthrough, meaning NG++. And before we get into the meat of it, I just have to quickly come out and say that I think that this is something that FromSoft have seriously missed out on in their past games; give us an actual REASON to play NG+ and beyond. DS2 at least did something in that regard, with having some unique things happen like bosses roaming the map, or rarer item drops, etc. but it did little to actually motivate people to go further than NG+, especially since you already had Bonfire Ascetics, items that let you move a singular area up to the next NG cycle. Not only will AC6 physically not let you know its full story until you finished the game for a third time, some of the best items and AC parts only start showing up here. While this may seem tedious to some people, I can assure you that finishing the second and third didn’t take nearly as long as my first one, even with both combined.
Most of the story is relayed to you via a series of Metal Gear Solid-esque intercom calls, in which - depending on the situation - you receive either exposition, details on your next mission, or some more personal stuff. These calls are literally just disembodied voices talking at you, you never get a face or anything other to memorise most NPCs by. What’s more is that they don’t seem to be voiced by anywhere near the same calibre of actors that worked on the Souls games. They sound more like your typical Anime-dub voice actors. And yet, despite all of this, I ended up enjoying both the story and the characters a lot more than I thought I would.
Let’s get to the plot now. I won’t go into too much detail concerning the endings, but consider this an official SPOILER WARNING.
You play as 4th generation augmented human “C-4: 621”, at least that’s what your master, the infamous and brutal Handler Walter calls you. You have no real name to speak of. You are a semi-sentient bag of bones and meat, barely even human. More like a brain in a jar, really. The only time you’re even able to move on your own volition is inside your AC. To Walter, and to everyone he’s offering your services to, you’re a hound. A dog to be beaten and trained. The lowliest of cannon fodder. Walter takes you with him to Rubicon 3, a dead and cold planet on the outskirts of the galaxy where 50-60 years ago a terrible calamity occurred; the Fires of Ibis. The planet was previously a research station and mining planet for a strange, reddish substance called “Coral” (omg Prey reference!?!?) which not only possesses immense energy potential, but is somehow also sentient. It’s essentially sentient and self-replicating gasoline, which also functions as a hive mind or network which potentially can absorb other consciousnesses into itself. During this time the planet has been inhabited by people - presumably of Earthen origin - who consider themselves “natives”. What exactly started the fires isn’t really explained, at least not explicitly, but it’s highly implied that it was due to excessive experimentation on the substance. In either case, whatever happened caused a fire so immense and devastating that it almost took out the entire planet with it. The survivors of this disaster, called “Cinders”, are still on Rubicon, defending it from corporate vultures who try to benefit from the chaos and destruction. And it’s important too, since 2 massive conglomerates, “Arquebus” and “Balam” have set their eyes on the planet due to a recent, huge resurgence of Coral. And that’s where you and Walter come in; like the other corporate parasites, you’re also here looking for some quick cash… or that’s what you think, at least. For now, the overarching goal is to gain a reputation as a hired gun, so the big corps will book you for their eventual missions to retake the slumbering Coral deposits.
The game begins with you illegally entering into Rubicon’s airspace with the help of Walter and landing in the ruins of a recent battle. You have no creds, no reputation and not even an identity to your name, so naturally your first mission is to steal one from a recently abandoned AC. This AC, called “NIGHTFALL” was piloted by a mercenary under the codename “Raven”, who was reported M.I.A., meaning we can simply pretend to be them and end their M.I.A. status. And so “Raven” becomes our new codename henceforth. After fucking around in the tutorial level and getting to grips with this game’s controls, in typical FromSoftware fashion we are met with an attack helicopter the size of an aircraft carrier. This thing was pretty infamous upon launch and quickly became known as the “noob filter” or whatever gatekeepy nonsense gamers are coming up with these days. Truly, this is your average, bog standard FromSoft tutorial boss. Certainly harder than you’d expect from the very first boss in the game, even harder than some of the bosses you’ll see a bit later, but not unbeatable or unreasonably tough by any means. What may be true is that, should you struggle with this boss to the point of frustration, the others will not be fun for you. But, once again, this is no different from a Iudex Gundyr or Asylum Demon or Father Gascoigne. The big helicopter goes down eventually, and we’ve secured a spot in the marketplace of hired guns. The ruse worked, and we’re operating under the codename Raven, which lets us access the mercenary liaison network “ALLMIND”. This network in turn lets us access various mission briefings, almost all of them provided by subsidiaries of either Arquebus or Balam, although you’ll get the occasional offer from other potential employers, but more on that later. It’s basically the life blood of the mercenary network working on Rubicon, and you’re gonna get very familiar with it.
From this point onward, getting into the actual story of the game is a bit difficult because it might go a lot of ways. While there are 2 endings you can get on your first 2 playthroughs, and a secret third one for your third playthrough, individual story moments might still different between 2 people depending on their choices. For the first 2 endings, there is only one decision that really makes a true difference concerning the endings, while most other choices will influence which other missions you might get. Most of these choices will only start appearing on your second and especially third playthrough, although NG does have some of them as well. Mostly they’ll influence who you’ll be getting your jobs from. Next to Balam and Arquebus, there is a third faction you could take jobs from - the Rubicon Liberation Front.
The RLF is the big obstacle for our friends, the lovely space corporations, to fully subjugate and ravage this planet. If I understand correctly, they’re mainly made up of the survivors of the Fires of Ibis, and their descendants. They fiercely defend their home against the capitalist vultures, and as such are subject to us committing horrible war crimes on their people. If you’re anything like me, at some point you’ll probably think something along the lines of “Damn, kinda sucks I can’t help the commies to beat the fascists”. Well, if you make the correct choices, you can make it so you’ll take most of your jobs from them. This sadly doesn’t really influence the ending, but it gives you an entirely different perspective on the story than just doing the corpo missions. They’re not the only other faction though.
Next to the three belligerent parties, there is also the space capitalist equivalent of the UN, the Planetary Closure Association (or PCA) which are equally ineffective and useless. After the great disaster 50 years ago, they attempted to fully lock off the planet to keep away any would-be scavengers looking to make a profit off the Coral deposits, including the native inhabitants of Rubicon. These people would later form the RLF, drive out the PCA and take back control of their home planet. Unfortunately, this also invited the vultures back in, leading to the ongoing, years long conflict you find yourself embroiled in. They’re never a faction you can work for, and will instead always remain as an antagonistic force, since they are at war with all three parties. There are other, minor factions too but they don’t really concern the main plot.
Regardless of which specific choices you follow, you’ll meet the same characters, follow the same overall development and make the same friends. And more important than any other is one in particular; the Coral-being Ayre.
At the end of Act 1, after previously establishing yourself as a capable mercenary for the corps, and attaining an almost legendary status for climbing “the Wall” (a gigantic RLF military fortress), Walter will send you on a secret mission, just for you. You’re sent to attack a PCA watchpoint which houses a sensor valve at its core, which stores massive amounts of Coral. After failing to sneakily get in, and after fighting what will certainly be the toughest enemy AC you’ve fought thus far, you get to the valve and blow it up. This leads to a massive Coral surge, of which you get a full dosage. During your near death experience, you hear a strange voice talking to you. It introduces itself as Ayre, and can communicate with you inside of your mind. No one knows of her, no one can sense her even remotely. Is she even real? Whoever, or whatever she is, she seems very invested in you from the moment she meets you. She gives you hints, works on guiding you through the level whenever Walter is not available and has your back in general, but most importantly - she is the only character in the whole game to treat you like an actual person.
There certainly are some other sympathetic characters, like “Cinder” Carla - a brilliant weapon designer who is seemingly a survivor of the fire, but seems too young for that to make sense. Or, everyone’s favourite character Rusty, who is pretty much this game’s Solaire of Astora. You might find characters like G1 Michigan entertaining, or you might find him annoying. In either case, some of these character might like you, some might hate you. But all of them treat you as nothing more than a dog. A semi-sentient robot to do the bidding of other people. But not Ayre. She believes in you. She sees the traces of a person in you, no matter how feint. And like all other characters in this game, she has her very own agenda.
For the first two endings, your choice is between 2 different visions for the future of Rubicon. I won’t go into too much detail, but effectively you’re choosing between Walter and his friends, and Ayre (and by extension, the Rubiconians).
Both of these endings start from the same general scenario; you’ve just defeated the IBIS-series AC which protects the big Coral deposit, but are knocked out by Snail and his goons, who take you prisoner and intend to “reprogram” you - they have presumably already done this to Walter at the time of you regaining consciousness. You claw your way out of there with a shitty makeshift AC and are rescued by Carla, who takes you back to the foggy city - only, it turns out this city is actually a gargantuan, titanic space ship called “Xylem”. From this point, you’re faced with the choice of which ending to go for. Let’s go over Walter’s ending first.
Walter, despite initially telling you he wants to make a profit, actually wants to burn all the remaining Coral to prevent anyone from ever trying to exploit it again - and also to stop the Coral from potentially infecting human civilisation. We learn that both Walter and Carla are part of an organisation called “OVERSEER”, who - as the name suggests - watch over Rubicon and monitor the status of the Coral and are tasked with burning it should the need arise. Turns out, Coral loves a good vacuum of space, apparently it’s the perfect environment for it to thrive and replicate in. This accelerated and chaotic replication might lead to mutations and a subsequent collapse of the entire Coral ecosystem, which may very well doom humanity. This realisation is what caused the great fire 50 years ago. It’s what made the scientists at Ibis, the great city built around the giant siphon, make a very difficult choice; to burn the Coral to prevent total collapse. It’s a bit reminiscent of Dark Souls and the story of New Londo, where its healers flooded the the whole town with all people in it to prevent the rise of a great evil that been growing.
If we’re going with this ending, we’re tasked with steering the mighty Xylem right into the huge Coral siphon to set it all ablaze. As typical for FromSoftware, if you go down this route, you’ll have some tough times ahead, and not only in terms of gameplay. On this route, you’ll have to kill and betray some people. One would be the one and only Rusty, who turns out to have been an undercover agent for the Liberation Front this whole time, who really hoped for you to turn around and find a better cause to fight for. But the real heartbreaker was the surprise that waited for me as the final boss for this ending of the game; Ayre. As a story moment, this is just brutal. Here you go, on your quest to become the ultimate beast of war, to rationalise all potential of collaboration out of existence - who better to stop you in your tracks than the one entity that treated you as a friend? This is by far my favourite boss fight in the game, mostly for its devastating emotional impact due to her still vocally insisting that we could have had a much better future and that it’s not too late, and this slowly shifting towards a determination to stop you whatever it takes. But it’s also one of the more mechanically interesting fights, with her using a similar set up to the IB-01 CEL-240 “Ibis series” AC (aka the “Malenia” of this game) meaning she is unbelievably fast, uses Coral based weaponry and has a strong desire to put a stop to your plans. Upon defeating her with tears in our eyes and our hands shaking, we proceed to steer the Xylem into the Coral to light the biggest fire the galaxy has ever seen. Rubicon is done for, all potential for any life eradicated for all times to come. Only ashes remain. This ending is called “Fires of Raven” in the achievements.
To the fans, it’s commonly known as the “Bad ending”, and even though I happen to agree that this is the worst ending you can pick, I wouldn’t say that the game is trying to make the point that one ending is inherently better than the other. It’s about your choice and how you interpret it, after all. And all I can say that the choice to go for this ending made me feel like a huge piece of shit.
Depending on how you choose to see Walter, there might be even something to fight for here. While I do not regard Walter as a terribly sympathetic character, it’s clear that he receives no joy from treating you like a hound, but rather has a very single-minded goal that he will follow whatever means necessary. But it’s not that you’re just a means to his ends; you’re supposed to carry on his legacy. His dream. He trusts you, deeply. He treats you the way he does so you follow through, so you do “what’s right”. Only.. is this truly what’s right? If you ask me, Walter’s ending is the worst ending since it really doesn’t concern itself with what YOU want at all. At the end of the day, he is your slaver. He is using you for his goals, and your actual thoughts and feelings are of no concern to him. A bit like a father who grooms you to do a certain thing - taking over the family business maybe - but never even entertains the notion that you might not want to do that.
Ayre’s ending on the other hand, banks on you making your own choices. To believe in a future of shared potential between humans and Coral. To believe in a future for Rubicon, for the people who live here and whatever form of life the Coral is. Naturally, being a Coral being herself she doesn’t want her and her family to die, but it’s about more than that. She really believes in you. She wants to spend time with you and wants to see you reach your full potential, to become more than just a witless dog. We’ve experienced first hand the possibilities of this shared existence. Of the intimacy and friendship granted to lonely souls like us. And it’s not just 621 who experienced this, Thumb Dolmayan (the grand priest of the Rubiconians, as it were) also had a similar experience, but more on that in a bit. I chose Ayre’s ending on my first playthrough, and I’m glad I did, because it’s really bittersweet and beautiful.
You’re met with the same scenario as before, only this time instead of confronting the Corps’ army, you’re tasked by Ayre to eliminate Carla. Naturally, this is a really rough decision to make. Carla literally JUST saved your life, and not for the first time either. She has been a friend to you since the Smart Cleaner incident, and a lot longer than that to Walter, and here you go turning around and killing her and Chatty. But we understand why this needs to be done. It’s not that Carla is evil or unjustified in her actions, it’s that we made the decision for a different future, and she made the decision to stand in the way of that. Having to take her and Chatty out is not only emotionally tough, but also perhaps the second hardest fight in the entire game. Jesus, that woman’s got hands. But not only that, she also has a backup plan should be die before the Xylem hit the Coral; an autopilot with commands to go full speed ahead.
Ayre then proceeds to send out a message to all Rubiconians via the Coral network; “Beyond scorched skies, Raven fights on”. Perhaps we should briefly talk about the nature of “Raven”. See, the identity that we stole, “Raven”, is not just a regular old codename. It’s a collective, a concept. It’s more like a title than a name. Ravens are independent. They fight not for money, but for what they believe in. This leads the RLF to join forces with you, and one very special fighter among them; Rusty is now on our side, fighting alongside instead of against us. We proceed down the Xylem to destroy the computer responsible for the autopilot, but somewhere along the way Rusty’s signal suddenly just breaks up. We never hear from him again. We never learn whether he died or escaped, sadly. Just before the computer, we face VII Snail, the little snot-nosed prick, for the last time and send him to his fiery death, screaming like the little bitch he is. We manage to divert the course of the ship but there is one last obstacle to take care of… it’s our old master, Handler Walter. Much like Ayre in the other ending, he pilots a coral IBIS-series AC, only black instead of white. But something is wrong. He isn’t really himself.
Arquebus have seemingly brainwashed Walter and “done something to him”. It’s never really elaborated on what exactly it was they did to him, or how or even why Walter managed to escape and come here. Did he even escape? Did they let him loose on purpose? It might be that Arquebus thinks that we’re still on the way to blow the Coral up, which would be bad news for them, so they send the only one that might possibly stand a chance against us. But Walter also seems to be still holding on to his dream. He occasionally makes mumbled and fragmented references to the reeducation and “his friend’s wish” during the fight, indicating that he might be here on his own volition after all. Mechanically, the fight is fairly similar to Ayre, but easier somehow. He is much slower, has less health and also isn’t anywhere near as aggressive as she was. I don’t have much else to say on that front, since it does feel more like a typical AC fight, rather than a boss.
Regardless, we beat him. During the ending cutscene Walter briefly raises his weapon as if to fight on, but then lowers it again only to say: “Look at you, 621… You found a friend.”, seemingly in acknowledgement of Ayre. I have so many questions. Who exactly was Walter’s “friend”? Why is he the only one who seems to know about her? Why is the realisation that we forged a connection with Ayre suddenly enough to stop Walter from attacking us further? Ultimately, we make our escape, and watch the Xylem tumble down into Rubicons atmosphere, missing the Coral by a couple hundred kilometres. Ayre remarks that “One day, humans and coral will thrive together… You kept our potential safe”. The screen fades to black. This one’s called “Liberator of Rubicon”.
This ending is definitely more ambiguous than the first one. What happens after all of this isn’t stated or spelled out by anyone. Basically, you just prevented the Coral from going extinct, and as such not much has changed about the actual status quo; it’s just that now perhaps we can go forward with a shared future in mind. You might notice that neither of these endings really address the core problems that this world faces.
The first ending has us burn all the coral… only, who is to say that it truly worked this time? The Fires of Ibis were said to have destroyed all Coral forever, and yet it came back, seemingly more powerful than ever. If even the smallest Coral particle survives, it’ll be only a matter of time before it will all happen again - and nothing will have changed, except that we have genocided an entire planet for nothing. The other ending may have prevented the utter destruction of Rubicon, but doesn’t really address the issue of unchecked Coral growth and potential collapse. Who is to stop other corps and villains to try and claim the Coral for themselves?
There is one more ending, which you can only unlock in NG++. I’m going into a bit more detail here, so once again consider this a SPOILER WARNING FOR THE TRUE ENDING. I felt fairly confident talking about story details for the first two endings because a lot of it isn’t really all that obvious until you sit down and think about it. This third and final ending however, has some pretty overt and noticeable story moments that starkly differentiate it from the others.
If this game only had the aforementioned endings, it would already be one of the more interesting and well made stories for a video game out there. There is already a good deal of commentary on the nature of choices, of loyalty, of what it means to follow orders vs. to fight for something you believe in. Of friendship, of loneliness, of the heartbreak of betraying the people you love for doing the thing that’s right. But then this game goes complete sicko mode and adds an entirely different layer on top of all this.
The third ending is called “Alea iacta est” (Lat. “The die is cast”), a phrase attributed to Julius Caesar when he and his army crossed the river Rubicon in northern Italy. By doing this, he burned all bridges between him and the Roman senate, effectively starting the civil war between him and Pompey and the Optimates. The phrase is used to indicate that something has moved past the point of no return - and that is most certainly appropriate in this context.
This new ending involves an aspect of the game I’ve deliberately avoided until now; the Arena mode. Until now, the Arena mode was mainly an alternate way to challenge yourself and unlock OST chips - which let you permanently upgrade your AC in multiple ways, such as upgrading the amount of health regained on heal, unlocking new abilities, increasing certain weapon damage, etc. - and grind money. During your first and second playthrough, you’ll likely occasionally have played around with it a bit. It’s what seems to be a semi-diegetic virtual combat arena in which you can test your strength against simulations of other ACs, ranked from section F all the way up to S. It’s main purpose is to gain access to new parts and make a lot of money real quick, apart from also being just a really fun alternative to doing missions. On your first playthrough, there truly is nothing more to this game mode, it really is just there to distract you from other stuff and make you grind OST chips. On the second playthrough, we notice that the arena now has a second tab, called “Analysis”, in which we can access even harder, more specialised fights which, again, primarily let us farm money and OST chips. This time around, we get enough chips to upgrade our AC to completion. Again on this playthrough, nothing too out of the ordinary, and still not really a cause for concern.
It’s on the third playthrough were strange things start happening. Right out of the gate you’ll notice that you’re getting a lot more decision missions, with most of them coming from the RLF, most notably you’re meant to protect the Strider this time instead of destroying it. To get to the third ending, you’re going to have to work a little harder this time. Not only do you need to complete a specific set of missions to end up at the correct scenario, you also need to complete the arena. You might have noticed that, during NG+, the three final slots in the arena remained closed off, even though you already fought what was supposed to be THE strongest mercenary alive. Choosing certain missions will result in unlocking these final three slots. All three of them are based on the IBIS style ACs you’ll be fighting in the other two endings. After you’ve beaten all three of them and you chose the right set of missions, at the end of chapter 4 there’ll be quite a different set of events waiting for you. But before we get to that, lets set the stage for the two great antagonists of this run.
Remember ALLMIND? Up until now, for the last 2 playthroughs, it was nothing more than a mercenary support network, a digital hub for pilots to test their skills and work together. In fact, it blended in with the background so much that I honestly kinda forgot about it. During this playthrough however, ALLMIND slowly begins to gain - or perhaps rather reveal - a certain level of sentience. It seems to know about your previous playthroughs, about your connection to Ayre and your past decisions. I found this slow and surprising reveal really creepy and uncanny, almost as though it can see right through 621 as a character and is speaking directly to you. Like it’s hijacking the story like an observer outside of it. It feels like a very strange fourth-wall break in the best way possible. It becomes an actual character in the story, with its own goal, an ending very different from Walter’s or Ayre’s. We briefly talked about how neither ending really addressed the problems that loomed over Rubicon. Walter’s ending “solves” the issue by killing the entire planet, without any actual guarantee that the Coral won’t reconstitute as it already has in the past, essentially rendering it pointless. The other ending has us preserve the Coral, but without any insurance that greedy corporations won’t come back in the future to haunt the planet. It’s a bit like a trolley problem in which neither solution is optimal. The third ending is a bit like if you strapped high power rockets onto the trolley and shot it into outer space. ALLMIND instead wants to accelerate Coral growth, pushing it to expand into the vacuum of space to expedite its growth, spreading throughout the whole galaxy. This is what’s known as “Coral release”.
Before we get into the how’s and why’s, we need to talk about another character I’ve neglected to mention until now: G5 Iguazu. For your first two playthroughs, he’s not terribly important. He is introduced to you in the “Destroy the Dam” mission during Chapter 1, in which G1 Michigan of the RedGuns (Balam’s elite AC force) hires you to help G4 and Iguazu to take a strategically important base from the rebels. While neither are particularly thrilled to have an independent mercenary assist them on their mission, Iguazu seems to be particularly offended by this. He only refers to you as “Freelancer”, and seemingly hates you simply for daring to be independent and not considering yourself part of any greater group. I guess to him this signals you not taking this life style seriously, but there might be something else that adds to his - like you, Iguazu is part of the same type of series of augmented humans, namely C4. I think it isn’t necessarily that he despises you for living your life so differently; it’s more that, deep down, he wishes he could be like you. To have what you have. On your second playthrough, the RLF will offer you a pretty handsome reward for taking out G4 and G5. Regardless of which option you pick, Iguazu will have nothing but disdain for you. He seems to pretty much run purely on spite in general. He absolutely hates Michigan and fantasises about killing him for constantly berating him and blasting his ass, seemingly not understanding that this is Michigan’s (admittedly very toxic and flawed) way of showing affection for his soldiers. He doesn’t seem to like anyone, really.
From this point onward, you’ll meet Iguazu a bunch, depending on which missions you choose and what you do in them, but the fact that he will show up here and there is a given. Like I said, for the first two playthroughs this isn’t anything particularly meaningful, it’s just a fairly low energy rival story. During the third playthrough however, Iguazu will show up a bunch more, and is going somewhere with it all.
With the stage having been set, let’s get into it now.
During NG++, ALLMIND will start to give you very specific and weird missions, all very different with one overarching goal; to help create the perfect AC. Occasionally, you’ll unlock one of the three mysterious closed off Arena slots, with all three of them not being piloted by a human, but by an AI. Most of ALLMINDS missions have data collection as their primary objective.
Now, the big question is of course; why? Why does ALLMIND seek coral release? What is even the idea behind it? The answers to these questions are never stated as such, and instead must be gleamed from many context clues such as the various logs you can find, environmental story telling and listening very closely to what the characters in this game have to say.
Let’s maybe begin with this: Who (or what) is ALLMIND exactly? It’s never stated how long it has existed for, who created it or why.
These questions don’t have any certified answers I’m afraid, but there are some hints. There is mention of a character only called “Assistant No. 1”, who is said to have gone insane during his research into Coral, and its possibilities concerning human augmentation. He is mentioned by another character, Prof. Nagai, who was the head scientist of the Rubicon Research Facility. He says the following:
“Assistant No 1. Has lost his mind. His research has utterly lost his mind. Granted, there may be some logic to C-PULSE sensory augmentation of human subjects - but no ethical scholar would ever dare cross that point of no return. Mankind is driven mad by possibilities. What does Coral represent, if not sheer potential?”
That line again. “Point of no return”. I think that this wording is very deliberate and supposed to make you connect it to this ending. My theory is that this Assistant 1 is the person who created ALLMIND. ALLMIND seeks coral release to augment all of humanity (and perhaps, all of sentient life) with Coral. It wants to do this by way of Coral release. So far, so good. My biggest personal question is how exactly the whole “build the perfect AC” relates to this. More on that later.
For the first 3 chapters, apart from the wave of new missions, everything is more or less the same as before. This all changes by the end of Chapter 4, where you’d normally fight CEL-240. Instead, ALLMIND chimes in to warn you that V.II Snail is planning to take you captive. Instead, you pull a UNO-reverse card on his ass and gank him and his friends. Then, suddenly, Iguazu shows up unannounced here to beat the shit out of both of you. Why is he here all of a sudden? After taking out Snail together, you two duke it out for what feels like the 20th time, and once again you clap Iguazu’s butt cheeks without too much effort. But things have changed.
ALLMIND takes you off the network, and proclaims you dead - at least, to the other people in the mercenary network. This is, of course, so no one can stand in the way of Coral release, not even Walter. Just like in Ayre’s ending, your goal is to stop the Xylem from crashing into the Coral convergence, with some added bonuses. I won’t go into detail concerning the last set of missions because this analysis / review is way too long already. Regardless, we push on to the final boss.
Anyway, as you all (hopefully) already know, the TRUE final boss isn't even ALLMIND itself, it's fucking Iguazu. I lost my shit when I realised who was inside that hyper-advanced mech from the next century. It's none other than the little neek whose face I've been dragging through the mud through 3 playthroughs, the guy who would keep on coming back to try his luck no matter how often and how badly I kept beating his ass. This man's sheer, unbridled hater-energy is something to behold. All the coral on this planet is but a humble spark compared to the unfathomable store of energy that could be processed by mining Iguazu's salt. I fucking love this guy.
We learn that he was able to hear the voices of the Coral the entire time as well. This was very likely the reason Iguazu was chosen by ALLMIND, although Iguazu makes it very clear that he doesn’t give a flying fuck about Coral release, he has one thing on his mind and one thing only: getting his hands around your throat.
The fight itself is in my opinion perhaps the most difficult fight in the game, alongside CEL-240. But sadly that's mostly due to some design decisions I'm not a fan of. I don't like that you have to deal with 5 MT's in the first stage, 2 freaking Sea Spiders in the second, only to THEN have to fight this guy solo in Super Saiyan mode. Ayre joining in on the party is cool in theory, but her presence there is not super helpful, because she really sucks at drawing aggro - also she leaves during what is arguably the hardest phase of the fight. Super-Iguazu himself is perfectly fine, and one of the more fun encounters in the game, but having to fight him at the end of a 3-phase boss encounter seems a bit like overkill to me.
Ultimately, we persevere and go ahead and achieve Coral release - we cut forward to an undisclosed point in time, in a strange, shallow sea. The night sky is burning red, tiny fiery sparkles among the stars. The Coral permeates the cosmos. Next to you, a thousand ACs rise, all glowing red with the power of Coral. Together you stare fatefully into the night sky. A new age has come. A new lifeform has taken to the stars. And you and Ayre will remain together for as long as this age will live on.
What a powerful fucking story. This was easily the biggest surprise for me, and why I ended up calling it my “surprise title of the year”. I expected I would enjoy the gameplay and customisation aspects of it all, I did however not expect that the thing that would stick with me the most out of all things in AC6 would be its narrative. It’s a very intricate and heartfelt story about purpose and choice, about identity and carving your own meaning in a universe that tells you you’re worth nothing. I expected something like Transformers and got something like Blade Runner instead. FromSoftware have once again proven why they’re the best in the industry, and it’ll be a long time before we see another company rise up to this level of consistent quality. This game has proven that they literally cannot do wrong, it seems like they’re incapable. Thank you Miyazaki.
Jokes aside, this really is a fantastic game all around. Yeah, it has a couple of annoying moments here and there but it wouldn’t be a From game if it didn’t. I haven’t gone back to S-rank every level yet, but I will definitely do that and I think I might go for the Platinum trophy as well, it really is that good of a game. Again, I don’t think it will win GOTY, but I’d love to see it get nominated at least, it would definitely deserve it.
All that’s left to say is: Got a job for you, 621.
9 / 10
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Dark Souls is my favourite game of all time. As a matter of fact, each and every one of the previous 7 games that FromSoftware have produced in the series variably known as “Souls games”, “Soulsborne”, “Bloodsouls”, etc, are among my favourite games ever made. From Demon’s Souls to Elden Ring, I’ve beaten them all numerous times, with various builds and self-imposed challenges. I’ve even written a review here on Backlogged about DS1 specifically, and what makes me love it so much beyond just mentioning that the game is difficult, which seems to be the only thing most reviewers are capable of mentioning.
So, that being said, it is baffling - mind-boggling even - that this company, despite me being a massive fanboy, has managed to create what is inarguably THE biggest surprise title of the year for me. I know what you’re thinking now: “Of course you’re gonna like it if you’ve enjoyed their previous work, right?” Clearly you know me better than I know myself, because I remember being fairly disenchanted by AC6’s reveal at the Game Awards 2022. Like any good FromSoft / Miyazaki fanboy, I was of course aware of the company’s history previous to their meteoric rise to stardom within the gaming industry. Unlike some of their oldest games (like the King’s Field series) I wasn’t too interested in ever delving deep into all of this stuff - especially Armored Core. Personally, I was never a huge fan of mechs and massive robots beyond accepting them as a staple of anime and gaming culture. So with all of that in mind, seeing that “FromSoft” title card during the game awards, desperately awaiting news of Elden Ring’s upcoming “Shadow of the Erdtree” DLC only to be met with an announcement concerning the revival of a series that hadn’t had any new entries in 15 years was a bit disappointing. I wasn’t even sure I was going to buy it, when every title other FromSoft released up until now was a guaranteed purchase. And to top it off, this game wasn’t even made by Miyazaki. If the legend himself wasn’t even really involved, did this ever stand any chance of actually being good?
I was never happier to have been completely wrong. This is very easily one of the best games released this year, a year stacked with amazing releases. Disregarding all titles not actually from this year, AC6 comes almost shockingly close to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for me, a game which had around thrice the amount of time and MANY times the budget of our beloved robot game. It probably won’t win GOTY, but that’s because this really is not a game for everyone - even though they really went out of their way to make this the most accessible and pick-up-and-play AC title yet. It’s more that this game just lacks that kind of stage presence and mainstream appeal that the Souls series has garnered by this point in time. In case you’re unfamiliar, Dark Souls was by no means the first game in FromSoft’s catalogue to gain them a reputation for their difficult games. While King’s Field was already infamous for seemingly hating the player for trying to, you know, play the game, Armored Core games quickly gained a reputation for being some of the hardest, toughest and unforgiving games out there. But I don’t want to spend too much time in this review talking about the previous titles. You could probably tell from how I worded myself thus far, but in case you couldn’t; this has been my first dance with the Armored Core series, and as such I have no actual first hand experience with the rest of the series. I deliberately didn’t delve into the previous titles in the series because a.) I didn’t want to burn myself out on a series right when the newest entry came around and b.) I wanted to see what this game was like specifically for someone who hadn’t played AC 1 - 5 and all the rest. Some older, longer-established AC fans told me that I NEED to play the older ones, or I will not be able to play it. They even told me horror stories about the so-called “reverse grip”, and how the games are supposedly way, way harder than the Souls games, etc. None of this is true. I was able to play this game with a normal controller grip, like any other normal game.
Speaking of which, let’s head right into the big question that rears its ugly head every time a new FromSoft title gets released:
Does this game is an hard?!??
Of course the answer to what one may find difficult is entirely subjective, and there is no discussion on planet earth that I’m more sick of than debating the need for “easy modes” in Soulsborne or other difficult video games. Of course I cannot definitely answer questions like “is this harder than Elden Ring or Sekiro” or others like this. What I can do is talk about my own experience as a Souls veteran and someone generally enjoys challenging games. I’m not a try-hard who thinks that beating a hard video game is somehow part of my personality, or that I need to beat a game on the hardest possible difficulty to give it a fair shake. I’ll try to get this topic over and done with as fast as possible so we can get to the stuff that’s actually interesting.
So, just how hard is this game? I honestly can’t say I found it significantly more or less difficult than any other game by FromSoftware I’ve played. There is a similar focus on reading enemy movements, judging your own distance and stamina/energy levels, trying to get your own hits in while avoiding theirs. The game is just different in HOW this difficulty manifests itself. As opposed to the generally very open world-structure of Souls games, in which you are expected to journey across a big world, often backtracking multiple times through connected areas, Armored Core generally takes a “mission-based” approach. That means each level is a self-contained map that features classical checkpoints rather than the iconic bonfires we’ve come to know. That of course means that one of the core aspects about any game’s difficulty - the healing system - is a lot different here than it was in Souls. In Souls, the general idea was to give you a (relatively) fixed amount of heals per run from each bonfire, which you can think of as the maximum amount of mistakes you’re allowed to make before you have to restart the run. These runs could be very long, which was balanced by giving you a lot of heals, e.g. (up to) 20 heals in Dark Souls (since you were also meant to traverse the greater world beyond just the levels), around 15 in DS2 and DS3, while DS2 also gave you life gems to compensate how much larger levels tended to be, Bloodborne let you farm heals to make for open world traversal, etc. You get the idea.
Here, in AC6, as mentioned, there are no bonfires. Instead, the game goes for multiple checkpoints in each level, which are often times not too far from each other. These checkpoints restore all your health on death (or reset), including your heals. Armored Cores also have a lot more health than your typical Souls protagonist, relatively speaking. As such, your healing is massively restricted in this game; you’re only ever given access to 3 heals. While you can upgrade the flat amount of health they restore, the number of individual heals cannot be altered. This is perhaps the biggest factor in potentially making this game a lot harder, although it should be mentioned that enemies generally tend to do way less damage to you than regular mobs in Souls games. As a matter of fact, most regular grunt enemies feel barely even like a threat and more like walking targets. Most ads can be destroyed within seconds, and not engaging them in the first place is even easier due to the insane mobility that your robot can potentially have. The real challenge definitely comes from the many, MANY bosses and other AC’s that the planet Rubicon 3 is populated with. And make no mistake, there are some tough fuckers among them. Another thing that might add to this, especially for Souls veterans, is that there are no i-frames in this game. That’s right, one of the core aspects of the Souls combat formula is missing. Dodges exist, but are meant to reposition yourself more than they are meant to dodge something point blank. If you dodge into an attack, you will get hit. And that really does make a difference. Not only is it hard to unlearn dodging right into attacks as the most optimal way to deal with them, some attacks track you so goddamn efficiently that it feels almost impossible to jump out of the way - that might have been unintentional though, as enemy tracking was some of the stuff that was addressed in the latest big patch for the game (as of late September 2023).
So much for how difficult this game might be, now let’s get to how it actually plays.
Unsurprisingly, it plays very differently from Souls. In fact, it barely has anything to do with the aforementioned genre at all. I’m sorry to all the old-school AC fans for continuously comparing this game to a series it has barely anything in common with, but I’d assume that the vast majority of people who got into AC this year did so in a similar manner to me, with no prior experience with AC, but a lot of experience with Souls games. I promise I will only continue to do it where it feels pertinent.
From what I’ve seen, all Armored Core games play rather similarly. They are all 3rd person shooters set in very large, open levels that extensively make use of all 3 dimensions. The games are very fast-paced, demand a lot of spacial and situational awareness from the player, fast reaction times and above all - patience and a willingness to perfect your play style. I’d say the closest comparison (other than similar mech-games) would be something between a non-cover based shooter mixed with a flying simulation game like Ace Combat. This game differentiates itself from the others by giving you some conveniences from the Souls games, like a directional dodge, a better camera system and a hard lock-on (previously the other games only featured an automatic “soft” lock on).
Players are generally given a great amount of mobility, both on the ground as well as in the air. That is, depending on the mech that you build. If you were to break down Armored Core down to a single signature mechanic, the one thing to identify it by, it would have to be its insane focus on customisability. From the speediest, jumpiest light weight build that can zoom around the map at near light-speed, to the heaviest, chunkiest tanks with enough firepower to wipe out a city, you can make any mech you can possibly think of. From long-range to melee, from ground-based speed demon to death-from-above. All pieces have their strengths and weaknesses, and as such, so do the many different combinations thereof. This customisability comes in the form of a staggering amount of individual parts you can unlock through various means. Some you can simply buy in the shop, others you have to find in secret chests hidden in the levels and others you have to unlock by beating one of AC6’s many, many optional challenges like the Arena. This doesn’t just involve the parts concerned with direct gameplay, you can also customise its colour schemes in great detail and even create entirely new decals and logos from scratch. Yeah, they have an actual, full blown image creator in there. Looks like Adobe Indesign comes with a whole video game attached these days. What’s even crazier is just how intuitive it all really is. While each and every single piece has an absurd amount of individual stats and parameters that change how your AC functions, working out how it all comes together is fairly easy. Ultimately, you just have to check whether the number you’re getting is blue or red. Blue = good, red = bad. Simple as.
The single most important piece for any of your mechs is going to be its leg component. They determine speed, jump distance and carrying capacity, the latter being the single most important aspect of your build. But it doesn’t stop there. Some legs are specifically made for jumping a long distance and come in all sorts of weight classes. Others, like the Quad Legs, are quite sturdy and have a lot of carrying capacity but can also levitate in the air for a time, making them great for builds that wanna stay airborne. Or take the tank legs, which suck at flying around and jumping, but give you great mobility on the ground as well as damn near infinite carrying capacity. And that’s just scratching the surface.
In the end, it’s all about what works FOR YOU. It’s not about making the best mech, creating the most broken robot you can possibly make and then go through the whole game with that singular build. While you can absolutely play AC6 that way if you want to, that would be the most boring and uninteresting way to engage with it. Luckily, this game has its ways of making you reconsider your build, and that mostly comes in the form of the many bosses and other ACs.
To those who did already play AC6, stop me if this feels familiar; you’ve played the game for a couple of hours, you’re starting to like your build, you breeze through the game like it’s nothing and then it appears: The hardest, toughest, brickiest brick wall of a boss you can imagine. Just a total dumpster fire. Whatever strategy you had is out the window. There is no chance you’re beating this boss with your current set up. And that’s where the beauty happens; you can simply swap out your build on the fly - more or less. Every time you die, you get the choice of starting again from the checkpoint, starting the whole mission again, or to either customise your current AC, or swap out an entirely new one. Both tweaking your machine as well as swapping out the whole thing are so fun, and really make you consider each and every piece you’re buying. What may be the most brutal and absurd boss for one person may be a walk in the park for another, and that’s all because they just built their mechs differently. This is part of what makes the “difficulty” discussion is especially redundant in this game; how easy or hard this game is depends entirely on you and your choices. An “easy mode” would do nothing to actually change how this game plays and how people perceived its difficulty. And the thing is, after a while this notion of “I have to defeat the boss with my current set up” grows less and less relevant. By this point, I have made 12 different builds, all of which I am actively using. Of course I have my standard, “default” melee build which I use to probe out everything, and which is my go to for most boss fights as I find it the most fun to use. But sooner or later everyone begins to understand that the real fun actually IS the build of the mech itself. The joy of seeing whatever you came up with shredding through enemies… or not. It really is all about the process of creation, and whether those creations can stand up to the toughest machines on Rubicon 3.
This game has a LOT of bosses. If we’re counting the many ACs that you might have to fight both in the story and the arenas, we’re looking at around 50 bosses. Without them, it’s more like 15-20. I wouldn’t really consider the ACs “bosses”, since they behave much more like the player, making them more similar to the typical Soulsborne NPC battle. Well over half of them are Arena-exclusive anyway, so I generally don’t consider them actual boss fights. As far as “actual” boss fights go, they are generally very, very good. I struggle to come up with even one I’d describe as bad. Even the ones I didn’t enjoy quite as much were at least alright compared to FS’s standard. They range from massive, spaceship like combat helicopters like the already infamous tutorial boss to Evangelion-esque fighting robots all the way up to truly gargantuan, country-sized super machines that could crush a city with a single step of their foot, like the absolutely colossal Strider, which is so large it would literally span an entire continent like Limgrave. And, in typical FromSoft fashion, it’ll be the smaller ones that will give you more trouble. In any case, they’re all visually very impressive and provide an immense sense of scale and immensity. It’s easy to forget that even the smallest enemies in this game are still massive when compared to real life. The important bit here is that you likely won’t be able to fight all bosses with the same build. Some bosses will absolutely hard counter certain builds, and it’s on you to figure out which set up might work. All in all in can be said that the boss fights in this game are masterful as always with FromSoft, even though they are very different from Souls bosses.
The same cannot be said for regular enemies, unfortunately. When compared to Soulsborne, they feel like barely even an afterthought. In those games, each and every enemy no matter how seemingly insignificant commanded a certain type of respect from you. Even the lowliest grunt could whoop your ass into the next century if you weren’t careful. Here in AC6 most regular enemies feel like they’re made out of cardboard. They are barely even a nuisance, much less an actual threat. What’s more is that you barely, if ever, have to actually engage with enemies, you can dart right past them almost always. While that has historically also been true for Souls, here it doesn’t even feel remotely challenging. But I think I understand why they did it. You’re expected to clear levels over and over again, trying to S-rank them and do them as fast as possible. You’re not supposed to struggle against the mobs, you’re supposed to be a machine of war. It’s not about taking as little damage as possible, it’s about blowing the absolute fuck out of your enemies. Blow through the little guys, preserve your ammunition and health for the big guys ahead.
This relative lack of deliberate level design with curated challenges speckled throughout is something you just have to accept. It’s not for everyone. It certainly demands a lot less cognitive work from the player. I've seen content creators like Videogamedunkey call this game out as "braindead" but I think that's doing it dirty. I think that the game offers you a very generous amount of customisable difficulty, and I think that's a fantastic, fresh way to address this debate.
Since we already addressed it, let’s move on to the level design.
Like I mentioned, AC6 follows a mission-based gameplay loop that takes you from level to level from a select-screen, instead of following an open world / semi-metroidvania model as the Souls games do. This, coupled with the fact that the sense of scale is entirely different, the players movement isn’t restricted to only 2 dimensions, and the generally much more open design philosophy of this game, explains why levels are the way they are here. While there is a surprising amount of variety within the selection here, generally speaking levels are much, much larger and more open than in Souls, while at the same time remaining completely linear with maybe the occasional treasure chest or combat log to find in some small side path. There are only a handful of instances where levels include actual alternate paths, and even then those are typically tied to certain story moments. Level size ranges from relatively small and claustrophobic areas to levels that are so fucking big that they might fit the entirety of Elden Ring inside them. The Strider is large enough to span an entire continent of that game, with the map that houses it obviously being many times the size of it. But size isn’t everything of course. Design and aesthetics are important too. You obviously don’t really have those typical looping level structures with shortcuts and winding paths and all that, but what you do have are some pretty amazing set pieces.
Missions will generally follow one of two styles. The first would be relatively short, single objective missions that typically revolve around taking out a boss, mini-boss or mob of enemies or retrieve something. These are typically doable in less than 5 minutes, and are overall perhaps the weakest part of the entire game, although that really isn’t saying much. The worst I can say about them is that they feel a little too much like filler, and that they often don’t really do much to advance the plot either. But that is not to say that there aren’t any short missions that are fun, there certainly are. It’s more that - to me at least - the real fun comes from the feeling of flying through absurdly large city scapes and mechanical superstructures at breakneck speed, taking out as many grunts as flawlessly as I can while working towards a bigger goal. The second variant of missions are the ones that take place in much larger, more involved levels which typically involve multiple stages, many different enemy set ups, story moments and typically a big, cinematic boss fight at the end. But of course, there are exceptions. In NG+ missions, you may be tasked with escorting an allied transport airship through a war zone. Or you might be tasked with picking up data storages from a battle field. I will admit that these typically aren’t the most thrilling missions. Of course there are also some missions that are just flat out annoying or uninteresting, like the NEPENTES mission, in which you have to simply jump down a huge hole, dodge some lasers and kill the laser machine in like 2 hits. Or certain missions in which you’re tasked with literally just taking out hoards of trash mobs. The point is, not every mission here is a masterpiece, but that’s fine. If we’re including all NG+ and NG++ exclusive ones, we’re looking at around 60+ missions for the whole game by my count, and I’d say only around 10-15 of them are mediocre or uninteresting.
Now, artistically speaking, this game isn’t all that comparable to the Soulsborne series. Not even close. FromSoftware, for the last 10+ years, have been cultivating a cult following and a not insignificant part of this was their dedication to create incredibly authentic feeling, richly detailed worlds teeming with history and life and dripping with atmosphere. The art direction wasn’t just a neat extra, it was inextricably linked to the very core of their games’ identity. Their games felt heavy, their stories deeply meaningful, like they were about nothing and everything at the same time. They felt like real art. At the very least, you could say that they had a certain prestige. A very serious flair about them. Armored Core doesn’t really have that, not to the same extent. It doesn’t have that weight, that same air of grandeur. But that isn’t to say that AC6 doesn’t do some really cool things with its aesthetic and art direction.
FromSoft always had a fascination with absurdly large architecture, and so do I. Generally, the concept of varying scale seems to be a long running theme with those folks. The monstrously large castles of Elden Ring and the Dark Souls series, the infinite catacombs of the Chalice Dungeons, the sheer might of Ashina atop the highest peak, etc. They love some overwhelmingly massive buildings and structures. And so do i. And it never felt more noticeable than in this game. Everything is so fucking big. It makes me think of Tsutomu Nihei’s “Blame!”, my favourite manga ever made, and it really feels like they may have taken just a smidgen of inspiration from it. This may be very personal, but I feel like there is a bit of cosmic horror baked into this concept of man-made structures being so unfathomably large than you just feel insignificant next to it. When you think about the fact that an Amored Core is itself already about 10-15 meter tall, and you can occasionally see microscopic wreckages of cars or helicopters, and then you stand next to something that makes YOU feel like an ant in comparison, that’s some crazy shit. It’s an intensely powerful feeling of dread. I just love that. The first time I saw that Moon-sized machine at the Coral Convergence, I thought that this was some of the most impressive shit I’ve ever seen. It’s easily as big as the Erdtree, if not larger. But it’s not just about dazzling you with immense size, sometimes all the stars align and certain areas have really good atmosphere. There is a section in the mid game where you have to explore a city drenched in a deep fog that kills all communication with the outside, and I found it somewhere in between weirdly chilling and relaxing. Typically that mission only takes 5 minutes, but I took 30 minutes just to explore all of it, once again highlighting just how massive these levels really are if you take your time.
My weird fascination with colossal buildings and machines out of the way, the actual design isn’t half bad either, at least with the big missions. What’s true for all them is their incredible attention to detail, which isn’t super surprising since FS are known for meticulously adding little extras and nods into their world. What IS surprising about this is that this game really does not expect you to explore every nook and cranny of it. I have to also mention how insanely beautiful the sky boxes tend to be in this game, especially the closer you draw to the coral convergence.
The actual design is, as previously mentioned, typically very straightforward with little to no deviations. More often than not, you’ll have some variable in the mix, like having to avoid giant space lasers, or having to protect an ally, trying to get through undetected, etc. Other times, levels are created as one contiguous, wide open space, and you have to simply fulfil a couple of objectives in any order you wish, like “destroy 5 turrets” or something like that. The game is definitely the least ambitious here, but it really doesn’t have to be. Intricate level design and “Firelink Shrine elevator” moments aren’t why you’re playing this game. You’re playing this game to make your own personalised Bionicle of death and commit war crimes in the name of evil space corporations.
Let’s also briefly talk about the music here. It’s pretty good for the most part, but it’s a far cry from what the Souls series managed to dish out. AC6’s OST is pretty average electronic-synth-wave type music that has a few good tracks on it (“Contact with You”, “Rusted Pride”, “Cries of Coral”, etc.) but I have to admit that I find the production on these tracks not very impressive. They all sound very flat and even have some pretty obvious production mistakes left in there. It generally sounds like there wasn’t quite as much effort put into this than they did on stuff like Elden Ring or Bloodborne. I do enjoy some fan-remixes of certain tunes from the OST though, so there’s that. In general I think that a lot of the tracks here could’ve been far more memorable if the production efforts went a little further.
With the aesthetic components out of the way, let’s talk about the thing that actually ended up making it my surprise title of the year; a very good story.
Now if there’s one thing that Armored Core fans love to praise about these games, it’s definitely not their narrative. I’m sure they are interesting, but from what plot summaries I’ve seen, it’s nothing too special, nothing too daring or out of the ordinary for the mech genre. The plot of AC6 seems to follow this trend - at least at first. The truth is that this game has 3 different endings, with the third and arguably true ending only being available on the third playthrough, meaning NG++. And before we get into the meat of it, I just have to quickly come out and say that I think that this is something that FromSoft have seriously missed out on in their past games; give us an actual REASON to play NG+ and beyond. DS2 at least did something in that regard, with having some unique things happen like bosses roaming the map, or rarer item drops, etc. but it did little to actually motivate people to go further than NG+, especially since you already had Bonfire Ascetics, items that let you move a singular area up to the next NG cycle. Not only will AC6 physically not let you know its full story until you finished the game for a third time, some of the best items and AC parts only start showing up here. While this may seem tedious to some people, I can assure you that finishing the second and third didn’t take nearly as long as my first one, even with both combined.
Most of the story is relayed to you via a series of Metal Gear Solid-esque intercom calls, in which - depending on the situation - you receive either exposition, details on your next mission, or some more personal stuff. These calls are literally just disembodied voices talking at you, you never get a face or anything other to memorise most NPCs by. What’s more is that they don’t seem to be voiced by anywhere near the same calibre of actors that worked on the Souls games. They sound more like your typical Anime-dub voice actors. And yet, despite all of this, I ended up enjoying both the story and the characters a lot more than I thought I would.
Let’s get to the plot now. I won’t go into too much detail concerning the endings, but consider this an official SPOILER WARNING.
You play as 4th generation augmented human “C-4: 621”, at least that’s what your master, the infamous and brutal Handler Walter calls you. You have no real name to speak of. You are a semi-sentient bag of bones and meat, barely even human. More like a brain in a jar, really. The only time you’re even able to move on your own volition is inside your AC. To Walter, and to everyone he’s offering your services to, you’re a hound. A dog to be beaten and trained. The lowliest of cannon fodder. Walter takes you with him to Rubicon 3, a dead and cold planet on the outskirts of the galaxy where 50-60 years ago a terrible calamity occurred; the Fires of Ibis. The planet was previously a research station and mining planet for a strange, reddish substance called “Coral” (omg Prey reference!?!?) which not only possesses immense energy potential, but is somehow also sentient. It’s essentially sentient and self-replicating gasoline, which also functions as a hive mind or network which potentially can absorb other consciousnesses into itself. During this time the planet has been inhabited by people - presumably of Earthen origin - who consider themselves “natives”. What exactly started the fires isn’t really explained, at least not explicitly, but it’s highly implied that it was due to excessive experimentation on the substance. In either case, whatever happened caused a fire so immense and devastating that it almost took out the entire planet with it. The survivors of this disaster, called “Cinders”, are still on Rubicon, defending it from corporate vultures who try to benefit from the chaos and destruction. And it’s important too, since 2 massive conglomerates, “Arquebus” and “Balam” have set their eyes on the planet due to a recent, huge resurgence of Coral. And that’s where you and Walter come in; like the other corporate parasites, you’re also here looking for some quick cash… or that’s what you think, at least. For now, the overarching goal is to gain a reputation as a hired gun, so the big corps will book you for their eventual missions to retake the slumbering Coral deposits.
The game begins with you illegally entering into Rubicon’s airspace with the help of Walter and landing in the ruins of a recent battle. You have no creds, no reputation and not even an identity to your name, so naturally your first mission is to steal one from a recently abandoned AC. This AC, called “NIGHTFALL” was piloted by a mercenary under the codename “Raven”, who was reported M.I.A., meaning we can simply pretend to be them and end their M.I.A. status. And so “Raven” becomes our new codename henceforth. After fucking around in the tutorial level and getting to grips with this game’s controls, in typical FromSoftware fashion we are met with an attack helicopter the size of an aircraft carrier. This thing was pretty infamous upon launch and quickly became known as the “noob filter” or whatever gatekeepy nonsense gamers are coming up with these days. Truly, this is your average, bog standard FromSoft tutorial boss. Certainly harder than you’d expect from the very first boss in the game, even harder than some of the bosses you’ll see a bit later, but not unbeatable or unreasonably tough by any means. What may be true is that, should you struggle with this boss to the point of frustration, the others will not be fun for you. But, once again, this is no different from a Iudex Gundyr or Asylum Demon or Father Gascoigne. The big helicopter goes down eventually, and we’ve secured a spot in the marketplace of hired guns. The ruse worked, and we’re operating under the codename Raven, which lets us access the mercenary liaison network “ALLMIND”. This network in turn lets us access various mission briefings, almost all of them provided by subsidiaries of either Arquebus or Balam, although you’ll get the occasional offer from other potential employers, but more on that later. It’s basically the life blood of the mercenary network working on Rubicon, and you’re gonna get very familiar with it.
From this point onward, getting into the actual story of the game is a bit difficult because it might go a lot of ways. While there are 2 endings you can get on your first 2 playthroughs, and a secret third one for your third playthrough, individual story moments might still different between 2 people depending on their choices. For the first 2 endings, there is only one decision that really makes a true difference concerning the endings, while most other choices will influence which other missions you might get. Most of these choices will only start appearing on your second and especially third playthrough, although NG does have some of them as well. Mostly they’ll influence who you’ll be getting your jobs from. Next to Balam and Arquebus, there is a third faction you could take jobs from - the Rubicon Liberation Front.
The RLF is the big obstacle for our friends, the lovely space corporations, to fully subjugate and ravage this planet. If I understand correctly, they’re mainly made up of the survivors of the Fires of Ibis, and their descendants. They fiercely defend their home against the capitalist vultures, and as such are subject to us committing horrible war crimes on their people. If you’re anything like me, at some point you’ll probably think something along the lines of “Damn, kinda sucks I can’t help the commies to beat the fascists”. Well, if you make the correct choices, you can make it so you’ll take most of your jobs from them. This sadly doesn’t really influence the ending, but it gives you an entirely different perspective on the story than just doing the corpo missions. They’re not the only other faction though.
Next to the three belligerent parties, there is also the space capitalist equivalent of the UN, the Planetary Closure Association (or PCA) which are equally ineffective and useless. After the great disaster 50 years ago, they attempted to fully lock off the planet to keep away any would-be scavengers looking to make a profit off the Coral deposits, including the native inhabitants of Rubicon. These people would later form the RLF, drive out the PCA and take back control of their home planet. Unfortunately, this also invited the vultures back in, leading to the ongoing, years long conflict you find yourself embroiled in. They’re never a faction you can work for, and will instead always remain as an antagonistic force, since they are at war with all three parties. There are other, minor factions too but they don’t really concern the main plot.
Regardless of which specific choices you follow, you’ll meet the same characters, follow the same overall development and make the same friends. And more important than any other is one in particular; the Coral-being Ayre.
At the end of Act 1, after previously establishing yourself as a capable mercenary for the corps, and attaining an almost legendary status for climbing “the Wall” (a gigantic RLF military fortress), Walter will send you on a secret mission, just for you. You’re sent to attack a PCA watchpoint which houses a sensor valve at its core, which stores massive amounts of Coral. After failing to sneakily get in, and after fighting what will certainly be the toughest enemy AC you’ve fought thus far, you get to the valve and blow it up. This leads to a massive Coral surge, of which you get a full dosage. During your near death experience, you hear a strange voice talking to you. It introduces itself as Ayre, and can communicate with you inside of your mind. No one knows of her, no one can sense her even remotely. Is she even real? Whoever, or whatever she is, she seems very invested in you from the moment she meets you. She gives you hints, works on guiding you through the level whenever Walter is not available and has your back in general, but most importantly - she is the only character in the whole game to treat you like an actual person.
There certainly are some other sympathetic characters, like “Cinder” Carla - a brilliant weapon designer who is seemingly a survivor of the fire, but seems too young for that to make sense. Or, everyone’s favourite character Rusty, who is pretty much this game’s Solaire of Astora. You might find characters like G1 Michigan entertaining, or you might find him annoying. In either case, some of these character might like you, some might hate you. But all of them treat you as nothing more than a dog. A semi-sentient robot to do the bidding of other people. But not Ayre. She believes in you. She sees the traces of a person in you, no matter how feint. And like all other characters in this game, she has her very own agenda.
For the first two endings, your choice is between 2 different visions for the future of Rubicon. I won’t go into too much detail, but effectively you’re choosing between Walter and his friends, and Ayre (and by extension, the Rubiconians).
Both of these endings start from the same general scenario; you’ve just defeated the IBIS-series AC which protects the big Coral deposit, but are knocked out by Snail and his goons, who take you prisoner and intend to “reprogram” you - they have presumably already done this to Walter at the time of you regaining consciousness. You claw your way out of there with a shitty makeshift AC and are rescued by Carla, who takes you back to the foggy city - only, it turns out this city is actually a gargantuan, titanic space ship called “Xylem”. From this point, you’re faced with the choice of which ending to go for. Let’s go over Walter’s ending first.
Walter, despite initially telling you he wants to make a profit, actually wants to burn all the remaining Coral to prevent anyone from ever trying to exploit it again - and also to stop the Coral from potentially infecting human civilisation. We learn that both Walter and Carla are part of an organisation called “OVERSEER”, who - as the name suggests - watch over Rubicon and monitor the status of the Coral and are tasked with burning it should the need arise. Turns out, Coral loves a good vacuum of space, apparently it’s the perfect environment for it to thrive and replicate in. This accelerated and chaotic replication might lead to mutations and a subsequent collapse of the entire Coral ecosystem, which may very well doom humanity. This realisation is what caused the great fire 50 years ago. It’s what made the scientists at Ibis, the great city built around the giant siphon, make a very difficult choice; to burn the Coral to prevent total collapse. It’s a bit reminiscent of Dark Souls and the story of New Londo, where its healers flooded the the whole town with all people in it to prevent the rise of a great evil that been growing.
If we’re going with this ending, we’re tasked with steering the mighty Xylem right into the huge Coral siphon to set it all ablaze. As typical for FromSoftware, if you go down this route, you’ll have some tough times ahead, and not only in terms of gameplay. On this route, you’ll have to kill and betray some people. One would be the one and only Rusty, who turns out to have been an undercover agent for the Liberation Front this whole time, who really hoped for you to turn around and find a better cause to fight for. But the real heartbreaker was the surprise that waited for me as the final boss for this ending of the game; Ayre. As a story moment, this is just brutal. Here you go, on your quest to become the ultimate beast of war, to rationalise all potential of collaboration out of existence - who better to stop you in your tracks than the one entity that treated you as a friend? This is by far my favourite boss fight in the game, mostly for its devastating emotional impact due to her still vocally insisting that we could have had a much better future and that it’s not too late, and this slowly shifting towards a determination to stop you whatever it takes. But it’s also one of the more mechanically interesting fights, with her using a similar set up to the IB-01 CEL-240 “Ibis series” AC (aka the “Malenia” of this game) meaning she is unbelievably fast, uses Coral based weaponry and has a strong desire to put a stop to your plans. Upon defeating her with tears in our eyes and our hands shaking, we proceed to steer the Xylem into the Coral to light the biggest fire the galaxy has ever seen. Rubicon is done for, all potential for any life eradicated for all times to come. Only ashes remain. This ending is called “Fires of Raven” in the achievements.
To the fans, it’s commonly known as the “Bad ending”, and even though I happen to agree that this is the worst ending you can pick, I wouldn’t say that the game is trying to make the point that one ending is inherently better than the other. It’s about your choice and how you interpret it, after all. And all I can say that the choice to go for this ending made me feel like a huge piece of shit.
Depending on how you choose to see Walter, there might be even something to fight for here. While I do not regard Walter as a terribly sympathetic character, it’s clear that he receives no joy from treating you like a hound, but rather has a very single-minded goal that he will follow whatever means necessary. But it’s not that you’re just a means to his ends; you’re supposed to carry on his legacy. His dream. He trusts you, deeply. He treats you the way he does so you follow through, so you do “what’s right”. Only.. is this truly what’s right? If you ask me, Walter’s ending is the worst ending since it really doesn’t concern itself with what YOU want at all. At the end of the day, he is your slaver. He is using you for his goals, and your actual thoughts and feelings are of no concern to him. A bit like a father who grooms you to do a certain thing - taking over the family business maybe - but never even entertains the notion that you might not want to do that.
Ayre’s ending on the other hand, banks on you making your own choices. To believe in a future of shared potential between humans and Coral. To believe in a future for Rubicon, for the people who live here and whatever form of life the Coral is. Naturally, being a Coral being herself she doesn’t want her and her family to die, but it’s about more than that. She really believes in you. She wants to spend time with you and wants to see you reach your full potential, to become more than just a witless dog. We’ve experienced first hand the possibilities of this shared existence. Of the intimacy and friendship granted to lonely souls like us. And it’s not just 621 who experienced this, Thumb Dolmayan (the grand priest of the Rubiconians, as it were) also had a similar experience, but more on that in a bit. I chose Ayre’s ending on my first playthrough, and I’m glad I did, because it’s really bittersweet and beautiful.
You’re met with the same scenario as before, only this time instead of confronting the Corps’ army, you’re tasked by Ayre to eliminate Carla. Naturally, this is a really rough decision to make. Carla literally JUST saved your life, and not for the first time either. She has been a friend to you since the Smart Cleaner incident, and a lot longer than that to Walter, and here you go turning around and killing her and Chatty. But we understand why this needs to be done. It’s not that Carla is evil or unjustified in her actions, it’s that we made the decision for a different future, and she made the decision to stand in the way of that. Having to take her and Chatty out is not only emotionally tough, but also perhaps the second hardest fight in the entire game. Jesus, that woman’s got hands. But not only that, she also has a backup plan should be die before the Xylem hit the Coral; an autopilot with commands to go full speed ahead.
Ayre then proceeds to send out a message to all Rubiconians via the Coral network; “Beyond scorched skies, Raven fights on”. Perhaps we should briefly talk about the nature of “Raven”. See, the identity that we stole, “Raven”, is not just a regular old codename. It’s a collective, a concept. It’s more like a title than a name. Ravens are independent. They fight not for money, but for what they believe in. This leads the RLF to join forces with you, and one very special fighter among them; Rusty is now on our side, fighting alongside instead of against us. We proceed down the Xylem to destroy the computer responsible for the autopilot, but somewhere along the way Rusty’s signal suddenly just breaks up. We never hear from him again. We never learn whether he died or escaped, sadly. Just before the computer, we face VII Snail, the little snot-nosed prick, for the last time and send him to his fiery death, screaming like the little bitch he is. We manage to divert the course of the ship but there is one last obstacle to take care of… it’s our old master, Handler Walter. Much like Ayre in the other ending, he pilots a coral IBIS-series AC, only black instead of white. But something is wrong. He isn’t really himself.
Arquebus have seemingly brainwashed Walter and “done something to him”. It’s never really elaborated on what exactly it was they did to him, or how or even why Walter managed to escape and come here. Did he even escape? Did they let him loose on purpose? It might be that Arquebus thinks that we’re still on the way to blow the Coral up, which would be bad news for them, so they send the only one that might possibly stand a chance against us. But Walter also seems to be still holding on to his dream. He occasionally makes mumbled and fragmented references to the reeducation and “his friend’s wish” during the fight, indicating that he might be here on his own volition after all. Mechanically, the fight is fairly similar to Ayre, but easier somehow. He is much slower, has less health and also isn’t anywhere near as aggressive as she was. I don’t have much else to say on that front, since it does feel more like a typical AC fight, rather than a boss.
Regardless, we beat him. During the ending cutscene Walter briefly raises his weapon as if to fight on, but then lowers it again only to say: “Look at you, 621… You found a friend.”, seemingly in acknowledgement of Ayre. I have so many questions. Who exactly was Walter’s “friend”? Why is he the only one who seems to know about her? Why is the realisation that we forged a connection with Ayre suddenly enough to stop Walter from attacking us further? Ultimately, we make our escape, and watch the Xylem tumble down into Rubicons atmosphere, missing the Coral by a couple hundred kilometres. Ayre remarks that “One day, humans and coral will thrive together… You kept our potential safe”. The screen fades to black. This one’s called “Liberator of Rubicon”.
This ending is definitely more ambiguous than the first one. What happens after all of this isn’t stated or spelled out by anyone. Basically, you just prevented the Coral from going extinct, and as such not much has changed about the actual status quo; it’s just that now perhaps we can go forward with a shared future in mind. You might notice that neither of these endings really address the core problems that this world faces.
The first ending has us burn all the coral… only, who is to say that it truly worked this time? The Fires of Ibis were said to have destroyed all Coral forever, and yet it came back, seemingly more powerful than ever. If even the smallest Coral particle survives, it’ll be only a matter of time before it will all happen again - and nothing will have changed, except that we have genocided an entire planet for nothing. The other ending may have prevented the utter destruction of Rubicon, but doesn’t really address the issue of unchecked Coral growth and potential collapse. Who is to stop other corps and villains to try and claim the Coral for themselves?
There is one more ending, which you can only unlock in NG++. I’m going into a bit more detail here, so once again consider this a SPOILER WARNING FOR THE TRUE ENDING. I felt fairly confident talking about story details for the first two endings because a lot of it isn’t really all that obvious until you sit down and think about it. This third and final ending however, has some pretty overt and noticeable story moments that starkly differentiate it from the others.
If this game only had the aforementioned endings, it would already be one of the more interesting and well made stories for a video game out there. There is already a good deal of commentary on the nature of choices, of loyalty, of what it means to follow orders vs. to fight for something you believe in. Of friendship, of loneliness, of the heartbreak of betraying the people you love for doing the thing that’s right. But then this game goes complete sicko mode and adds an entirely different layer on top of all this.
The third ending is called “Alea iacta est” (Lat. “The die is cast”), a phrase attributed to Julius Caesar when he and his army crossed the river Rubicon in northern Italy. By doing this, he burned all bridges between him and the Roman senate, effectively starting the civil war between him and Pompey and the Optimates. The phrase is used to indicate that something has moved past the point of no return - and that is most certainly appropriate in this context.
This new ending involves an aspect of the game I’ve deliberately avoided until now; the Arena mode. Until now, the Arena mode was mainly an alternate way to challenge yourself and unlock OST chips - which let you permanently upgrade your AC in multiple ways, such as upgrading the amount of health regained on heal, unlocking new abilities, increasing certain weapon damage, etc. - and grind money. During your first and second playthrough, you’ll likely occasionally have played around with it a bit. It’s what seems to be a semi-diegetic virtual combat arena in which you can test your strength against simulations of other ACs, ranked from section F all the way up to S. It’s main purpose is to gain access to new parts and make a lot of money real quick, apart from also being just a really fun alternative to doing missions. On your first playthrough, there truly is nothing more to this game mode, it really is just there to distract you from other stuff and make you grind OST chips. On the second playthrough, we notice that the arena now has a second tab, called “Analysis”, in which we can access even harder, more specialised fights which, again, primarily let us farm money and OST chips. This time around, we get enough chips to upgrade our AC to completion. Again on this playthrough, nothing too out of the ordinary, and still not really a cause for concern.
It’s on the third playthrough were strange things start happening. Right out of the gate you’ll notice that you’re getting a lot more decision missions, with most of them coming from the RLF, most notably you’re meant to protect the Strider this time instead of destroying it. To get to the third ending, you’re going to have to work a little harder this time. Not only do you need to complete a specific set of missions to end up at the correct scenario, you also need to complete the arena. You might have noticed that, during NG+, the three final slots in the arena remained closed off, even though you already fought what was supposed to be THE strongest mercenary alive. Choosing certain missions will result in unlocking these final three slots. All three of them are based on the IBIS style ACs you’ll be fighting in the other two endings. After you’ve beaten all three of them and you chose the right set of missions, at the end of chapter 4 there’ll be quite a different set of events waiting for you. But before we get to that, lets set the stage for the two great antagonists of this run.
Remember ALLMIND? Up until now, for the last 2 playthroughs, it was nothing more than a mercenary support network, a digital hub for pilots to test their skills and work together. In fact, it blended in with the background so much that I honestly kinda forgot about it. During this playthrough however, ALLMIND slowly begins to gain - or perhaps rather reveal - a certain level of sentience. It seems to know about your previous playthroughs, about your connection to Ayre and your past decisions. I found this slow and surprising reveal really creepy and uncanny, almost as though it can see right through 621 as a character and is speaking directly to you. Like it’s hijacking the story like an observer outside of it. It feels like a very strange fourth-wall break in the best way possible. It becomes an actual character in the story, with its own goal, an ending very different from Walter’s or Ayre’s. We briefly talked about how neither ending really addressed the problems that loomed over Rubicon. Walter’s ending “solves” the issue by killing the entire planet, without any actual guarantee that the Coral won’t reconstitute as it already has in the past, essentially rendering it pointless. The other ending has us preserve the Coral, but without any insurance that greedy corporations won’t come back in the future to haunt the planet. It’s a bit like a trolley problem in which neither solution is optimal. The third ending is a bit like if you strapped high power rockets onto the trolley and shot it into outer space. ALLMIND instead wants to accelerate Coral growth, pushing it to expand into the vacuum of space to expedite its growth, spreading throughout the whole galaxy. This is what’s known as “Coral release”.
Before we get into the how’s and why’s, we need to talk about another character I’ve neglected to mention until now: G5 Iguazu. For your first two playthroughs, he’s not terribly important. He is introduced to you in the “Destroy the Dam” mission during Chapter 1, in which G1 Michigan of the RedGuns (Balam’s elite AC force) hires you to help G4 and Iguazu to take a strategically important base from the rebels. While neither are particularly thrilled to have an independent mercenary assist them on their mission, Iguazu seems to be particularly offended by this. He only refers to you as “Freelancer”, and seemingly hates you simply for daring to be independent and not considering yourself part of any greater group. I guess to him this signals you not taking this life style seriously, but there might be something else that adds to his - like you, Iguazu is part of the same type of series of augmented humans, namely C4. I think it isn’t necessarily that he despises you for living your life so differently; it’s more that, deep down, he wishes he could be like you. To have what you have. On your second playthrough, the RLF will offer you a pretty handsome reward for taking out G4 and G5. Regardless of which option you pick, Iguazu will have nothing but disdain for you. He seems to pretty much run purely on spite in general. He absolutely hates Michigan and fantasises about killing him for constantly berating him and blasting his ass, seemingly not understanding that this is Michigan’s (admittedly very toxic and flawed) way of showing affection for his soldiers. He doesn’t seem to like anyone, really.
From this point onward, you’ll meet Iguazu a bunch, depending on which missions you choose and what you do in them, but the fact that he will show up here and there is a given. Like I said, for the first two playthroughs this isn’t anything particularly meaningful, it’s just a fairly low energy rival story. During the third playthrough however, Iguazu will show up a bunch more, and is going somewhere with it all.
With the stage having been set, let’s get into it now.
During NG++, ALLMIND will start to give you very specific and weird missions, all very different with one overarching goal; to help create the perfect AC. Occasionally, you’ll unlock one of the three mysterious closed off Arena slots, with all three of them not being piloted by a human, but by an AI. Most of ALLMINDS missions have data collection as their primary objective.
Now, the big question is of course; why? Why does ALLMIND seek coral release? What is even the idea behind it? The answers to these questions are never stated as such, and instead must be gleamed from many context clues such as the various logs you can find, environmental story telling and listening very closely to what the characters in this game have to say.
Let’s maybe begin with this: Who (or what) is ALLMIND exactly? It’s never stated how long it has existed for, who created it or why.
These questions don’t have any certified answers I’m afraid, but there are some hints. There is mention of a character only called “Assistant No. 1”, who is said to have gone insane during his research into Coral, and its possibilities concerning human augmentation. He is mentioned by another character, Prof. Nagai, who was the head scientist of the Rubicon Research Facility. He says the following:
“Assistant No 1. Has lost his mind. His research has utterly lost his mind. Granted, there may be some logic to C-PULSE sensory augmentation of human subjects - but no ethical scholar would ever dare cross that point of no return. Mankind is driven mad by possibilities. What does Coral represent, if not sheer potential?”
That line again. “Point of no return”. I think that this wording is very deliberate and supposed to make you connect it to this ending. My theory is that this Assistant 1 is the person who created ALLMIND. ALLMIND seeks coral release to augment all of humanity (and perhaps, all of sentient life) with Coral. It wants to do this by way of Coral release. So far, so good. My biggest personal question is how exactly the whole “build the perfect AC” relates to this. More on that later.
For the first 3 chapters, apart from the wave of new missions, everything is more or less the same as before. This all changes by the end of Chapter 4, where you’d normally fight CEL-240. Instead, ALLMIND chimes in to warn you that V.II Snail is planning to take you captive. Instead, you pull a UNO-reverse card on his ass and gank him and his friends. Then, suddenly, Iguazu shows up unannounced here to beat the shit out of both of you. Why is he here all of a sudden? After taking out Snail together, you two duke it out for what feels like the 20th time, and once again you clap Iguazu’s butt cheeks without too much effort. But things have changed.
ALLMIND takes you off the network, and proclaims you dead - at least, to the other people in the mercenary network. This is, of course, so no one can stand in the way of Coral release, not even Walter. Just like in Ayre’s ending, your goal is to stop the Xylem from crashing into the Coral convergence, with some added bonuses. I won’t go into detail concerning the last set of missions because this analysis / review is way too long already. Regardless, we push on to the final boss.
Anyway, as you all (hopefully) already know, the TRUE final boss isn't even ALLMIND itself, it's fucking Iguazu. I lost my shit when I realised who was inside that hyper-advanced mech from the next century. It's none other than the little neek whose face I've been dragging through the mud through 3 playthroughs, the guy who would keep on coming back to try his luck no matter how often and how badly I kept beating his ass. This man's sheer, unbridled hater-energy is something to behold. All the coral on this planet is but a humble spark compared to the unfathomable store of energy that could be processed by mining Iguazu's salt. I fucking love this guy.
We learn that he was able to hear the voices of the Coral the entire time as well. This was very likely the reason Iguazu was chosen by ALLMIND, although Iguazu makes it very clear that he doesn’t give a flying fuck about Coral release, he has one thing on his mind and one thing only: getting his hands around your throat.
The fight itself is in my opinion perhaps the most difficult fight in the game, alongside CEL-240. But sadly that's mostly due to some design decisions I'm not a fan of. I don't like that you have to deal with 5 MT's in the first stage, 2 freaking Sea Spiders in the second, only to THEN have to fight this guy solo in Super Saiyan mode. Ayre joining in on the party is cool in theory, but her presence there is not super helpful, because she really sucks at drawing aggro - also she leaves during what is arguably the hardest phase of the fight. Super-Iguazu himself is perfectly fine, and one of the more fun encounters in the game, but having to fight him at the end of a 3-phase boss encounter seems a bit like overkill to me.
Ultimately, we persevere and go ahead and achieve Coral release - we cut forward to an undisclosed point in time, in a strange, shallow sea. The night sky is burning red, tiny fiery sparkles among the stars. The Coral permeates the cosmos. Next to you, a thousand ACs rise, all glowing red with the power of Coral. Together you stare fatefully into the night sky. A new age has come. A new lifeform has taken to the stars. And you and Ayre will remain together for as long as this age will live on.
What a powerful fucking story. This was easily the biggest surprise for me, and why I ended up calling it my “surprise title of the year”. I expected I would enjoy the gameplay and customisation aspects of it all, I did however not expect that the thing that would stick with me the most out of all things in AC6 would be its narrative. It’s a very intricate and heartfelt story about purpose and choice, about identity and carving your own meaning in a universe that tells you you’re worth nothing. I expected something like Transformers and got something like Blade Runner instead. FromSoftware have once again proven why they’re the best in the industry, and it’ll be a long time before we see another company rise up to this level of consistent quality. This game has proven that they literally cannot do wrong, it seems like they’re incapable. Thank you Miyazaki.
Jokes aside, this really is a fantastic game all around. Yeah, it has a couple of annoying moments here and there but it wouldn’t be a From game if it didn’t. I haven’t gone back to S-rank every level yet, but I will definitely do that and I think I might go for the Platinum trophy as well, it really is that good of a game. Again, I don’t think it will win GOTY, but I’d love to see it get nominated at least, it would definitely deserve it.
All that’s left to say is: Got a job for you, 621.
2017
Prey (2017) is a great game with an immense amount of depth and thought put into nearly every facet of its design, but sadly it didn’t fully click with me - at least, not until much later. One of the most competent ImSims ever made, with some really cool Metroidvania-style world design, but often tedious to actually play.
8 / 10
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This is a weird one. By all rights, according to my taste and what I value in video games, I should love this game. I should be droning on about how it’s perhaps the most comprehensive AND expansive ImSim-gameplay I’ve ever seen. Not even Deus Ex allows for such a multitude of different options to tackle any given situation, and that one is one of my favourite games of all time. I mean, I’m even currently playing through Nightdive’s 2023 remake of System Shock, a game series very clearly serving as the inspiration for Prey (which btw, if for some reason you don’t know, is not related to the 2009 game of the same name at all) and somehow I’m liking that one more, even though Prey is probably objectively the better game. Lots of people even unofficially dubbed it “System Shock 3”, and it’s easy to see why. It’s gorgeous, with fantastically realised world design, equally competent individual level design, an unbelievably polished physics engine and some of the wildest, most gamebreaking abilities any first person shooter ever dared messing around with.
And yet, despite all of this, it didn’t really click for me. Or rather, it took so long that the game was effectively over by the time I developed a proper grasp on its intentions. Don’t get me wrong, I did get used to some of Prey’s more unconventional design choices, I did make an honest effort in trying to play the game in a way where I would make use of its most fun abilities, and I did finally end up enjoying the game quite a lot, especially towards the end. It’s just that, whenever I see people rank this as “the best” or even among the best Immersive Sim out there, something in me doesn’t really agree about it.
No matter how I splice it, how I think about it, the truth is: I was bored quite a lot when playing Prey. I got fairly close to being kinda done with this game on more than one occasion. It wasn’t until the later sections that the knot finally started to loosen a bit.
If I were trying to be as reductive as possible, I’d say something like “It’s more fun in theory than in praxis.”But I know that isn’t quite what’s happening here. Prey isn’t actually at fault in this instance - well, mostly. I think.
I’m the problem. I simply failed to connect with it the same way I did with other great ImSims like Deus Ex or Cruelty Squad, or even System Shock. Usually, in my other reviews (that you’ve totally read, I know) I would go into excruciating detail in analysing this game’s design and identifying its strengths and flaws. The thing is, I’m not sure if I can do the same here. Instead, this is going to be more of an exploration of why this objectively great game just didn’t resonate with me personally, at least at first.
IMPORTANT - Before we go any further I should mention that I have NOT played the “Mooncrash” DLC. Any points that might get addressed in the DLC do not affect my opinion of Prey.
I’ll begin with the things I enjoyed from the get go, the things that drew me in right at the start. Fittingly enough, let’s begin right there: at the start of the game.
We begin the game as Morgan Yu, a Chinese-American scientist (you can choose between male or female) who’s been recruited by their brother, Alex Yu, to join his company “TranStar” and work aboard the international space station “Talos-1” which is currently orbiting Earth’s moon. We wake up in our luxurious San Francisco apartment and are given time and space to fumble around with the controls, inspect the apartment and marvel at the incredibly detailed graphical assets. As soon as we feel like it, we may leave the apartment, talk a bit to the cleaning lady - who knows our name and everything - and head for the roof, where a helicopter is already waiting to take us to the TranStar HQ. The helicopter ride is beautiful and scenic, and presents us with one of the most iconic title cards in gaming. Alex is waiting for us, tells us how glad he is we joined the program and has us taking a little personality test with Dr. Bellamy. The tests are fairly average, very basic instructions and questions. We begin to wonder why exactly we’re doing this, and why the tests are so incredibly basic. Suddenly, Dr. Bellamy notices that his coffee mug is suddenly completely empty, even though it was filled up just a second ago. That’s because this mug is actually what appears to be some weird, dark and twisted alien life-form disguised as a mug that attacks the professor but before we can do anything we’re getting knocked out by nerve gas.
We wake up in our luxurious San Francisco apartment and are given time and space to fumble around with the controls… hold on. What is happening? Didn’t we leave the apartment already? Something’s… off. The objects are in different spots than they were when we left. We have 6 new mails, all saying “DANGER. LEAVE NOW.” We leave through the door, and see the cleaning lady dead on the floor. The way to the roof is locked. We find a big old wrench next to the lady and arm ourselves with it. Suddenly a voice speaks to us, but not just any voice: OUR voice. It introduces itself as “January” and tells us that what happened yesterday was not a dream, that we need to leave the apartment, and that we’re not safe. We remember that there was a balcony door we couldn’t open before. It’s still locked, but we do have a wrench in our possession. We decide that it’s our best bet to break the window and maybe somehow climb down the side of the building? We take a swing at the window and… it reveals that none of it was real. The apartment, the roof, the TranStar office, even the helicopter ride over there… all of it was literally a facade. A massive LED screen with pretty pictures on it. We realise we’re inside some massive laboratory. But why? What is going on? WTF happened yesterday? After you’ve made your way through the tutorial area, you arrive at a massive lobby which reveals the truth of your situation: We were on Talos-1 all along. Before us, a massive window with a silhouette of earth behind it. But there’s a problem; the entire station has been overrun by a hostile alien species, the Typhon. These aliens were discovered sometime in the 60’s during the space race, and were subsequently kept and experimented on what would eventually become Talos-1. They are quite different from humans in that they seem to exist as a sort of hive mind with psychic abilities, and it’s this discovery that lead scientists to capture and research them to unlock the technology that made the Yu family into the insanely wealthy, powerful people they are today; Neuromods. More on them later.
This is perhaps the strongest opening to any video game I’ve seen in a while. That moment when the wrench hits the glass and reveals the real, cold and dark set behind it feels almost uncanny. Like you’ve just no-clipped out of reality into a horror game. The sheer sense of intrigue that this produces is unparalleled by most other games, or even other forms of media. It immediately hooked me and made me want to find out more about what happened.
It’s very unfortunate then, that this is by far the best and most interesting moment in Prey’s story, and that everything which comes after the intro gradually feels less and less interesting, and becomes more of an excuse for you to traverse the massive space station than an actually interesting plot that drives you forward on its own. We’ll talk more about it down the line.
Something that continues to grow on me the more I think about it and watch other people play the game would be this game’s almost unbelievable amount of emergent gameplay, i.e. “Immersive sim stuff”. While the game “intends” for you to go through most of it in a fairly linear manner, you are given many opportunities to completely break this game in half with the various weapons, tools and abilities at your disposal. Take for example the GLOO Gun. It’s a gun that shoots some sort of wet, organic material that instantly hardens as soon as it makes contact. While its primary purpose is to slow down and immobilise the smaller Typhon enemies like the Mimic so they take more damage, it has multiple other applications as well. Most notably, you can create ledges to grab onto to climb high spaces, or you could create a bridge so you can cross perilous gaps. You can put out fires with it, or stop electrical currents. You can even create roadblocks for smaller enemies, so you can get to safety, and I’m sure there are some other uses as well. While most other weapons obviously don’t have quite the same amount of utility there are a surprising amount of things you can do with them as well. Recycler Charges are another fantastic and multi-faceted tool that can be used in a staggering amount of ways. They are deceptively simple; they break down whatever thing you throw it at into its core components. While this has obvious combat applications, and you can use them to farm those very same components, you can also use them to remove any obstructions or roadblocks that might be too heavy to lift, or otherwise out of reach. The last of the big components here would be the various abilities the player can unlock via the game’s aforementioned, signature technology - Neuromods. Neuromods are devices that are capable of capturing and saving the lived experiences and accumulated skills of a person, allowing for instant transferring of information and abilities from one person to another. If, say, you suck at playing the piano, there’s a Neuromod that lets you become Lev Ornstein himself. These basically function like your level up points within a skill tree / RPG system. The downside of this technology is that, if you were to remove a Neuromod from the user’s brain, you’d delete all of their memories up until the moment that Neuromod was first installed. That means, if you installed a Neuromod that taught you how to play the piano 3 years ago, not only will you lose the ability to play the piano, but you’ll also lose the entire last 3 years of your life. That’s bloody terrifying.
The Neuromod abilities come in 2 main categories, which both have 3 subcategories.
The main categories come in “Human” and “Typhon”. Human abilities are split into “Scientist”, “Engineer” and “Security” categories respectively, while “Typhon” is split into “Energy”, “Morph” and “Telepathy”.
“Scientist” mainly concerns your healing items and PSI - which is basically mana - as well as your hacking abilities. “Engineer” works on things like carrying heavy things (which can be one of the best skills in the game), your repair skills and materials (both target weapon upgrades as well), and “Impact Calibration”, which essentially just upgrades your wrench attacks. Finally for the Human mods, Security. This one obviously revolves mostly around weapon usage, but also your “Conditioning” (i.e. health points, stamina, toughness, mobility), your stealth level and even grants you a bullet-time ability.
Now the Typhon abilities. “Energy” is comprised mostly of psycho-energetic combat abilities, which can be used against the various Typhon or robot enemies (and/or even humans). These come in the form of “kinetic”, “electrostatic” or “thermal” energy blasts, and resistance to those very same elements. Kinetic even features a gravity reversal ability that lets you lift any object into the air - less useful in combat, and more for exploration. The “Morph” neuromods are perhaps the most interesting of the bunch. Perhaps the most underrated ability out of them all; “Mimic”, which like the name suggests lets you imitate any object in the room that isn’t glued to the floor, just like the enemies of the same name. While this can be used for stealth, its real use is more geared towards getting into tight, narrow spaces, maybe slipping underneath a small opening under some rubble, or fit through a tiny hole. It also grants you some minor health recovery abilities. “Phantom” is a weird one. The main ability is basically a very long dash/dodge that creates a doppelganger in the spot where you stood that can take a couple of hits before it disappears. You can also create doppelgängers by finding human corpses and reanimating them, although I have to admit I have never used this ability once. It also grants resistance to Ether based attacks. “Telepathy” features the “Backlash” tree, which creates an auto-deflect shield for 20 seconds that instantly repels enemy attacks. Next, “Psychoshock” which works similar to the Energy skills, lets you deal psychic damage, can one shot a lot of smaller enemies and completely disable enemies which use psychic abilities themselves. One of my favourite skills in the entire game has to be Mind Jack, which lets you turn enemies into allies that fight for you for 60 seconds, and even free human NPCs that are under Typhon mind control. Finally, there’s “Remote Control”, which lets you pick up and interact with objects up to 10 meters away (more if you upgade it) and also do the same as Mind Jack but for machines. Practically all Typhon abilities use PSI, and starting from a certain number of Typhon neuromods installed, the Talos-1 internal security system will start idenfifying you as Typhon as well, meaning you’ll be dealing with aliens, hacked robots, mind-controlled humans AND the station’s security functioning as intended.
Of course, you don’t have to use any neuromods you don’t want. You could play the game entirely without Typhon abilities, meaning that the station’s security system will never target you - which can be invaluable during later parts of Prey - or you could be playing it without ANY neuromods at all. It’s entirely possible to beat the game without acquiring a single ability.
So you can tell, there is quite a bit of freedom when it comes to how you can tackle any situation, and - theoretically - it’s incredibly fun to figure all of this out. I think my biggest problem with all of this, and why I think this whole concept is more in theory than in praxis lies with the fact that Prey is quite bad at actually explaining or relaying any of this to you. The only instance I can remember in which an ability is presented to you in a way that actually expands your horizon of it is seeing a dead NPC who tried to build a bridge with the GLOO gun. There are more problems with it, but once again, I’ll go into more detail later.
Another thing I wanna explicitly mention as genuinely great design and a fantastic and surprisingly deep game mechanic; the recycle system. Every single object, item and even character in this game consist of a set amount of materials, which are either organic, synthetic, mineral or Typhon based. There are 2 specialised kinds of machines that can be found throughout the station’s many levels. One is a recycling station, which - like the recycler charger - lets you break down any one item or object that can be picked up into its core components. The other, the fabricator, lets you create new objects from those very same components as long as you have the blueprint for it, which includes healing items, weapons, ammunition and even neuromods among others. This is genius, and made for an incredibly compelling gameplay loop, and some of the best crafting I’ve seen in a game. Literally any single object you pick up can potentially help in making you stronger, so no item you pick up is ever entirely worthless. System Shock had a similar system, but in that game you could only do it with very specific items, labelled as “junk”. Those “junk” items could either be vaporised into scrap metal or turned into money directly via a recycling station. You couldn’t recycle any weapons (except broken ones), grenades or other non-“junk” items. Here, in Prey, you can recycle anything.
The one thing where this system perhaps goes a little too far is with the ability to simply fabricate Neuromods yourself. While this is obviously a great tool for people who are trying to get very powerful as early as possible, it kind of takes away from the intrinsic joy of finding them in the wild. By proxy, it also diminishes the joy of exploration as a whole because, outside of very few unique items and weapons, Neuromods are going to be your main reward for exploring the map. You obviously can’t do this right from the start, but you can unlock this early enough that it can potentially trivialise a lot of Prey’s later sections.
Finally, let’s talk about Talos-1, as a video game world as well as a place within the story. There are very few video game maps as complete and authentic as this one. Taking very obvious cues from System Shock’s “Citadel Station”, Prey takes place entirely within (and around) Talos-1, which is made up of multiple different levels that are all stacked vertically on top of each other. Each layer serves a different purpose and its design reflects that. Like System Shock, Talos-1 needs to be traversed via a sort of “Metroidvania-lite” approach, in which you’ll be confronted with many locked doors or blocked paths that you’ll need to either find a key, password or pin code for, find the right ability to circumnavigate it, or open from the other side in one way or another. This is fantastic design, which allows for a fairly nicely structured, linear story line that the player can simply follow without thinking too much about where to go next, while also giving you the opportunity of completely breaking that very same pacing. You can grab items, weapons, abilities and much more well before you’re actually meant to find them if you know what you’re doing. But other than System Shock, Prey also lets you fly around outside of Talos-1, making for an alternate mode of traversal between its respective areas, and giving you even more stuff to find. This area can be quite tricky to navigate though, as enemies are numerous and orientation can be a bit rough.
So, up until now most of this sounds positively fantastic. An incredibly rich and multi-faceted gameplay system that allows for an almost unprecedented amount of freedom when it comes to the second-to-second experience. Deep and thoughtful world building, and a game world that feels entirely complete in-itself, and has diegetic explanations for close to everything that happens in game. Sounds like a dream come true.
So why, I ask myself, did it take so long for me to “get it”? Why did it take me close to 20 hours before I finally started to grasp how the game actually wanted me to play it when it took me roughly 25 to beat? Why did so many parts of the game feel so frustrating for me? Why did I get bored so often? Why did I have to stop the game to do something else multiple times? Why can’t I seem to recognise this game for the 10/10 that so many people say it is?
Right from the bat, you’re probably thinking “Well, that’s on you buddy.” And it likely is, for the most part. I’m definitely at fault for trying to play the game like it’s Cruelty Squad for the first couple of hours.
Let’s start with something that’s perhaps a bit subjective, but then again, so are most of my criticisms. The player character’s movement feels unbearably slow. Seriously. I unironically think that around half my problems with this game can be boiled down to how tedious it is to get around the place. This extends to all forms of movement, be it a simple walk from point A to point B, during combat or platforming; you always feel like gravity is twice as strong for you as it is for everything else. Even floating around outside the station feels unwieldy and impractical, even though can admittedly fly quite fast. There is a sprint button, but stamina is hilariously low at the start and requires multiple investments until you start to notice a change at all. I’m not expecting to to be able to dart around the map like it’s DOOM instantly, but considering that just about every other ImSim gave me ability to move a lot faster eventually, the complete lack of any real mobility upgrades just felt really off for me. Even System Shock gives you a speed upgrade a bit later in the game. Again, I know that this is very subjective and that a lot of people are likely going to disagree with me, but I really did not enjoy how much the game restricts your movement.
Now, I think I understand why the player character is so low. Prey is ultimately a bit of a space horror game - or at least, it presents itself like one. I know that Arkane Studios don’t really consider it a horror title, and in all honesty it’s not very scary. But there is an undeniable focus on some horror elements when it comes to engaging enemies. What I mean with that is; typically video game protagonists tends to be very slow in horror games, which makes sense as you want to make the player feel disempowered and like they’re in over their head. In this case, it’ll be the threat of most enemies in this game being able to catch up with you effortlessly. So, that means we have to square up and fight, then? Well… the problem with that is that almost all enemies are absurdly strong at the start of the game. As established, they are all quite fast, they all have more health than you’d think and starting with the Phantoms, they are able to delete you almost instantly. Even the mimics can be a real problem if you encounter more than one at a time. So, what exactly are we to do? Should we just avoid combat entirely? At least for the early game, that seems to be the idea. While you can absolutely play this game with only a few weapons you can obtain relatively early on, playing it like that is really hard and tedious. Combat is definitely a core component of this game, but it only starts to become interesting as soon as you’ve actually acquired a decent amount of Neuromods. For the first couple of hours, I was constantly save scumming just to get past minor enemy set ups. The obvious answer to this would be “just use stealth” but I sadly found stealth to be the most underdeveloped mechanic in the whole game. To this day, I do not fully understand what exactly enemies even can or can’t notice.
Once again, I understand that this isn’t necessarily objective truth. I know that there are plenty of ways to circumnavigate enemies without the use of advanced weapons or skills, and I understand that me being stubborn was more often the problem than not, I do feel like the game communicates what you are even capable of very poorly at times. At least I can confidently say that it does get better, you do get much more ways to engage with enemies outside of just shooting at them. The other problem here is that combat feels woefully unbalanced. Some options are just always stronger than others.
For example, the shotgun is just always the best option of doing damage. There is nothing that this thing cannot chew through. Doesn’t matter if they’re aliens, robots or humans, the shotgun will take them down. You don’t even necessarily need to upgrade it, it’s just always the best option. There are other guns that work better at range or have other perks, but considering that 90% of the game takes place in rather cramped environments with small corridors and relatively low ceilings, there is almost never any reason to switch to anything else. I basically only used the standard pistol (I did switch this one for the golden version, which is just the same but better in every way) and the shotgun, and made use of the Typhon skills for combat purposes for the whole game. I tried other weapons, but they all felt very impractical to use, ammo was way too rare (or expensive to craft) or they slowed your already quite sluggish character down to a snail’s pace. Very occasionally I would also use the stun gun on robots, but as soon as I unlocked the ability to electrify enemies with mind powers, I don’t think I ever used that gun again. Generally speaking, Typhon powers are also unbelievably strong. The devs tried to balance it by making PSI regen items rather rare, but it turns out that you can do a side quest in which the entire water supply of Talos-1 becomes enriched with PSI, so you basically have infinite and free PSI at every single sink in the game. This of course means that using guns that use finite ammunition (you can theoretically run out of crafting materials, believe it or not) that deal less damage than mind powers, which can be potentially used infinitely as long as you have a sink in the vicinity, feels almost comically useless.
There are of course also various grenades, but they don’t really add that much to the feeling of combat. The recycler charges are a really neat concept though, it’s just that I found them much too valuable to be using in combat, rather than simply using them to clear road blocks.
So much for the feel of combat on the player’s end. Overall, I’d say it’s perfectly fine as soon as you understand how you’re actually meant to play this game. The closest thing I can compare this to is the feeling you get when playing a Souls game for the first time, particularly the older ones where, once you get it, it’s some of the best stuff in gaming but the game is just not good at telling you how you’re meant to play it. Now let’s talk about the various enemies.
In general, a game having an unbalanced and slightly flawed combat system doesn’t have to be necessarily bad if the enemies are interesting and varied enough. Sadly, I can’t say I found Prey’s enemies to be all that interesting, or engaging for the most part. They don’t really do it for me in terms of horror either, unless I’m really going out of my way to unpack the meta narrative of it all, and how the story presents an interesting Lovecraftian idea about opening a Pandora’s box of knowledge.
As far as the Typhon go, I don’t find their visual design particularly compelling. I think they look rather dull for the most part. Like they went out of their way to make their design as nondescript as possible. They are all variations on the same bunch of black goo that takes different forms and shapes. The general variety of enemies is also rather low. There are only 7 unique Typhon types: Mimics, Phantoms, Poltergeists, Techno- and Telepaths (which function almost the same way), Cystoids, Weavers and Nightmares. I’m not counting the Apex, since that one isn’t really an “enemy” per se.
Let’s start with the Mimic; fitting, since it’s the first enemy we see. Which is itself strange, because they are probably the most creative and interesting enemy in the entire game. Mimics can turn into any single object in the room, from random coffee mugs to chairs to actual items the player might want to loot like health pick ups, ammunition and even weapons. They are rather small, but they are vicious and fast. They are almost indistinguishable from normal items, meaning you’ll get a surprise ambush if you’re not double checking everything. While you could just shoot or attack every object in the room, it’s a lot easier to watch for a specific sign; they randomly twitch every few seconds, like they’re glitching out. Theoretically, this is probably the strongest horror element in here, at least on a gameplay level. It makes for some genuine paranoia whenever you walk into a dimly lit room with a lot of objects, never knowing which one of them might come to life. Their one problem isn’t even related to their design, but rather to Prey seriously pushing what is even possible on a PS4 - the many, many visual glitches. I lost count of how many times I lost track of what is a Mimic and what isn’t due to objects just randomly twitching by themselves, or lights flickering because the engine can’t keep up. I’ll get a bit more into this a bit later, but for now not much else can be said about Mimics. They are small and fast, but can be killed relatively easily, even at the start. (There are also “Greater Mimics” which are slightly larger and stronger but otherwise identical.)
The same cannot be said about Phantoms. They are quite a bit stronger, faster and tankier than Mimics, and especially the elemental ones will tear you a new one in the early game. They attack you with the same powers you will get later down the line, and they are quite tanky for first encountering them literally in the tutorial area. They come in all sorts of flavours, from the “normal” ones with kinetic powers, to Etheric (psychic), Voltaic (electric) and Thermal (heat). The etheric one is perhaps the most interesting since it can clone itself, but other than that they behave pretty much identically.
Poltergeists could have been interesting, but they are woefully underused and not really all that threatening. Their gimmick is that they can turn invisible and create gravity reversal vortexes beneath your feet, which can deal a lot of damage if you don’t realise what’s happening. They are not really all that threatening though, as they are almost always alone and in rather small spaces, so finding them is never a huge challenge.
Tele- and Technopaths are, for all intents and purposes, the same enemy. Both of them work by controlling other units, either humans or robots. Kill them, and their slaves are free - at least that’s true for the Telepath. Unlike the other Typhon enemies, I think their design is genuinely a bit creepy, the way you can’t really tell where front and back is on this thing. Generally, these guys can provide you some of the more interesting combat challenges since the Telepath holds human characters hostage that you can free and later meet in a different section - meaning that there is a very strong incentive of trying to NOT get the humans killed - and the Technopaths will often hinder your path by blocking doors or elevators. They also often control turrets, which can be hacked after the death of the Technopath, so you can secure the area afterwards.
Cystoids are basically sentient mines that hover towards the player and explode. Less of an enemy and more like a stage hazard. They are produced and stored in Cystoid Nests, which stop producing them if you destroy the nests. Since they explode when you kill them, you can also just shoot them into each other for maximum damage. Pretty fun when it happens.
Finally, we have the Weavers, which are the strongest regular Typhon enemies. Visually, they resemble mimics but are much larger, with far more appendages and they possess the ability to construct Coral, an orange-glowing spiderweb-like substance that seems to facilitate the spread of Typhon creatures across the station. This stuff is everywhere in the station and it keeps spreading. The weavers don’t really attack by themselves, instead they’ll create a bunch of cystoid to keep you distracted while they run away. In the lore of the game, they are also responsible for creating other Typhon, such as Mimics, Phantoms and Techno/Telepaths.
While these were all regular enemies, there is one more special enemy we’ll occasionally run into; the Nightmares. They are gigantic Phantom-like Typhon that stalk the player throughout the station, and will randomly appear to hunt us down. When we first encounter them they are basically unkillable, unless you’re extraordinarily skilled at the game. They are extremely fast, have short- and long ranged attacks, are capable of one-shotting you and are seldom alone. Upon appearing, they trigger a mini-sidequest in which you need to either evade it for 3 minutes, or kill it. Like I said, at first you’ll most likely just run away. And, if you make the mistake of trying to kill one in the early game like I did, you’ll probably keep on doing that for a while. And, in all honesty, running away is almost always the better option. Doing this will make it so the Nightmare won’t appear for 20 minutes, while killing it extends this to 30, and you also get a bit of Typhon crafting material. That is SO not worth it. Like, that’s almost ridiculous. It is by far the hardest enemy to fight in the game, and it nets you the same amount of Typhon material you’d get by clearing a room of weak mobs.
Let’s quickly move on to the more robotic enemies on the station, although there is not much to say here.
There are basically only 2 types of machines; turrets and operators.
Turrets function exactly like you’d think. They are autonomous guns that shoot at enemies. If you play the game without using any Typhon Neuromods, these things will never even consider you enemies unless they’ve been taken over by a Technopath. If you DO have enough Typhon material in you, they’ll start detecting you as a threat after a while. You can however hack them to make them friendly to you in either case. They can be very useful in certain situations, since they do have a surprising amount of firepower.
Operators are a bit more complicated. There are 3 types of operators; Medical, Science and Engineering. All three of them also come in friendly varieties. The friendly versions essentially provide infinite healing, PSI-regen and suit-integrity repair services respectively. They can be produced via a dispenser that typically needs to be repaired or hacked to be accessed and made usable.
As enemies, they’re surprisingly persistent and annoying. They basically only take damage from kinetic and electric attacks, and especially the Medical and Science bots’ shock attack deals a lot of damage. While you cannot restore them normally, you can use the hacking ability to turn them into friendlies one at a time.
The game introduces one more operator type towards the end, the Military Operator. These things are tough. They can fire lasers at you from very far away and eat through your healthbar like it’s nothing. I have some problems with them, but more related to the game’s story, and less their status as enemies. But they are pretty annoying to deal with as well, especially since the game will mercilessly dump them on your head literally every step of the way. The one saving grace is that, if you manage to hack them, these things can take out entire Typhon squads for you without blinking.
So, that’s it for the enemies in this game. Not much else to say about any of them. I will say that the game does a fine job of keeping things fresh with new enemies until roughly 30% through, after which you’ll see the same enemies appear over and over again. It’s kind of wild to me that the original System Shock did a better job at this 30 years ago. Especially towards the end, you’ll be slicing through the same enemies you fought at the start like a 1000°C knife through butter.
With the enemies out of the way, let’s talk about the world design a bit more. In theory, it’s great. In praxis, it’s still good but severely impacted by the fact that physically getting around is just so tedious. It never really feels like you’re gaining ground against the fact that you’ll have to backtrack through areas over and over again, without really finding anything that might make subsequent trips a little easier or at least take less long. Yes, you do unlock some locked doors between areas, you will unlock a big elevator that goes between some areas and the GLOO gun can create shortcuts were there were none. There is also the GUTS system and going outside of Talos-1. The GUTS system is a neat experience for the first time, but repeated traversal through it feels unnecessarily punishing. It’s also not particularly fast. The same goes for flying outside the station. While, yes, you can theoretically go from any area to any other by doing this, in reality most doors are jammed shut from the other side and you’re equally slow outside the station as you are inside. There is potentially some cool stuff to find out here, but most of it is locked by either a number code or by the lack of some specific ability. While it is cool in theory that it exists, once again, in praxis flying all the way out to some random piece of debris a mile away from the station only to be met with a door you cannot physically get to open is just disappointing. I don’t think I went back to any one of these, simply because getting there was such a hassle, and more importantly; I knew it was just going to be Neuromods anyway.
Neuromods are, in theory, a great reward for exploration, since they facilitate the feedback loop of finding items to unlock abilities to find more items. The problem comes from the fact that you can create them yourself very early. This problem’s nature is twofold, once in the sense that being able to unlock some of the game’s most broken abilities relatively early to the start of the game can of course utterly break the balance of the experience. That may be intended however, and I don’t necessarily see this as a huge issue. The bigger problem comes from the fact that exploration very rarely rewards you with anything better or more valuable than Neuromods anyway, meaning that what little incentive there was to go back to a random shuttle outside of Talos-1 is now utterly gone, since you know you won’t be getting any unique rewards. What makes this whole problem even more severe is that - sometimes - there IS unique and cool stuff to find, like interactions with NPCs, cool environmental storytelling moments, and maybe even a unique weapon or something. These moments are few and far between though.
This has all been fairly critical and negative, so let’s come back to something positive again.
The art direction in this game, especially in terms of environmental designs, is incredible. I genuinely think that this is one of the best looking PS4 games out there. In fact, I kinda wish it wasn’t tied to this console in particular, as the games fantastic looking environments and set designs clearly put a lot of strain on the game’s overall performance. This game would benefit from a PS5 remaster to an unbelievable degree, just so we could get a stable 60fps out of this. I’m not usually as adamant about increasing frame rates for a game that works fine, and I’m typically also ok with a stable 30 - if it IS stable, which in this case, it sadly isn’t. Graphically, it wouldn’t even need one as it looks genuinely great. The visual variety in between the zones is amazing too. From the very 80’s corporate-style Lobby, with lots of cozy, wooden browns and reds and greens, to the dark, blue and red Reactor level, the amazing looking, lush and green Arboretum, the scary and mechanical Neuromods Division and Psychotronics.. etc. Where the designers seemed to have conserved energy with the enemy variety, they seem to have gone all out with the areas. Ultimately, not a bad choice, as this game clearly plays much more around interacting with the world than the enemies. This is also where we need to address the similarities to System Shock, its biggest and most obvious inspiration when it comes to the overall design of Prey. In terms of locations, Prey does a much better job of making it all feel more natural and less video-gamey. While I love System Shock, and I ultimately prefer it a bit to Prey, the latter really makes Talos-1 feel like a real place that exists as a space station first and foremost, and a video game level second. System Shock’s Citadel Station feels also very immersive and authentic for the time, but these days the video-gamey structure is far more obvious.
Where I thought that the overall story was a bit lacklustre overall, the various side quests are great and often do a much better job of really pulling you right into the experience than the main plot. My favourite (and I reckon I’m not alone with this) would be the side quest about the imposter cook, in which you will have to deal with a terrifyingly fiendish foe, who is easily more threatening than any alien or machine on board. What’s worse is that, by the end, it’s hard to fault him for really wanting to see you dead. He’s a great villain and a real trickster. He will put really well hidden recycler charge traps everywhere, being able to kill you outright. I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t feel like describing his entire, very lengthy quest, but I really enjoyed it from start to finish.
In general, it’s quite impressive just how much of the side quests’ story contents end up flowing back into the main plot, depending on what you do - or don’t do. Characters will give different dialogues, engage differently with the story or maybe even not be there at all, depending on whether or not they’ve died. Or take the previously mentioned side quest about putting PSI in the general water supply, making the entire game play totally differently. I’ve already praised the game for its extensive immersive sim mechanics in terms of second-to-second gameplay, but what I find even more impressive is just how many different angles they considered for how the story might play out. It’s almost a shame how thinly the plot is constructed in terms of making the player progress from one area to another, because the lore and implications of the story are great.
Seeing how often I addressed it by now, we should probably talk about the actual plot. We already explored the opening of this game at the start of the review, now let’s get back to where we left off.
Morgan finds themselves on Talos-1, without any idea of how they got here or why. We just escaped the Neuromod Division, which held the little fish bowl laboratory in which we were seemingly observed and studied, but why? The AI with our voice, January, says it might have some answers, but that we need to go to our office and watch a video to understand it all. We have an office? What exactly is going on here? Turns out, not only are we on this station already, but we are actually the vice president of TranStar, and thus the co-owner of this station. By watching a video/hologram on a 3D screen by the company Looking Glass (a not very subtle hint to Looking Glass Studios, creators of System Shock and it’s sequel) that Morgan recorded for themselves sometime in the past, we learn that we are suffering from permanent memory loss due to our experimentation with Typhon-based Neuromods. As we learned, removing a Neuromod also removes all memories and experiences that were gained since it got installed. Video-Morgan also explains to current Morgan that they created January for this exact scenario, and that we can and should trust it to have our best interest at mind. Before we can finish watching the whole video, it gets interrupted by a certain someone.
Morgan’s brother, Alex Yu, explains that he can’t have us watching the rest of this video, out of fear that we might understand everything horribly wrong, and that he personally needs to explain the situation to us. January, however, implies that we shouldn’t trust Alex, and that we need to get to the Hardware Labs to get Looking Glass back online. After fighting our way through the labs and doing just that, we go back to the office to watch the rest of the video, in which past-Morgan states that - in the event of a Typhon outbreak - we need to destroy everything. The station, the research and most importantly, the Typhon. This of course, sadly, includes ourselves. Past-Morgan also warns us that Alex will certainly try and stop us. January introduces itself in “person” (it inhabits an operator) and sends us to fix the station’s main lift. To do that, we first need to go to Psychotronics. This is where the Typhon first broke out of their confinement.
Some quick lore context: In this universe, JFK survived his assassination attempt, and the USA - for some reason - got really invested in the space race, much more than in our timeline. Not sure what JFK surviving would have to do with that, but whatever. Some time during the 1960’s, the US discovers a strange alien species which they name Typhon. The USSR joins the US in a scientific effort to study the species, and begin to construct a station which would later become Talos-1. Later, when the USSR collapses sometime in the 80’s (earlier than in our timeline) and the US practically own the whole station, the Typhon break containment for the first time and kill a bunch of scientists, leading the US to abandon the project. Much later, during the 2020’s, TranStar acquires the station and restarts the research project on the Typhon. They massively increase the station’s size and build around the original station like a big church built around a small chapel. This original station is what would later become Psychotronics, and you can tell that this place is much older than the rest of Talos-1.
Moving on. After entering Psychotronics, we get contacted by yet another AI with our voice, this one’s called December. This one was also created by Morgan, but even before January. It informs us that, other than blowing up the whole station alongside ourselves, we could also just dip, using Alex’s escape pod. We’d just need to find his keycard, which we won’t find for a little while. This becomes an alternate ending to the game you can absolutely go for. As soon as you find that keycard, you’re basically free to go and end the game right then and there - if you’re ok with being this selfish. If we’re not going for this specific ending, our ultimate goal in any case is to find our Arming Key, a keycard that holds the self-destruct code of the nuclear reactor which powers this station. (Another very obvious nod to System Shock)
And starting from here, this is where we get into the section of the story I was talking about before, the part where the actual plot kind of devolves into sending you around the whole place to solve some fairly ad-hoc problems every time. The station security captain asks you to bail them out, go to this area. Oh now, something doesn’t work again, gotta go to this other area and fix it. Now something else happened, and you gotta go somewhere else yet again. Now you need to systematically gather different voice logs of a certain employee to unlock a door that leads to another area, making you run around the entire station to find the pieces. It feels weirdly unfocussed for a game that had such an eventful beginning with so many plot-strains introduced right at the start. That is not to say that there aren’t genuinely cool story moments afterwards, because there are.
Unravelling the dynamic between Morgan and Alex is very interesting, and I find it cool how often your perspective of Alex can change in a single playthrough. Depending on your viewpoint, Alex is either a ridiculously cruel and callous person, a straight up evil capitalist who will sacrifice anything and anyone just to further his own, immediate gains, or a very reasonable albeit thick-headed savant, a genius in his field of research with a very single minded but ultimately somewhat noble goal, to allow humanity a massive leap forward. The many interactions and conversations you have with him make for a multitude of possible interpretations of his character, and I think that’s great. He is very well written.
The next bit that’s actually interesting story wise, is when Alex locks us in Deep Storage, on our way to retrieve the schematic for our Arming Key. He locks us in here, to keep us (relatively) safe for one, but also obviously so we can’t progress with our quest to blow up the station. Chief archivist Danielle Sho, seemingly surprised we’re still alive, tells us of a way out, by jettisoning a storage unit out into deep space, which knocks us unconscious. When we come to, we’re a couple hundred meters away from Talos-1, letting us explore the outside of the station for the first time. After a short while, Security Chief Elazar tells us that she can let us back in through the Cargo Bay. On the way there, we receive a distress signal by one Dr. Dayo Igwe, who locked himself in a cargo container to escape the Typhon, just like we did to escape from Deep Storage. While you can choose to either leave him to his doom or kill him, saving him is almost inarguably the best choice, as he will provide you with a lot of dialogue and story context but also some side quests, and his presence can pretty drastically change the outcome of the game’s ending.
After this, the marathon continues. We need to go back to the main station, but - oh no - Typhon are camping behind the only door connecting both parts. Now we need to go back and retrieve a whole bunch of turrets to guard the door. Do you see what I mean with my statement before, about how this game’s plot doesn’t really ever move beyond giving you very immediate problems that you’ll need to address now to move on to the next area. It feels strangely video gamey for a game that is otherwise very careful to NOT do that.
Next, we need to go to Life Support. There, Dr. Mikhaila Ilyushin informs us that we need to reboot the entire system fo Talos-1 to override the lockdown that Alex enforced. She’s dying from the symptoms of an illness she needs constant medicine for, locking her in place. We can choose to retrieve the medicine and save her, despite her wishes to the contrary. So we make our way to the reactor to reboot the station, only to find that we need to replace a broken piece of equipment that we have to go somewhere else for to find it. At this point the constant detours the game makes you go on feel honestly start to feel rather contrived and gratuitous. At least, it doesn’t take too long this time before we reboot the station. Doing this unlocks quite a few places, but also locks others off because they’ve been overrun by this point. Alex finally invites us to his office up in the Arboretum to talk face to face.
Yeah, right. Did you seriously think this game wouldn’t throw another red herring your way? When you arrive there, Alex is obviously not in his office, and instead makes you watch a Looking Glass video of him and Morgan from quite a bit back. This Morgan is wildly different than the Morgan you listened to in the first video. They are seemingly fully aware and in acceptance that experimenting with Neuromods might drastically change their personality, and that they are willingly doing all of this to go all the way to the end with Typhon-based research. This Morgan staunchly believes that Neuromod research will lead to the benefit of all humankind and believes that any and all sacrifices are necessary to keep it going.
This is, in my opinion, a very interesting moment that questions your motives as a player, as well as Morgan, the character. We have different versions of the same person, separated only by a few months who utterly disagree on what to do in this situation. Old Morgan is willing to go all the way, saying that them losing their memory is an acceptable outcome to them, and that it’s imperative that current Morgan keeps getting reminded of that. The newer, still not quite current, post-Neuromod-removal Morgan instead feels quite differently, they are willing to put their own life on the line to stop it all. The question is; which one is the real Morgan? Surely it’s the one before the removals. But, on the other hand, wouldn’t the real Morgan be the one that doesn’t have any preconceived notions about what to gain from this? The more important question: Does it really matter? What is important to the current Morgan? This is perhaps the closest the game gets to actually getting really freaking profound with its story. It’s such an interesting question being posed here.
To come back to the actual plot at hand, Morgan learns that they made plans for a so-called Nullwave device, which would be able to completely kill all Typhon within a very large radius, more than enough to envelop the entire station. These Nullwaves can also be used as regular weaponry, both in form of a gun and grenades. If I understand this correctly, they effectively act like phase-shifted brainwaves that cancel out the psionic brainwaves (and thus the psychic powers) of the Typhon, kinda like how noise-suppression technology cancels out incoming sound by producing an exactly phase-shifted version of that very same sound. This realisation basically opens up a third possible ending, in which you try and kill all the Typhon instead of abandoning the station or blowing it up, instead trying to salvage the research.
Our next quest is to scan certain Coral clusters outside of the station, to gather enough data to be able to actually construct the Nullwave device. Regardless of whether we want to do this or not, Alex promises to just give us his Arming Key, effectively forcing us to do it. In either case, we have to go back outside. I feel like making this an actual player choice might have added a little more freedom to the end of the game, but I can take it or leave it. Outside, January contacts us again to make the point that past-Morgan doesn’t necessarily speak for current-Morgan, and that we should really think about what WE want. Not too much later, Alex contacts us to tell us that our parents - the owners of TranStar and main benefactors and sponsors of Talos-1 - have somehow caught wind of the outbreak and decide to try and nip this little problem in the bud.
During an attempt to upload the data, literally as if on cue (because it is), suddenly the system shots down and our parents’ contingency plan is set into motion. The so-called “Recovery team” has arrived at the station, and its chief, Walter Dahl, is out to smoke our asses. Turns out, their parents don’t give two shits about Morgan and Alex. In praxis, this recovery team is basically just this mercenary and a whole bunch of Military Operators (I told you we’d talk more about them) that now occupy literally EVERY. SINGLE. LEVEL. of this entire station. His orders are to kill everyone, destroy the entire station, and then pretend it just blew up for some reason. Apart from this being annoying to deal with in general, I was just rolling my eyes at Prey going “OH NO something went wrong at the very last second AGAIN!?? WOW! OH NO! How could this happen?? What an unlikely occurrence!!”
This is where the plot and even the pacing of the game sadly kind of falls apart for me. Let’s start with the fact that having to deal with these fuckers is the most annoying shit in this entire game. They will literally gank you every single step of the way from that point on all the way until the end, with only very occasional breaks. They are very tanky, deal absurd amounts of damage, can fly, and are constantly being produced by all the Operator Dispenser machines throughout the entirety of Talos-1, because Dahl hacked them. The only way to stop them is to kill them or hack them. Killing them truly is easier said than done, as these things will shred through ANYTHING, even the Nightmare Typhon is no match for even 2 of those things. Even IF you manage to kill them, the nearest operator will just keep on churning out more of them, so you’ll have at least 3 to deal with at any time. Hacking them requires the highest level hacking skill there is in this game - Hacking IV. As if hacking them wasn’t difficult enough (you have to stand next to them without them seeing you), you actually have to hack all 3 hostile Military Operators in ANY area for them to stop constantly spawning. The only other way to stop them from spawning on top of your ass is to simply finish the next part of the story, essentially meaning that the only effective way to deal with this is to run past everything and beeline it to the end. That also means that you better explored every nook and cranny of this station before this point, because… good luck trying to explore during this shit.
The part that really irks me is how haphazardly this all is implemented in the story. These things are literally being produced by the station’s own operator dispensers. They all run through a centralised system, with all data shared between them. How on earth did Talos-1 and its entire crew get fucked up this bad when THESE THINGS exist? As explained before, these things can shred through entire armies of Typhon, including the really big, scary ones like the Nightmare. With this technology readily available, there should be absolutely no way the Typhon could spread as much as they did, seeing how Dahl eradicates most of them in a couple of hours. Some people might argue that Dahl probably first introduced them to Talos-1, and that they didn’t exist before. The problem is that, in an optional log file you can learn the fact that these things were literally designed ON Talos-1, and that Dahl’s operator, Kaspar, is basically just forcing the dispensers to endlessly produce Military Operators with schematics that already existed on board. Unless I am missing some crucial pieces of info, this is a pretty glaring plot hole that could’ve been easily solved by writing a few lines of extra dialogue. This probably wouldn’t bother me if a.) this wasn’t an extremely important plot detail that could literally delete the entire core conflict of this story and b.) it wasn’t quite indicative of a general lack of care and polish that went into the end game.
So, we have to deal with Dahl and his horde of robots. To shut them down, we have to get to the Shuttle Bay and stop Kaspar, his main operator. We can either kill or hack it, it makes no difference gameplay wise. Important: Before we come here, we can talk to Dr. Igwe and Dr. Ilyushin back at Morgan’s office. We can actually talk to them a whole bunch of times throughout the game, and both will give you side quests. I particularly liked Mikhaila’s quest and the moral conundrum it presents you with, and it’s one of the best pieces of characterisation that Morgan gets in this whole game - weird how it’s completely optional and highly missable. The important bit would be Dr. Igwe’s suggestion of not killing Dahl, and instead simply incapacitating him, removing his Neuromods and telling him that his order was to rescue us. Depending on how you play this game, and what ending you value most, this can get you what is arguably this game’s best endings, but I’ll get to that in just a bit.
After we’ve stopped Kaspar, the final stretch of the game begins. We also learn that Kaspar was manually stopping the Coral-data upload from happening, presumably to make sure there was absolutely NO evidence left of what happened here. That makes me think of something. I just realised that I haven’t really explained why exactly one would want to delete what happened on this station from history.
Well, turns out that the primary test subjects for most experimentation with Neuromods were.. prisoners. Russian death row prisoners, no less. These prisoners apparently all got offered a deal at some point during their wait on death row, where they could gain “””freedom””” in exchange for participating in science experiments in space. These science experiments were some of the most gruesome stuff imaginable. From slowly injecting subjects with minor amounts of Typhon to letting putting a person and a mimic into an enclosed space and just… see what happens. We also learn that basically all Phantoms on the station were previously those very same prisoners. No wonder they’re so hellbent on killing you. All of this of course means that Morgan Yu, regardless of what they choose to do past their Neuromod removal, is a criminal, piece of shit scumbag of the highest margin. When I learned this, I felt like blowing up the station not because it was the right thing to do, but because I hated Morgan so much and found that they deserved it.
But before we get to that, let’s finish this up. We receive a distress call from Alex, saying that Dahl is about to break into his safe room. When we reach the Arboretum again, we have to make a choice of how to deal with Dahl. Remember, if we don’t kill him here, Dr. Igwe can make him forget what his actual reason for coming here was. This would have been the preferred outcome for me, but sadly my game glitched and Dahl somehow died, even though I knocked him out with the stun gun and he was at around half health. The next time I checked, he was suddenly dead with no explanation of what might have happened. I still have no idea how this happened, and I’m still kinda salty. But that’s just the level of quality to expect from a Bethesda-published game at this point.
Regardless of what we do, the final confrontation with Alex is here. You can of course, just kill him and grab the key, but that would be needlessly barbaric at this point in the story. The least we can do is hear him out, seeing how Morgan truly is no angel themselves either. Alex does give us the key, as promised, but he also makes us listen to his monologue about how he knows, deep down inside, that we also want what Alex wants. In terms of what the true, actual Morgan with all their memories and experience before the removal intact would think, I think Alex is quite right. Morgan seems like an incorrigible megalomaniac, just like their brother. What’s more important is that Alex made a discovery… the Coral talks. It emits a signal somewhere into deep space, and also connects all Typhon to each other. Through this discovery, he was able to create a Nullwave device that can hijack this Coral network and send a massive NW pulse directly through it, meaning it would kill every single organism hooked into this network.
In this very second, the destination of the mysterious Coral signal becomes clear. Out of nowhere, literally materialising into the vacuum of space, swallowing the entire station in a single gulp like a black hole, appears the Apex Typhon. A gargantuan, unfathomably large Typhon organism that makes the Nightmare look like an ant in comparison. This is perhaps the strongest story moment since the very beginning of the game, since it throws you for a loop just as heavily as that first one. Panic sets in. The entire ship begins to crack and crumble. Turns out, the coral, and all of the smaller Typhon had only one single purpose: to survey and create the way for the Apex to arrive. To feed. To consume the entirety of Talos-1, and it won’t stop there. It has realised that there are more humans to feed on, and it’s already dangerously close to Earth. Things got really fucking serious really quickly. Next to this, Alex is floating around unconscious. We have to grab the key from him and get out of there, but we can also decide to save Alex by dragging his unconscious body into his safe room. If we don’t, we’re leaving him here to die.
Now, with both arming keys AND the Nullwave device in hand, we have to make a choice. And this choice is actually quite multifaceted, depending on how you’ve played the game. Should you decide to destroy the station, you must make your way down to the reactor again and start the self-destruct sequence with January waiting there. If you’ve saved Alex, he’ll show up here and destroy January, pleading with you not to do it. However, he won’t physically stop you from doing it, which feels kinda strange. At this point in time, I fully expected Alex to be ready to both kill and die for his project, but he destroys January before your eyes and yet won’t get in your way further than that. This really should’ve ended with you having to decide between your brother and everyone else.
If you decide to blow it up without having spared Dahl, you alone get the choice to either blow yourself up with the rest or make your way to to Alex’s escape pod and piss off. Everyone else will have to die regardless. IF you’ve saved Dahl, he’ll actually gather the precious few survivors of this station, including you and Alex, and leave for Earth. Like I said, initially I was going for the ending of getting the survivors out of here and blowing the station up with Morgan still in it, but since Dahl glitched himself to death on my save, I felt like blowing up the station without giving the others a chance to escape felt more like punishing them for Morgan’s crimes.
So I went for the other ending, in which you’ll have to trigger the updated Nullwave device to kill the Typhon. To do this, you’ll have to get all the way back to Psychotronics, almost at the start of the game. Remember how this is where the Typhon first broke out? This is where the heart of the Coral lies, the thickest, reddest, densest webbing on the entire station, and it just so happens to surround the very old Soviet satellite “Vorona-1”. This is where it all started. Shortly after it first got launched into space in 1958, Vorona-1 sent very strange readings back to the Soviet scientists, leading them to investigate. Predictably, all astronauts who were sent on that mission were lost and never seen again, and the existence of the Typhon kept a state secret. Only a few years later, President Kennedy and General Secretary Khrushchev would join forces to create the space program and station that would later become Talos-1. This very same satellite is still the core of the infection today, over 60 years later.
We place the Nullwave device on the satellite and make our way back to the bridge, where we would otherwise trigger the explosion. This time, however, if Alex survived before, it’ll be January knocking him out and pleading with you to blow the station up instead. It argues that there is no way to know for sure that all Typhon will 100% die, and that even IF that were the case, there were plenty of good reasons to destroy everything here. Should we decide to go through with it, January makes us kill it before we can launch the device. If we activate it, all the Typhon die and the station, along with all research, is saved. This feels almost a bit too good to be true, and that’s because it is.
Regardless of which choice we made, after each respective “””ending””” a very strange cutscene begins to play.
Without warning, a set of VR goggles lifts from your head. You are in a chair. In front of you, Alex Yu and 4 operators representing Drs. Igwe, Ilyushin, Elazar and Sho. Turns out, none of what you experienced for the last 20-30 hours or so was real. It was all a simulation. You are, in fact, a hybrid being, a mixture of human and Typhon genes. If you look down on your hands, you can even see black, Typhon-y fingers. What you experienced was in fact “a simulation based on the real Morgan’s memories”. So, to me this implies that everything on Talos-1 still happened, it’s just not YOU it happened to, at least not first. This whole thing has been an evaluation. A test to see whether or not you, unlike regular Typhon, are capable of a little human emotion called “empathy”. They are trying to see whether or not you, the human-typhon hybrid creature, are capable of bridging the gap between both species.
Why is this important?
It turns out that whatever the real Morgan was up to up there did nothing to stop the Typhon from utterly invading and dominating earth. Alex spins your chair around to reveal that the entire planet has been covered in Coral, with density many times that of even the thickest webbing on Talos-1. Earth is utterly, irrevocably lost. But there was one discovery that Alex made during the Talos incident that could somehow change everything; Typhon cannot feel empathy. They are incapable of it. So the team in front of you seemingly set out to create a simulation of reality that put the Typhon into the shoes of humanity, most likely with the idea to cultivate empathy through lived experience; the same way we do it as humans. All of those choices, whether to kill or spare people, to free prisoners, to provide medicine or to kill someone in cold blood; all of these choices will be addressed here in this final cutscene. All of it was part of the evaluation.
To me it sadly isn’t clear what exactly the ultimate end goal was here. Was it to create an ambassador for humanity? To create a new species with the strengths of both and weaknesses of neither? To negotiate peace? I’m honestly not sure, and no lore video on the subject has really been able to answer my question in a way that feels satisfying.
Ultimately, you are confronted with one final choice: Alex offers you his hand and asks you whether or not you want to work together. If you accept, you’ll take his hand, yours turns into a human hand and everything ends in that moment. If you decline, you instead kill Alex and presumably doom humanity for good.
To this day I’m not sure what I’m supposed to think of all of this. My initial gut reaction was extremely dismissive, and felt almost like a slap in the face. Were they really going for a “it was all a dream” explanation literally the last possible second? Surely they knew how cliché that might come across?
To the writers' credit, this does not come entirely out of nowhere. There is something that passed me by throughout my whole playthrough, and I didn’t quite realise its purpose until way after the fact. Very occasionally, when doing certain things, Morgan will experience something of a vision. They only last very short amounts of time, and we only see glimpses of some massive Coral network. The important bit is about what we hear. We hear Morgan’s voice, saying phrases like “Don’t let them do this to you”, “You’re not who they say you are”, “They’re lying to you”, “Kill them”, etc. At first, I thought these were kind of random and didn’t think too much about them. Then, when they got more frequent I assumed that they were talking about how “they” are either the Typhon or the corporate higher ups who intend on leaving you here. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. The thing that really made me get it was realising when exactly these visions are occurring. The first happens when you install your first Typhon-based Neuromod. The next happens when you make direct contact with Coral. The next happens when you get knocked out during the Deep Storage ejection and the final one plays when you place the Nullwave device on the Coral heart.
All of this is to say that they are definitely foreshadowing this ending, and that means that it’s essential to the story. This story was never about Morgan Yu defeating the Typhon, it was always about people trying to teach an alien how to be human. And I think that’s perfectly fine, and makes for a nice little extra shock at the end. It also calls back to the beginning of the game, where you break the glass to reveal the true world behind it. Ultimately, if I’m allowed to take this analysis on a bit of a meta-layer, Prey is a game about games, about choices and about how they have consequences, and this is reflected everywhere in the game. If you ask me, choosing not to kill Alex at the end almost feels like it’s doing a disservice to the story’s themes. Here we have a cautionary tale of two siblings who just couldn’t keep Pandora’s box closed, and no matter how hard they tried to control whatever was in there, it just got worse and worse with each attempt. They attempted to uncover the eldritch truth and expected not to get swallowed by the void.
The only thing I think might have really added to all of this was if they gave you the opportunity of actually breaking out of the simulation. Maybe getting all Typhon-neuromods could unlock the ability to simply reject or break it? Or maybe you could somehow merge with the Apex towards the end? Maybe it could happen automatically if you play like a bloodthirsty monster? Perhaps, doing something that the creators of this immersive simulation did not anticipate? An emergent situation, as it were? Of course you’d have to be extremely careful as to not spoil the ending, should a player discover it by accident. You could do what other games do, and only make this possible on NG+. I don’t know, I just really feel like breaking out of the simulation should be an option.
Those were my thoughts on the game’s overall plot. Before I end this absurdly long review of a game I can’t make up my mind about, here are some loose thoughts that didn’t really fit into the rest of the text.
I thought the game did a very good job at the facial animations and motion capture. The characters move very naturally, although they do occasionally exhibit certain Bethesda-isms. I also liked that all of the characters look really unique and distinct from one another. The same can be said for the voice acting, it’s very, very solid at the least. There were no stand-out performances or anything, but the overall level of quality was very good. My favourite is probably Alex, since he manages to convey a pretty sincere tone that feels more like “actual” acting rather than video game acting.
I wasn’t as much a fan when it came to how the game handles dialogue. While I understand that having Morgan talk throughout the whole game may have been a bit too much to ask, given how both of Morgan’s VA’s each voice January, December AND all Looking Glass videos, voice logs, and so on, that all feature Morgan. But I can’t help but feel that it’s pretty weird how no one ever questions why you’re not saying a single word throughout the whole thing. Not even Alex, your brother, notices that you’re weirdly quiet. Everyone just talks AT you for the whole game, and no one ever bothers to ask why you’re refusing to make a single sound. Then again, this was likely a deliberate choice with the intention of making you understand that Morgan is effectively a blank slate after their Neuromod removal, and that you’re supposed to imagine what Morgan is saying? I don’t know, I feel like there may have been a more elegant solution out there.
The soundtrack is pretty cool too. Nothing too extraordinary or out there, but a very solid mood-setter made by the one and only Mick Gordon. I will say that there is, surprisingly, not a whole lot of it. The official OST only features 30 minutes of music, and while I feel like there is probably more of it in the actual game, maybe it’s not even that much more. What is there is pretty memorable though. I obviously love the opening theme that feels really grand and epic and like you’re going on a big and cool adventure, only for the game to pull the rug from under you immediately afterwards. But I’m also quite partial to Alex’s, as well as January & December’s theme. They all have a cool, laid back Post Rock-ish vibe to them. Not as much a fan of the vocal tracks though.
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So yeah, those were pretty much my thoughts. If you read through all of this - first of all, thank you a whole lot! - you might have noticed that I kinda convinced myself while writing that I really should play through this game again some time soon. Really sitting down and writing my thoughts down like this made me realise that this really is a great game, but I also think I also showed that not quite everything I criticised here was JUST my lack of understanding. There are some genuine flaws here, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a great game.
Arkane Studios, man. Something just doesn’t really click between their games and me. I tried Dishonored (but I should try that one again), I tried Deathloop, I tried Arx Fatalis, and yet Prey is the only one I managed to finish, and even that wasn’t without problems. It is so strange because I truly don’t have the same issue with other developers in the genre. I wonder what the deal is here. I love immersive sims. I love Deus Ex to death. I S-ranked every mission in Cruelty Squad. I even enjoyed System Shock a lot, even though it also has lots of flaws. What is it with Arkane’s games that make them feel so… boring to me? Are they really so complex and incomprehensible that I legitimately don’t understand them? I don’t feel like that’s the case. It’s just something about my preferences that doesn’t really align with their game design philosophy. But I will keep trying. If you take anything away from this, let it be that I think that this is a great game, a fantastic game even, but it just didn’t resonate the same with me as it did with a lot of other people, and while that makes me a bit sad, I can always try and play it again to see if I get it on the next attempt.
8 / 10
8 / 10
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This is a weird one. By all rights, according to my taste and what I value in video games, I should love this game. I should be droning on about how it’s perhaps the most comprehensive AND expansive ImSim-gameplay I’ve ever seen. Not even Deus Ex allows for such a multitude of different options to tackle any given situation, and that one is one of my favourite games of all time. I mean, I’m even currently playing through Nightdive’s 2023 remake of System Shock, a game series very clearly serving as the inspiration for Prey (which btw, if for some reason you don’t know, is not related to the 2009 game of the same name at all) and somehow I’m liking that one more, even though Prey is probably objectively the better game. Lots of people even unofficially dubbed it “System Shock 3”, and it’s easy to see why. It’s gorgeous, with fantastically realised world design, equally competent individual level design, an unbelievably polished physics engine and some of the wildest, most gamebreaking abilities any first person shooter ever dared messing around with.
And yet, despite all of this, it didn’t really click for me. Or rather, it took so long that the game was effectively over by the time I developed a proper grasp on its intentions. Don’t get me wrong, I did get used to some of Prey’s more unconventional design choices, I did make an honest effort in trying to play the game in a way where I would make use of its most fun abilities, and I did finally end up enjoying the game quite a lot, especially towards the end. It’s just that, whenever I see people rank this as “the best” or even among the best Immersive Sim out there, something in me doesn’t really agree about it.
No matter how I splice it, how I think about it, the truth is: I was bored quite a lot when playing Prey. I got fairly close to being kinda done with this game on more than one occasion. It wasn’t until the later sections that the knot finally started to loosen a bit.
If I were trying to be as reductive as possible, I’d say something like “It’s more fun in theory than in praxis.”But I know that isn’t quite what’s happening here. Prey isn’t actually at fault in this instance - well, mostly. I think.
I’m the problem. I simply failed to connect with it the same way I did with other great ImSims like Deus Ex or Cruelty Squad, or even System Shock. Usually, in my other reviews (that you’ve totally read, I know) I would go into excruciating detail in analysing this game’s design and identifying its strengths and flaws. The thing is, I’m not sure if I can do the same here. Instead, this is going to be more of an exploration of why this objectively great game just didn’t resonate with me personally, at least at first.
IMPORTANT - Before we go any further I should mention that I have NOT played the “Mooncrash” DLC. Any points that might get addressed in the DLC do not affect my opinion of Prey.
I’ll begin with the things I enjoyed from the get go, the things that drew me in right at the start. Fittingly enough, let’s begin right there: at the start of the game.
We begin the game as Morgan Yu, a Chinese-American scientist (you can choose between male or female) who’s been recruited by their brother, Alex Yu, to join his company “TranStar” and work aboard the international space station “Talos-1” which is currently orbiting Earth’s moon. We wake up in our luxurious San Francisco apartment and are given time and space to fumble around with the controls, inspect the apartment and marvel at the incredibly detailed graphical assets. As soon as we feel like it, we may leave the apartment, talk a bit to the cleaning lady - who knows our name and everything - and head for the roof, where a helicopter is already waiting to take us to the TranStar HQ. The helicopter ride is beautiful and scenic, and presents us with one of the most iconic title cards in gaming. Alex is waiting for us, tells us how glad he is we joined the program and has us taking a little personality test with Dr. Bellamy. The tests are fairly average, very basic instructions and questions. We begin to wonder why exactly we’re doing this, and why the tests are so incredibly basic. Suddenly, Dr. Bellamy notices that his coffee mug is suddenly completely empty, even though it was filled up just a second ago. That’s because this mug is actually what appears to be some weird, dark and twisted alien life-form disguised as a mug that attacks the professor but before we can do anything we’re getting knocked out by nerve gas.
We wake up in our luxurious San Francisco apartment and are given time and space to fumble around with the controls… hold on. What is happening? Didn’t we leave the apartment already? Something’s… off. The objects are in different spots than they were when we left. We have 6 new mails, all saying “DANGER. LEAVE NOW.” We leave through the door, and see the cleaning lady dead on the floor. The way to the roof is locked. We find a big old wrench next to the lady and arm ourselves with it. Suddenly a voice speaks to us, but not just any voice: OUR voice. It introduces itself as “January” and tells us that what happened yesterday was not a dream, that we need to leave the apartment, and that we’re not safe. We remember that there was a balcony door we couldn’t open before. It’s still locked, but we do have a wrench in our possession. We decide that it’s our best bet to break the window and maybe somehow climb down the side of the building? We take a swing at the window and… it reveals that none of it was real. The apartment, the roof, the TranStar office, even the helicopter ride over there… all of it was literally a facade. A massive LED screen with pretty pictures on it. We realise we’re inside some massive laboratory. But why? What is going on? WTF happened yesterday? After you’ve made your way through the tutorial area, you arrive at a massive lobby which reveals the truth of your situation: We were on Talos-1 all along. Before us, a massive window with a silhouette of earth behind it. But there’s a problem; the entire station has been overrun by a hostile alien species, the Typhon. These aliens were discovered sometime in the 60’s during the space race, and were subsequently kept and experimented on what would eventually become Talos-1. They are quite different from humans in that they seem to exist as a sort of hive mind with psychic abilities, and it’s this discovery that lead scientists to capture and research them to unlock the technology that made the Yu family into the insanely wealthy, powerful people they are today; Neuromods. More on them later.
This is perhaps the strongest opening to any video game I’ve seen in a while. That moment when the wrench hits the glass and reveals the real, cold and dark set behind it feels almost uncanny. Like you’ve just no-clipped out of reality into a horror game. The sheer sense of intrigue that this produces is unparalleled by most other games, or even other forms of media. It immediately hooked me and made me want to find out more about what happened.
It’s very unfortunate then, that this is by far the best and most interesting moment in Prey’s story, and that everything which comes after the intro gradually feels less and less interesting, and becomes more of an excuse for you to traverse the massive space station than an actually interesting plot that drives you forward on its own. We’ll talk more about it down the line.
Something that continues to grow on me the more I think about it and watch other people play the game would be this game’s almost unbelievable amount of emergent gameplay, i.e. “Immersive sim stuff”. While the game “intends” for you to go through most of it in a fairly linear manner, you are given many opportunities to completely break this game in half with the various weapons, tools and abilities at your disposal. Take for example the GLOO Gun. It’s a gun that shoots some sort of wet, organic material that instantly hardens as soon as it makes contact. While its primary purpose is to slow down and immobilise the smaller Typhon enemies like the Mimic so they take more damage, it has multiple other applications as well. Most notably, you can create ledges to grab onto to climb high spaces, or you could create a bridge so you can cross perilous gaps. You can put out fires with it, or stop electrical currents. You can even create roadblocks for smaller enemies, so you can get to safety, and I’m sure there are some other uses as well. While most other weapons obviously don’t have quite the same amount of utility there are a surprising amount of things you can do with them as well. Recycler Charges are another fantastic and multi-faceted tool that can be used in a staggering amount of ways. They are deceptively simple; they break down whatever thing you throw it at into its core components. While this has obvious combat applications, and you can use them to farm those very same components, you can also use them to remove any obstructions or roadblocks that might be too heavy to lift, or otherwise out of reach. The last of the big components here would be the various abilities the player can unlock via the game’s aforementioned, signature technology - Neuromods. Neuromods are devices that are capable of capturing and saving the lived experiences and accumulated skills of a person, allowing for instant transferring of information and abilities from one person to another. If, say, you suck at playing the piano, there’s a Neuromod that lets you become Lev Ornstein himself. These basically function like your level up points within a skill tree / RPG system. The downside of this technology is that, if you were to remove a Neuromod from the user’s brain, you’d delete all of their memories up until the moment that Neuromod was first installed. That means, if you installed a Neuromod that taught you how to play the piano 3 years ago, not only will you lose the ability to play the piano, but you’ll also lose the entire last 3 years of your life. That’s bloody terrifying.
The Neuromod abilities come in 2 main categories, which both have 3 subcategories.
The main categories come in “Human” and “Typhon”. Human abilities are split into “Scientist”, “Engineer” and “Security” categories respectively, while “Typhon” is split into “Energy”, “Morph” and “Telepathy”.
“Scientist” mainly concerns your healing items and PSI - which is basically mana - as well as your hacking abilities. “Engineer” works on things like carrying heavy things (which can be one of the best skills in the game), your repair skills and materials (both target weapon upgrades as well), and “Impact Calibration”, which essentially just upgrades your wrench attacks. Finally for the Human mods, Security. This one obviously revolves mostly around weapon usage, but also your “Conditioning” (i.e. health points, stamina, toughness, mobility), your stealth level and even grants you a bullet-time ability.
Now the Typhon abilities. “Energy” is comprised mostly of psycho-energetic combat abilities, which can be used against the various Typhon or robot enemies (and/or even humans). These come in the form of “kinetic”, “electrostatic” or “thermal” energy blasts, and resistance to those very same elements. Kinetic even features a gravity reversal ability that lets you lift any object into the air - less useful in combat, and more for exploration. The “Morph” neuromods are perhaps the most interesting of the bunch. Perhaps the most underrated ability out of them all; “Mimic”, which like the name suggests lets you imitate any object in the room that isn’t glued to the floor, just like the enemies of the same name. While this can be used for stealth, its real use is more geared towards getting into tight, narrow spaces, maybe slipping underneath a small opening under some rubble, or fit through a tiny hole. It also grants you some minor health recovery abilities. “Phantom” is a weird one. The main ability is basically a very long dash/dodge that creates a doppelganger in the spot where you stood that can take a couple of hits before it disappears. You can also create doppelgängers by finding human corpses and reanimating them, although I have to admit I have never used this ability once. It also grants resistance to Ether based attacks. “Telepathy” features the “Backlash” tree, which creates an auto-deflect shield for 20 seconds that instantly repels enemy attacks. Next, “Psychoshock” which works similar to the Energy skills, lets you deal psychic damage, can one shot a lot of smaller enemies and completely disable enemies which use psychic abilities themselves. One of my favourite skills in the entire game has to be Mind Jack, which lets you turn enemies into allies that fight for you for 60 seconds, and even free human NPCs that are under Typhon mind control. Finally, there’s “Remote Control”, which lets you pick up and interact with objects up to 10 meters away (more if you upgade it) and also do the same as Mind Jack but for machines. Practically all Typhon abilities use PSI, and starting from a certain number of Typhon neuromods installed, the Talos-1 internal security system will start idenfifying you as Typhon as well, meaning you’ll be dealing with aliens, hacked robots, mind-controlled humans AND the station’s security functioning as intended.
Of course, you don’t have to use any neuromods you don’t want. You could play the game entirely without Typhon abilities, meaning that the station’s security system will never target you - which can be invaluable during later parts of Prey - or you could be playing it without ANY neuromods at all. It’s entirely possible to beat the game without acquiring a single ability.
So you can tell, there is quite a bit of freedom when it comes to how you can tackle any situation, and - theoretically - it’s incredibly fun to figure all of this out. I think my biggest problem with all of this, and why I think this whole concept is more in theory than in praxis lies with the fact that Prey is quite bad at actually explaining or relaying any of this to you. The only instance I can remember in which an ability is presented to you in a way that actually expands your horizon of it is seeing a dead NPC who tried to build a bridge with the GLOO gun. There are more problems with it, but once again, I’ll go into more detail later.
Another thing I wanna explicitly mention as genuinely great design and a fantastic and surprisingly deep game mechanic; the recycle system. Every single object, item and even character in this game consist of a set amount of materials, which are either organic, synthetic, mineral or Typhon based. There are 2 specialised kinds of machines that can be found throughout the station’s many levels. One is a recycling station, which - like the recycler charger - lets you break down any one item or object that can be picked up into its core components. The other, the fabricator, lets you create new objects from those very same components as long as you have the blueprint for it, which includes healing items, weapons, ammunition and even neuromods among others. This is genius, and made for an incredibly compelling gameplay loop, and some of the best crafting I’ve seen in a game. Literally any single object you pick up can potentially help in making you stronger, so no item you pick up is ever entirely worthless. System Shock had a similar system, but in that game you could only do it with very specific items, labelled as “junk”. Those “junk” items could either be vaporised into scrap metal or turned into money directly via a recycling station. You couldn’t recycle any weapons (except broken ones), grenades or other non-“junk” items. Here, in Prey, you can recycle anything.
The one thing where this system perhaps goes a little too far is with the ability to simply fabricate Neuromods yourself. While this is obviously a great tool for people who are trying to get very powerful as early as possible, it kind of takes away from the intrinsic joy of finding them in the wild. By proxy, it also diminishes the joy of exploration as a whole because, outside of very few unique items and weapons, Neuromods are going to be your main reward for exploring the map. You obviously can’t do this right from the start, but you can unlock this early enough that it can potentially trivialise a lot of Prey’s later sections.
Finally, let’s talk about Talos-1, as a video game world as well as a place within the story. There are very few video game maps as complete and authentic as this one. Taking very obvious cues from System Shock’s “Citadel Station”, Prey takes place entirely within (and around) Talos-1, which is made up of multiple different levels that are all stacked vertically on top of each other. Each layer serves a different purpose and its design reflects that. Like System Shock, Talos-1 needs to be traversed via a sort of “Metroidvania-lite” approach, in which you’ll be confronted with many locked doors or blocked paths that you’ll need to either find a key, password or pin code for, find the right ability to circumnavigate it, or open from the other side in one way or another. This is fantastic design, which allows for a fairly nicely structured, linear story line that the player can simply follow without thinking too much about where to go next, while also giving you the opportunity of completely breaking that very same pacing. You can grab items, weapons, abilities and much more well before you’re actually meant to find them if you know what you’re doing. But other than System Shock, Prey also lets you fly around outside of Talos-1, making for an alternate mode of traversal between its respective areas, and giving you even more stuff to find. This area can be quite tricky to navigate though, as enemies are numerous and orientation can be a bit rough.
So, up until now most of this sounds positively fantastic. An incredibly rich and multi-faceted gameplay system that allows for an almost unprecedented amount of freedom when it comes to the second-to-second experience. Deep and thoughtful world building, and a game world that feels entirely complete in-itself, and has diegetic explanations for close to everything that happens in game. Sounds like a dream come true.
So why, I ask myself, did it take so long for me to “get it”? Why did it take me close to 20 hours before I finally started to grasp how the game actually wanted me to play it when it took me roughly 25 to beat? Why did so many parts of the game feel so frustrating for me? Why did I get bored so often? Why did I have to stop the game to do something else multiple times? Why can’t I seem to recognise this game for the 10/10 that so many people say it is?
Right from the bat, you’re probably thinking “Well, that’s on you buddy.” And it likely is, for the most part. I’m definitely at fault for trying to play the game like it’s Cruelty Squad for the first couple of hours.
Let’s start with something that’s perhaps a bit subjective, but then again, so are most of my criticisms. The player character’s movement feels unbearably slow. Seriously. I unironically think that around half my problems with this game can be boiled down to how tedious it is to get around the place. This extends to all forms of movement, be it a simple walk from point A to point B, during combat or platforming; you always feel like gravity is twice as strong for you as it is for everything else. Even floating around outside the station feels unwieldy and impractical, even though can admittedly fly quite fast. There is a sprint button, but stamina is hilariously low at the start and requires multiple investments until you start to notice a change at all. I’m not expecting to to be able to dart around the map like it’s DOOM instantly, but considering that just about every other ImSim gave me ability to move a lot faster eventually, the complete lack of any real mobility upgrades just felt really off for me. Even System Shock gives you a speed upgrade a bit later in the game. Again, I know that this is very subjective and that a lot of people are likely going to disagree with me, but I really did not enjoy how much the game restricts your movement.
Now, I think I understand why the player character is so low. Prey is ultimately a bit of a space horror game - or at least, it presents itself like one. I know that Arkane Studios don’t really consider it a horror title, and in all honesty it’s not very scary. But there is an undeniable focus on some horror elements when it comes to engaging enemies. What I mean with that is; typically video game protagonists tends to be very slow in horror games, which makes sense as you want to make the player feel disempowered and like they’re in over their head. In this case, it’ll be the threat of most enemies in this game being able to catch up with you effortlessly. So, that means we have to square up and fight, then? Well… the problem with that is that almost all enemies are absurdly strong at the start of the game. As established, they are all quite fast, they all have more health than you’d think and starting with the Phantoms, they are able to delete you almost instantly. Even the mimics can be a real problem if you encounter more than one at a time. So, what exactly are we to do? Should we just avoid combat entirely? At least for the early game, that seems to be the idea. While you can absolutely play this game with only a few weapons you can obtain relatively early on, playing it like that is really hard and tedious. Combat is definitely a core component of this game, but it only starts to become interesting as soon as you’ve actually acquired a decent amount of Neuromods. For the first couple of hours, I was constantly save scumming just to get past minor enemy set ups. The obvious answer to this would be “just use stealth” but I sadly found stealth to be the most underdeveloped mechanic in the whole game. To this day, I do not fully understand what exactly enemies even can or can’t notice.
Once again, I understand that this isn’t necessarily objective truth. I know that there are plenty of ways to circumnavigate enemies without the use of advanced weapons or skills, and I understand that me being stubborn was more often the problem than not, I do feel like the game communicates what you are even capable of very poorly at times. At least I can confidently say that it does get better, you do get much more ways to engage with enemies outside of just shooting at them. The other problem here is that combat feels woefully unbalanced. Some options are just always stronger than others.
For example, the shotgun is just always the best option of doing damage. There is nothing that this thing cannot chew through. Doesn’t matter if they’re aliens, robots or humans, the shotgun will take them down. You don’t even necessarily need to upgrade it, it’s just always the best option. There are other guns that work better at range or have other perks, but considering that 90% of the game takes place in rather cramped environments with small corridors and relatively low ceilings, there is almost never any reason to switch to anything else. I basically only used the standard pistol (I did switch this one for the golden version, which is just the same but better in every way) and the shotgun, and made use of the Typhon skills for combat purposes for the whole game. I tried other weapons, but they all felt very impractical to use, ammo was way too rare (or expensive to craft) or they slowed your already quite sluggish character down to a snail’s pace. Very occasionally I would also use the stun gun on robots, but as soon as I unlocked the ability to electrify enemies with mind powers, I don’t think I ever used that gun again. Generally speaking, Typhon powers are also unbelievably strong. The devs tried to balance it by making PSI regen items rather rare, but it turns out that you can do a side quest in which the entire water supply of Talos-1 becomes enriched with PSI, so you basically have infinite and free PSI at every single sink in the game. This of course means that using guns that use finite ammunition (you can theoretically run out of crafting materials, believe it or not) that deal less damage than mind powers, which can be potentially used infinitely as long as you have a sink in the vicinity, feels almost comically useless.
There are of course also various grenades, but they don’t really add that much to the feeling of combat. The recycler charges are a really neat concept though, it’s just that I found them much too valuable to be using in combat, rather than simply using them to clear road blocks.
So much for the feel of combat on the player’s end. Overall, I’d say it’s perfectly fine as soon as you understand how you’re actually meant to play this game. The closest thing I can compare this to is the feeling you get when playing a Souls game for the first time, particularly the older ones where, once you get it, it’s some of the best stuff in gaming but the game is just not good at telling you how you’re meant to play it. Now let’s talk about the various enemies.
In general, a game having an unbalanced and slightly flawed combat system doesn’t have to be necessarily bad if the enemies are interesting and varied enough. Sadly, I can’t say I found Prey’s enemies to be all that interesting, or engaging for the most part. They don’t really do it for me in terms of horror either, unless I’m really going out of my way to unpack the meta narrative of it all, and how the story presents an interesting Lovecraftian idea about opening a Pandora’s box of knowledge.
As far as the Typhon go, I don’t find their visual design particularly compelling. I think they look rather dull for the most part. Like they went out of their way to make their design as nondescript as possible. They are all variations on the same bunch of black goo that takes different forms and shapes. The general variety of enemies is also rather low. There are only 7 unique Typhon types: Mimics, Phantoms, Poltergeists, Techno- and Telepaths (which function almost the same way), Cystoids, Weavers and Nightmares. I’m not counting the Apex, since that one isn’t really an “enemy” per se.
Let’s start with the Mimic; fitting, since it’s the first enemy we see. Which is itself strange, because they are probably the most creative and interesting enemy in the entire game. Mimics can turn into any single object in the room, from random coffee mugs to chairs to actual items the player might want to loot like health pick ups, ammunition and even weapons. They are rather small, but they are vicious and fast. They are almost indistinguishable from normal items, meaning you’ll get a surprise ambush if you’re not double checking everything. While you could just shoot or attack every object in the room, it’s a lot easier to watch for a specific sign; they randomly twitch every few seconds, like they’re glitching out. Theoretically, this is probably the strongest horror element in here, at least on a gameplay level. It makes for some genuine paranoia whenever you walk into a dimly lit room with a lot of objects, never knowing which one of them might come to life. Their one problem isn’t even related to their design, but rather to Prey seriously pushing what is even possible on a PS4 - the many, many visual glitches. I lost count of how many times I lost track of what is a Mimic and what isn’t due to objects just randomly twitching by themselves, or lights flickering because the engine can’t keep up. I’ll get a bit more into this a bit later, but for now not much else can be said about Mimics. They are small and fast, but can be killed relatively easily, even at the start. (There are also “Greater Mimics” which are slightly larger and stronger but otherwise identical.)
The same cannot be said about Phantoms. They are quite a bit stronger, faster and tankier than Mimics, and especially the elemental ones will tear you a new one in the early game. They attack you with the same powers you will get later down the line, and they are quite tanky for first encountering them literally in the tutorial area. They come in all sorts of flavours, from the “normal” ones with kinetic powers, to Etheric (psychic), Voltaic (electric) and Thermal (heat). The etheric one is perhaps the most interesting since it can clone itself, but other than that they behave pretty much identically.
Poltergeists could have been interesting, but they are woefully underused and not really all that threatening. Their gimmick is that they can turn invisible and create gravity reversal vortexes beneath your feet, which can deal a lot of damage if you don’t realise what’s happening. They are not really all that threatening though, as they are almost always alone and in rather small spaces, so finding them is never a huge challenge.
Tele- and Technopaths are, for all intents and purposes, the same enemy. Both of them work by controlling other units, either humans or robots. Kill them, and their slaves are free - at least that’s true for the Telepath. Unlike the other Typhon enemies, I think their design is genuinely a bit creepy, the way you can’t really tell where front and back is on this thing. Generally, these guys can provide you some of the more interesting combat challenges since the Telepath holds human characters hostage that you can free and later meet in a different section - meaning that there is a very strong incentive of trying to NOT get the humans killed - and the Technopaths will often hinder your path by blocking doors or elevators. They also often control turrets, which can be hacked after the death of the Technopath, so you can secure the area afterwards.
Cystoids are basically sentient mines that hover towards the player and explode. Less of an enemy and more like a stage hazard. They are produced and stored in Cystoid Nests, which stop producing them if you destroy the nests. Since they explode when you kill them, you can also just shoot them into each other for maximum damage. Pretty fun when it happens.
Finally, we have the Weavers, which are the strongest regular Typhon enemies. Visually, they resemble mimics but are much larger, with far more appendages and they possess the ability to construct Coral, an orange-glowing spiderweb-like substance that seems to facilitate the spread of Typhon creatures across the station. This stuff is everywhere in the station and it keeps spreading. The weavers don’t really attack by themselves, instead they’ll create a bunch of cystoid to keep you distracted while they run away. In the lore of the game, they are also responsible for creating other Typhon, such as Mimics, Phantoms and Techno/Telepaths.
While these were all regular enemies, there is one more special enemy we’ll occasionally run into; the Nightmares. They are gigantic Phantom-like Typhon that stalk the player throughout the station, and will randomly appear to hunt us down. When we first encounter them they are basically unkillable, unless you’re extraordinarily skilled at the game. They are extremely fast, have short- and long ranged attacks, are capable of one-shotting you and are seldom alone. Upon appearing, they trigger a mini-sidequest in which you need to either evade it for 3 minutes, or kill it. Like I said, at first you’ll most likely just run away. And, if you make the mistake of trying to kill one in the early game like I did, you’ll probably keep on doing that for a while. And, in all honesty, running away is almost always the better option. Doing this will make it so the Nightmare won’t appear for 20 minutes, while killing it extends this to 30, and you also get a bit of Typhon crafting material. That is SO not worth it. Like, that’s almost ridiculous. It is by far the hardest enemy to fight in the game, and it nets you the same amount of Typhon material you’d get by clearing a room of weak mobs.
Let’s quickly move on to the more robotic enemies on the station, although there is not much to say here.
There are basically only 2 types of machines; turrets and operators.
Turrets function exactly like you’d think. They are autonomous guns that shoot at enemies. If you play the game without using any Typhon Neuromods, these things will never even consider you enemies unless they’ve been taken over by a Technopath. If you DO have enough Typhon material in you, they’ll start detecting you as a threat after a while. You can however hack them to make them friendly to you in either case. They can be very useful in certain situations, since they do have a surprising amount of firepower.
Operators are a bit more complicated. There are 3 types of operators; Medical, Science and Engineering. All three of them also come in friendly varieties. The friendly versions essentially provide infinite healing, PSI-regen and suit-integrity repair services respectively. They can be produced via a dispenser that typically needs to be repaired or hacked to be accessed and made usable.
As enemies, they’re surprisingly persistent and annoying. They basically only take damage from kinetic and electric attacks, and especially the Medical and Science bots’ shock attack deals a lot of damage. While you cannot restore them normally, you can use the hacking ability to turn them into friendlies one at a time.
The game introduces one more operator type towards the end, the Military Operator. These things are tough. They can fire lasers at you from very far away and eat through your healthbar like it’s nothing. I have some problems with them, but more related to the game’s story, and less their status as enemies. But they are pretty annoying to deal with as well, especially since the game will mercilessly dump them on your head literally every step of the way. The one saving grace is that, if you manage to hack them, these things can take out entire Typhon squads for you without blinking.
So, that’s it for the enemies in this game. Not much else to say about any of them. I will say that the game does a fine job of keeping things fresh with new enemies until roughly 30% through, after which you’ll see the same enemies appear over and over again. It’s kind of wild to me that the original System Shock did a better job at this 30 years ago. Especially towards the end, you’ll be slicing through the same enemies you fought at the start like a 1000°C knife through butter.
With the enemies out of the way, let’s talk about the world design a bit more. In theory, it’s great. In praxis, it’s still good but severely impacted by the fact that physically getting around is just so tedious. It never really feels like you’re gaining ground against the fact that you’ll have to backtrack through areas over and over again, without really finding anything that might make subsequent trips a little easier or at least take less long. Yes, you do unlock some locked doors between areas, you will unlock a big elevator that goes between some areas and the GLOO gun can create shortcuts were there were none. There is also the GUTS system and going outside of Talos-1. The GUTS system is a neat experience for the first time, but repeated traversal through it feels unnecessarily punishing. It’s also not particularly fast. The same goes for flying outside the station. While, yes, you can theoretically go from any area to any other by doing this, in reality most doors are jammed shut from the other side and you’re equally slow outside the station as you are inside. There is potentially some cool stuff to find out here, but most of it is locked by either a number code or by the lack of some specific ability. While it is cool in theory that it exists, once again, in praxis flying all the way out to some random piece of debris a mile away from the station only to be met with a door you cannot physically get to open is just disappointing. I don’t think I went back to any one of these, simply because getting there was such a hassle, and more importantly; I knew it was just going to be Neuromods anyway.
Neuromods are, in theory, a great reward for exploration, since they facilitate the feedback loop of finding items to unlock abilities to find more items. The problem comes from the fact that you can create them yourself very early. This problem’s nature is twofold, once in the sense that being able to unlock some of the game’s most broken abilities relatively early to the start of the game can of course utterly break the balance of the experience. That may be intended however, and I don’t necessarily see this as a huge issue. The bigger problem comes from the fact that exploration very rarely rewards you with anything better or more valuable than Neuromods anyway, meaning that what little incentive there was to go back to a random shuttle outside of Talos-1 is now utterly gone, since you know you won’t be getting any unique rewards. What makes this whole problem even more severe is that - sometimes - there IS unique and cool stuff to find, like interactions with NPCs, cool environmental storytelling moments, and maybe even a unique weapon or something. These moments are few and far between though.
This has all been fairly critical and negative, so let’s come back to something positive again.
The art direction in this game, especially in terms of environmental designs, is incredible. I genuinely think that this is one of the best looking PS4 games out there. In fact, I kinda wish it wasn’t tied to this console in particular, as the games fantastic looking environments and set designs clearly put a lot of strain on the game’s overall performance. This game would benefit from a PS5 remaster to an unbelievable degree, just so we could get a stable 60fps out of this. I’m not usually as adamant about increasing frame rates for a game that works fine, and I’m typically also ok with a stable 30 - if it IS stable, which in this case, it sadly isn’t. Graphically, it wouldn’t even need one as it looks genuinely great. The visual variety in between the zones is amazing too. From the very 80’s corporate-style Lobby, with lots of cozy, wooden browns and reds and greens, to the dark, blue and red Reactor level, the amazing looking, lush and green Arboretum, the scary and mechanical Neuromods Division and Psychotronics.. etc. Where the designers seemed to have conserved energy with the enemy variety, they seem to have gone all out with the areas. Ultimately, not a bad choice, as this game clearly plays much more around interacting with the world than the enemies. This is also where we need to address the similarities to System Shock, its biggest and most obvious inspiration when it comes to the overall design of Prey. In terms of locations, Prey does a much better job of making it all feel more natural and less video-gamey. While I love System Shock, and I ultimately prefer it a bit to Prey, the latter really makes Talos-1 feel like a real place that exists as a space station first and foremost, and a video game level second. System Shock’s Citadel Station feels also very immersive and authentic for the time, but these days the video-gamey structure is far more obvious.
Where I thought that the overall story was a bit lacklustre overall, the various side quests are great and often do a much better job of really pulling you right into the experience than the main plot. My favourite (and I reckon I’m not alone with this) would be the side quest about the imposter cook, in which you will have to deal with a terrifyingly fiendish foe, who is easily more threatening than any alien or machine on board. What’s worse is that, by the end, it’s hard to fault him for really wanting to see you dead. He’s a great villain and a real trickster. He will put really well hidden recycler charge traps everywhere, being able to kill you outright. I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t feel like describing his entire, very lengthy quest, but I really enjoyed it from start to finish.
In general, it’s quite impressive just how much of the side quests’ story contents end up flowing back into the main plot, depending on what you do - or don’t do. Characters will give different dialogues, engage differently with the story or maybe even not be there at all, depending on whether or not they’ve died. Or take the previously mentioned side quest about putting PSI in the general water supply, making the entire game play totally differently. I’ve already praised the game for its extensive immersive sim mechanics in terms of second-to-second gameplay, but what I find even more impressive is just how many different angles they considered for how the story might play out. It’s almost a shame how thinly the plot is constructed in terms of making the player progress from one area to another, because the lore and implications of the story are great.
Seeing how often I addressed it by now, we should probably talk about the actual plot. We already explored the opening of this game at the start of the review, now let’s get back to where we left off.
Morgan finds themselves on Talos-1, without any idea of how they got here or why. We just escaped the Neuromod Division, which held the little fish bowl laboratory in which we were seemingly observed and studied, but why? The AI with our voice, January, says it might have some answers, but that we need to go to our office and watch a video to understand it all. We have an office? What exactly is going on here? Turns out, not only are we on this station already, but we are actually the vice president of TranStar, and thus the co-owner of this station. By watching a video/hologram on a 3D screen by the company Looking Glass (a not very subtle hint to Looking Glass Studios, creators of System Shock and it’s sequel) that Morgan recorded for themselves sometime in the past, we learn that we are suffering from permanent memory loss due to our experimentation with Typhon-based Neuromods. As we learned, removing a Neuromod also removes all memories and experiences that were gained since it got installed. Video-Morgan also explains to current Morgan that they created January for this exact scenario, and that we can and should trust it to have our best interest at mind. Before we can finish watching the whole video, it gets interrupted by a certain someone.
Morgan’s brother, Alex Yu, explains that he can’t have us watching the rest of this video, out of fear that we might understand everything horribly wrong, and that he personally needs to explain the situation to us. January, however, implies that we shouldn’t trust Alex, and that we need to get to the Hardware Labs to get Looking Glass back online. After fighting our way through the labs and doing just that, we go back to the office to watch the rest of the video, in which past-Morgan states that - in the event of a Typhon outbreak - we need to destroy everything. The station, the research and most importantly, the Typhon. This of course, sadly, includes ourselves. Past-Morgan also warns us that Alex will certainly try and stop us. January introduces itself in “person” (it inhabits an operator) and sends us to fix the station’s main lift. To do that, we first need to go to Psychotronics. This is where the Typhon first broke out of their confinement.
Some quick lore context: In this universe, JFK survived his assassination attempt, and the USA - for some reason - got really invested in the space race, much more than in our timeline. Not sure what JFK surviving would have to do with that, but whatever. Some time during the 1960’s, the US discovers a strange alien species which they name Typhon. The USSR joins the US in a scientific effort to study the species, and begin to construct a station which would later become Talos-1. Later, when the USSR collapses sometime in the 80’s (earlier than in our timeline) and the US practically own the whole station, the Typhon break containment for the first time and kill a bunch of scientists, leading the US to abandon the project. Much later, during the 2020’s, TranStar acquires the station and restarts the research project on the Typhon. They massively increase the station’s size and build around the original station like a big church built around a small chapel. This original station is what would later become Psychotronics, and you can tell that this place is much older than the rest of Talos-1.
Moving on. After entering Psychotronics, we get contacted by yet another AI with our voice, this one’s called December. This one was also created by Morgan, but even before January. It informs us that, other than blowing up the whole station alongside ourselves, we could also just dip, using Alex’s escape pod. We’d just need to find his keycard, which we won’t find for a little while. This becomes an alternate ending to the game you can absolutely go for. As soon as you find that keycard, you’re basically free to go and end the game right then and there - if you’re ok with being this selfish. If we’re not going for this specific ending, our ultimate goal in any case is to find our Arming Key, a keycard that holds the self-destruct code of the nuclear reactor which powers this station. (Another very obvious nod to System Shock)
And starting from here, this is where we get into the section of the story I was talking about before, the part where the actual plot kind of devolves into sending you around the whole place to solve some fairly ad-hoc problems every time. The station security captain asks you to bail them out, go to this area. Oh now, something doesn’t work again, gotta go to this other area and fix it. Now something else happened, and you gotta go somewhere else yet again. Now you need to systematically gather different voice logs of a certain employee to unlock a door that leads to another area, making you run around the entire station to find the pieces. It feels weirdly unfocussed for a game that had such an eventful beginning with so many plot-strains introduced right at the start. That is not to say that there aren’t genuinely cool story moments afterwards, because there are.
Unravelling the dynamic between Morgan and Alex is very interesting, and I find it cool how often your perspective of Alex can change in a single playthrough. Depending on your viewpoint, Alex is either a ridiculously cruel and callous person, a straight up evil capitalist who will sacrifice anything and anyone just to further his own, immediate gains, or a very reasonable albeit thick-headed savant, a genius in his field of research with a very single minded but ultimately somewhat noble goal, to allow humanity a massive leap forward. The many interactions and conversations you have with him make for a multitude of possible interpretations of his character, and I think that’s great. He is very well written.
The next bit that’s actually interesting story wise, is when Alex locks us in Deep Storage, on our way to retrieve the schematic for our Arming Key. He locks us in here, to keep us (relatively) safe for one, but also obviously so we can’t progress with our quest to blow up the station. Chief archivist Danielle Sho, seemingly surprised we’re still alive, tells us of a way out, by jettisoning a storage unit out into deep space, which knocks us unconscious. When we come to, we’re a couple hundred meters away from Talos-1, letting us explore the outside of the station for the first time. After a short while, Security Chief Elazar tells us that she can let us back in through the Cargo Bay. On the way there, we receive a distress signal by one Dr. Dayo Igwe, who locked himself in a cargo container to escape the Typhon, just like we did to escape from Deep Storage. While you can choose to either leave him to his doom or kill him, saving him is almost inarguably the best choice, as he will provide you with a lot of dialogue and story context but also some side quests, and his presence can pretty drastically change the outcome of the game’s ending.
After this, the marathon continues. We need to go back to the main station, but - oh no - Typhon are camping behind the only door connecting both parts. Now we need to go back and retrieve a whole bunch of turrets to guard the door. Do you see what I mean with my statement before, about how this game’s plot doesn’t really ever move beyond giving you very immediate problems that you’ll need to address now to move on to the next area. It feels strangely video gamey for a game that is otherwise very careful to NOT do that.
Next, we need to go to Life Support. There, Dr. Mikhaila Ilyushin informs us that we need to reboot the entire system fo Talos-1 to override the lockdown that Alex enforced. She’s dying from the symptoms of an illness she needs constant medicine for, locking her in place. We can choose to retrieve the medicine and save her, despite her wishes to the contrary. So we make our way to the reactor to reboot the station, only to find that we need to replace a broken piece of equipment that we have to go somewhere else for to find it. At this point the constant detours the game makes you go on feel honestly start to feel rather contrived and gratuitous. At least, it doesn’t take too long this time before we reboot the station. Doing this unlocks quite a few places, but also locks others off because they’ve been overrun by this point. Alex finally invites us to his office up in the Arboretum to talk face to face.
Yeah, right. Did you seriously think this game wouldn’t throw another red herring your way? When you arrive there, Alex is obviously not in his office, and instead makes you watch a Looking Glass video of him and Morgan from quite a bit back. This Morgan is wildly different than the Morgan you listened to in the first video. They are seemingly fully aware and in acceptance that experimenting with Neuromods might drastically change their personality, and that they are willingly doing all of this to go all the way to the end with Typhon-based research. This Morgan staunchly believes that Neuromod research will lead to the benefit of all humankind and believes that any and all sacrifices are necessary to keep it going.
This is, in my opinion, a very interesting moment that questions your motives as a player, as well as Morgan, the character. We have different versions of the same person, separated only by a few months who utterly disagree on what to do in this situation. Old Morgan is willing to go all the way, saying that them losing their memory is an acceptable outcome to them, and that it’s imperative that current Morgan keeps getting reminded of that. The newer, still not quite current, post-Neuromod-removal Morgan instead feels quite differently, they are willing to put their own life on the line to stop it all. The question is; which one is the real Morgan? Surely it’s the one before the removals. But, on the other hand, wouldn’t the real Morgan be the one that doesn’t have any preconceived notions about what to gain from this? The more important question: Does it really matter? What is important to the current Morgan? This is perhaps the closest the game gets to actually getting really freaking profound with its story. It’s such an interesting question being posed here.
To come back to the actual plot at hand, Morgan learns that they made plans for a so-called Nullwave device, which would be able to completely kill all Typhon within a very large radius, more than enough to envelop the entire station. These Nullwaves can also be used as regular weaponry, both in form of a gun and grenades. If I understand this correctly, they effectively act like phase-shifted brainwaves that cancel out the psionic brainwaves (and thus the psychic powers) of the Typhon, kinda like how noise-suppression technology cancels out incoming sound by producing an exactly phase-shifted version of that very same sound. This realisation basically opens up a third possible ending, in which you try and kill all the Typhon instead of abandoning the station or blowing it up, instead trying to salvage the research.
Our next quest is to scan certain Coral clusters outside of the station, to gather enough data to be able to actually construct the Nullwave device. Regardless of whether we want to do this or not, Alex promises to just give us his Arming Key, effectively forcing us to do it. In either case, we have to go back outside. I feel like making this an actual player choice might have added a little more freedom to the end of the game, but I can take it or leave it. Outside, January contacts us again to make the point that past-Morgan doesn’t necessarily speak for current-Morgan, and that we should really think about what WE want. Not too much later, Alex contacts us to tell us that our parents - the owners of TranStar and main benefactors and sponsors of Talos-1 - have somehow caught wind of the outbreak and decide to try and nip this little problem in the bud.
During an attempt to upload the data, literally as if on cue (because it is), suddenly the system shots down and our parents’ contingency plan is set into motion. The so-called “Recovery team” has arrived at the station, and its chief, Walter Dahl, is out to smoke our asses. Turns out, their parents don’t give two shits about Morgan and Alex. In praxis, this recovery team is basically just this mercenary and a whole bunch of Military Operators (I told you we’d talk more about them) that now occupy literally EVERY. SINGLE. LEVEL. of this entire station. His orders are to kill everyone, destroy the entire station, and then pretend it just blew up for some reason. Apart from this being annoying to deal with in general, I was just rolling my eyes at Prey going “OH NO something went wrong at the very last second AGAIN!?? WOW! OH NO! How could this happen?? What an unlikely occurrence!!”
This is where the plot and even the pacing of the game sadly kind of falls apart for me. Let’s start with the fact that having to deal with these fuckers is the most annoying shit in this entire game. They will literally gank you every single step of the way from that point on all the way until the end, with only very occasional breaks. They are very tanky, deal absurd amounts of damage, can fly, and are constantly being produced by all the Operator Dispenser machines throughout the entirety of Talos-1, because Dahl hacked them. The only way to stop them is to kill them or hack them. Killing them truly is easier said than done, as these things will shred through ANYTHING, even the Nightmare Typhon is no match for even 2 of those things. Even IF you manage to kill them, the nearest operator will just keep on churning out more of them, so you’ll have at least 3 to deal with at any time. Hacking them requires the highest level hacking skill there is in this game - Hacking IV. As if hacking them wasn’t difficult enough (you have to stand next to them without them seeing you), you actually have to hack all 3 hostile Military Operators in ANY area for them to stop constantly spawning. The only other way to stop them from spawning on top of your ass is to simply finish the next part of the story, essentially meaning that the only effective way to deal with this is to run past everything and beeline it to the end. That also means that you better explored every nook and cranny of this station before this point, because… good luck trying to explore during this shit.
The part that really irks me is how haphazardly this all is implemented in the story. These things are literally being produced by the station’s own operator dispensers. They all run through a centralised system, with all data shared between them. How on earth did Talos-1 and its entire crew get fucked up this bad when THESE THINGS exist? As explained before, these things can shred through entire armies of Typhon, including the really big, scary ones like the Nightmare. With this technology readily available, there should be absolutely no way the Typhon could spread as much as they did, seeing how Dahl eradicates most of them in a couple of hours. Some people might argue that Dahl probably first introduced them to Talos-1, and that they didn’t exist before. The problem is that, in an optional log file you can learn the fact that these things were literally designed ON Talos-1, and that Dahl’s operator, Kaspar, is basically just forcing the dispensers to endlessly produce Military Operators with schematics that already existed on board. Unless I am missing some crucial pieces of info, this is a pretty glaring plot hole that could’ve been easily solved by writing a few lines of extra dialogue. This probably wouldn’t bother me if a.) this wasn’t an extremely important plot detail that could literally delete the entire core conflict of this story and b.) it wasn’t quite indicative of a general lack of care and polish that went into the end game.
So, we have to deal with Dahl and his horde of robots. To shut them down, we have to get to the Shuttle Bay and stop Kaspar, his main operator. We can either kill or hack it, it makes no difference gameplay wise. Important: Before we come here, we can talk to Dr. Igwe and Dr. Ilyushin back at Morgan’s office. We can actually talk to them a whole bunch of times throughout the game, and both will give you side quests. I particularly liked Mikhaila’s quest and the moral conundrum it presents you with, and it’s one of the best pieces of characterisation that Morgan gets in this whole game - weird how it’s completely optional and highly missable. The important bit would be Dr. Igwe’s suggestion of not killing Dahl, and instead simply incapacitating him, removing his Neuromods and telling him that his order was to rescue us. Depending on how you play this game, and what ending you value most, this can get you what is arguably this game’s best endings, but I’ll get to that in just a bit.
After we’ve stopped Kaspar, the final stretch of the game begins. We also learn that Kaspar was manually stopping the Coral-data upload from happening, presumably to make sure there was absolutely NO evidence left of what happened here. That makes me think of something. I just realised that I haven’t really explained why exactly one would want to delete what happened on this station from history.
Well, turns out that the primary test subjects for most experimentation with Neuromods were.. prisoners. Russian death row prisoners, no less. These prisoners apparently all got offered a deal at some point during their wait on death row, where they could gain “””freedom””” in exchange for participating in science experiments in space. These science experiments were some of the most gruesome stuff imaginable. From slowly injecting subjects with minor amounts of Typhon to letting putting a person and a mimic into an enclosed space and just… see what happens. We also learn that basically all Phantoms on the station were previously those very same prisoners. No wonder they’re so hellbent on killing you. All of this of course means that Morgan Yu, regardless of what they choose to do past their Neuromod removal, is a criminal, piece of shit scumbag of the highest margin. When I learned this, I felt like blowing up the station not because it was the right thing to do, but because I hated Morgan so much and found that they deserved it.
But before we get to that, let’s finish this up. We receive a distress call from Alex, saying that Dahl is about to break into his safe room. When we reach the Arboretum again, we have to make a choice of how to deal with Dahl. Remember, if we don’t kill him here, Dr. Igwe can make him forget what his actual reason for coming here was. This would have been the preferred outcome for me, but sadly my game glitched and Dahl somehow died, even though I knocked him out with the stun gun and he was at around half health. The next time I checked, he was suddenly dead with no explanation of what might have happened. I still have no idea how this happened, and I’m still kinda salty. But that’s just the level of quality to expect from a Bethesda-published game at this point.
Regardless of what we do, the final confrontation with Alex is here. You can of course, just kill him and grab the key, but that would be needlessly barbaric at this point in the story. The least we can do is hear him out, seeing how Morgan truly is no angel themselves either. Alex does give us the key, as promised, but he also makes us listen to his monologue about how he knows, deep down inside, that we also want what Alex wants. In terms of what the true, actual Morgan with all their memories and experience before the removal intact would think, I think Alex is quite right. Morgan seems like an incorrigible megalomaniac, just like their brother. What’s more important is that Alex made a discovery… the Coral talks. It emits a signal somewhere into deep space, and also connects all Typhon to each other. Through this discovery, he was able to create a Nullwave device that can hijack this Coral network and send a massive NW pulse directly through it, meaning it would kill every single organism hooked into this network.
In this very second, the destination of the mysterious Coral signal becomes clear. Out of nowhere, literally materialising into the vacuum of space, swallowing the entire station in a single gulp like a black hole, appears the Apex Typhon. A gargantuan, unfathomably large Typhon organism that makes the Nightmare look like an ant in comparison. This is perhaps the strongest story moment since the very beginning of the game, since it throws you for a loop just as heavily as that first one. Panic sets in. The entire ship begins to crack and crumble. Turns out, the coral, and all of the smaller Typhon had only one single purpose: to survey and create the way for the Apex to arrive. To feed. To consume the entirety of Talos-1, and it won’t stop there. It has realised that there are more humans to feed on, and it’s already dangerously close to Earth. Things got really fucking serious really quickly. Next to this, Alex is floating around unconscious. We have to grab the key from him and get out of there, but we can also decide to save Alex by dragging his unconscious body into his safe room. If we don’t, we’re leaving him here to die.
Now, with both arming keys AND the Nullwave device in hand, we have to make a choice. And this choice is actually quite multifaceted, depending on how you’ve played the game. Should you decide to destroy the station, you must make your way down to the reactor again and start the self-destruct sequence with January waiting there. If you’ve saved Alex, he’ll show up here and destroy January, pleading with you not to do it. However, he won’t physically stop you from doing it, which feels kinda strange. At this point in time, I fully expected Alex to be ready to both kill and die for his project, but he destroys January before your eyes and yet won’t get in your way further than that. This really should’ve ended with you having to decide between your brother and everyone else.
If you decide to blow it up without having spared Dahl, you alone get the choice to either blow yourself up with the rest or make your way to to Alex’s escape pod and piss off. Everyone else will have to die regardless. IF you’ve saved Dahl, he’ll actually gather the precious few survivors of this station, including you and Alex, and leave for Earth. Like I said, initially I was going for the ending of getting the survivors out of here and blowing the station up with Morgan still in it, but since Dahl glitched himself to death on my save, I felt like blowing up the station without giving the others a chance to escape felt more like punishing them for Morgan’s crimes.
So I went for the other ending, in which you’ll have to trigger the updated Nullwave device to kill the Typhon. To do this, you’ll have to get all the way back to Psychotronics, almost at the start of the game. Remember how this is where the Typhon first broke out? This is where the heart of the Coral lies, the thickest, reddest, densest webbing on the entire station, and it just so happens to surround the very old Soviet satellite “Vorona-1”. This is where it all started. Shortly after it first got launched into space in 1958, Vorona-1 sent very strange readings back to the Soviet scientists, leading them to investigate. Predictably, all astronauts who were sent on that mission were lost and never seen again, and the existence of the Typhon kept a state secret. Only a few years later, President Kennedy and General Secretary Khrushchev would join forces to create the space program and station that would later become Talos-1. This very same satellite is still the core of the infection today, over 60 years later.
We place the Nullwave device on the satellite and make our way back to the bridge, where we would otherwise trigger the explosion. This time, however, if Alex survived before, it’ll be January knocking him out and pleading with you to blow the station up instead. It argues that there is no way to know for sure that all Typhon will 100% die, and that even IF that were the case, there were plenty of good reasons to destroy everything here. Should we decide to go through with it, January makes us kill it before we can launch the device. If we activate it, all the Typhon die and the station, along with all research, is saved. This feels almost a bit too good to be true, and that’s because it is.
Regardless of which choice we made, after each respective “””ending””” a very strange cutscene begins to play.
Without warning, a set of VR goggles lifts from your head. You are in a chair. In front of you, Alex Yu and 4 operators representing Drs. Igwe, Ilyushin, Elazar and Sho. Turns out, none of what you experienced for the last 20-30 hours or so was real. It was all a simulation. You are, in fact, a hybrid being, a mixture of human and Typhon genes. If you look down on your hands, you can even see black, Typhon-y fingers. What you experienced was in fact “a simulation based on the real Morgan’s memories”. So, to me this implies that everything on Talos-1 still happened, it’s just not YOU it happened to, at least not first. This whole thing has been an evaluation. A test to see whether or not you, unlike regular Typhon, are capable of a little human emotion called “empathy”. They are trying to see whether or not you, the human-typhon hybrid creature, are capable of bridging the gap between both species.
Why is this important?
It turns out that whatever the real Morgan was up to up there did nothing to stop the Typhon from utterly invading and dominating earth. Alex spins your chair around to reveal that the entire planet has been covered in Coral, with density many times that of even the thickest webbing on Talos-1. Earth is utterly, irrevocably lost. But there was one discovery that Alex made during the Talos incident that could somehow change everything; Typhon cannot feel empathy. They are incapable of it. So the team in front of you seemingly set out to create a simulation of reality that put the Typhon into the shoes of humanity, most likely with the idea to cultivate empathy through lived experience; the same way we do it as humans. All of those choices, whether to kill or spare people, to free prisoners, to provide medicine or to kill someone in cold blood; all of these choices will be addressed here in this final cutscene. All of it was part of the evaluation.
To me it sadly isn’t clear what exactly the ultimate end goal was here. Was it to create an ambassador for humanity? To create a new species with the strengths of both and weaknesses of neither? To negotiate peace? I’m honestly not sure, and no lore video on the subject has really been able to answer my question in a way that feels satisfying.
Ultimately, you are confronted with one final choice: Alex offers you his hand and asks you whether or not you want to work together. If you accept, you’ll take his hand, yours turns into a human hand and everything ends in that moment. If you decline, you instead kill Alex and presumably doom humanity for good.
To this day I’m not sure what I’m supposed to think of all of this. My initial gut reaction was extremely dismissive, and felt almost like a slap in the face. Were they really going for a “it was all a dream” explanation literally the last possible second? Surely they knew how cliché that might come across?
To the writers' credit, this does not come entirely out of nowhere. There is something that passed me by throughout my whole playthrough, and I didn’t quite realise its purpose until way after the fact. Very occasionally, when doing certain things, Morgan will experience something of a vision. They only last very short amounts of time, and we only see glimpses of some massive Coral network. The important bit is about what we hear. We hear Morgan’s voice, saying phrases like “Don’t let them do this to you”, “You’re not who they say you are”, “They’re lying to you”, “Kill them”, etc. At first, I thought these were kind of random and didn’t think too much about them. Then, when they got more frequent I assumed that they were talking about how “they” are either the Typhon or the corporate higher ups who intend on leaving you here. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. The thing that really made me get it was realising when exactly these visions are occurring. The first happens when you install your first Typhon-based Neuromod. The next happens when you make direct contact with Coral. The next happens when you get knocked out during the Deep Storage ejection and the final one plays when you place the Nullwave device on the Coral heart.
All of this is to say that they are definitely foreshadowing this ending, and that means that it’s essential to the story. This story was never about Morgan Yu defeating the Typhon, it was always about people trying to teach an alien how to be human. And I think that’s perfectly fine, and makes for a nice little extra shock at the end. It also calls back to the beginning of the game, where you break the glass to reveal the true world behind it. Ultimately, if I’m allowed to take this analysis on a bit of a meta-layer, Prey is a game about games, about choices and about how they have consequences, and this is reflected everywhere in the game. If you ask me, choosing not to kill Alex at the end almost feels like it’s doing a disservice to the story’s themes. Here we have a cautionary tale of two siblings who just couldn’t keep Pandora’s box closed, and no matter how hard they tried to control whatever was in there, it just got worse and worse with each attempt. They attempted to uncover the eldritch truth and expected not to get swallowed by the void.
The only thing I think might have really added to all of this was if they gave you the opportunity of actually breaking out of the simulation. Maybe getting all Typhon-neuromods could unlock the ability to simply reject or break it? Or maybe you could somehow merge with the Apex towards the end? Maybe it could happen automatically if you play like a bloodthirsty monster? Perhaps, doing something that the creators of this immersive simulation did not anticipate? An emergent situation, as it were? Of course you’d have to be extremely careful as to not spoil the ending, should a player discover it by accident. You could do what other games do, and only make this possible on NG+. I don’t know, I just really feel like breaking out of the simulation should be an option.
Those were my thoughts on the game’s overall plot. Before I end this absurdly long review of a game I can’t make up my mind about, here are some loose thoughts that didn’t really fit into the rest of the text.
I thought the game did a very good job at the facial animations and motion capture. The characters move very naturally, although they do occasionally exhibit certain Bethesda-isms. I also liked that all of the characters look really unique and distinct from one another. The same can be said for the voice acting, it’s very, very solid at the least. There were no stand-out performances or anything, but the overall level of quality was very good. My favourite is probably Alex, since he manages to convey a pretty sincere tone that feels more like “actual” acting rather than video game acting.
I wasn’t as much a fan when it came to how the game handles dialogue. While I understand that having Morgan talk throughout the whole game may have been a bit too much to ask, given how both of Morgan’s VA’s each voice January, December AND all Looking Glass videos, voice logs, and so on, that all feature Morgan. But I can’t help but feel that it’s pretty weird how no one ever questions why you’re not saying a single word throughout the whole thing. Not even Alex, your brother, notices that you’re weirdly quiet. Everyone just talks AT you for the whole game, and no one ever bothers to ask why you’re refusing to make a single sound. Then again, this was likely a deliberate choice with the intention of making you understand that Morgan is effectively a blank slate after their Neuromod removal, and that you’re supposed to imagine what Morgan is saying? I don’t know, I feel like there may have been a more elegant solution out there.
The soundtrack is pretty cool too. Nothing too extraordinary or out there, but a very solid mood-setter made by the one and only Mick Gordon. I will say that there is, surprisingly, not a whole lot of it. The official OST only features 30 minutes of music, and while I feel like there is probably more of it in the actual game, maybe it’s not even that much more. What is there is pretty memorable though. I obviously love the opening theme that feels really grand and epic and like you’re going on a big and cool adventure, only for the game to pull the rug from under you immediately afterwards. But I’m also quite partial to Alex’s, as well as January & December’s theme. They all have a cool, laid back Post Rock-ish vibe to them. Not as much a fan of the vocal tracks though.
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So yeah, those were pretty much my thoughts. If you read through all of this - first of all, thank you a whole lot! - you might have noticed that I kinda convinced myself while writing that I really should play through this game again some time soon. Really sitting down and writing my thoughts down like this made me realise that this really is a great game, but I also think I also showed that not quite everything I criticised here was JUST my lack of understanding. There are some genuine flaws here, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a great game.
Arkane Studios, man. Something just doesn’t really click between their games and me. I tried Dishonored (but I should try that one again), I tried Deathloop, I tried Arx Fatalis, and yet Prey is the only one I managed to finish, and even that wasn’t without problems. It is so strange because I truly don’t have the same issue with other developers in the genre. I wonder what the deal is here. I love immersive sims. I love Deus Ex to death. I S-ranked every mission in Cruelty Squad. I even enjoyed System Shock a lot, even though it also has lots of flaws. What is it with Arkane’s games that make them feel so… boring to me? Are they really so complex and incomprehensible that I legitimately don’t understand them? I don’t feel like that’s the case. It’s just something about my preferences that doesn’t really align with their game design philosophy. But I will keep trying. If you take anything away from this, let it be that I think that this is a great game, a fantastic game even, but it just didn’t resonate the same with me as it did with a lot of other people, and while that makes me a bit sad, I can always try and play it again to see if I get it on the next attempt.
8 / 10
2019
Gato Roboto is a neat little cat-based Metroidvania-lite with a neat art style, kick-ass OST and really solid movement mechanics. While the game is a little too linear and is pretty short, this is still one of the more underrated entries into the genre. Perfect for when you have a free afternoon or evening.
8 / 10
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This was certainly one of the more pleasant gaming-related surprises I experienced this year. I picked up this game entirely on a whim after I saw some YouTuber briefly mention it and talked about how great the art was, and that the player character was a cat. Naturally, after the disappointment that was 2021’s Stray - in which you also ostensibly play as a cat, but only insofar that the character you’re controlling looks like a cat, and only very little in the way of actually simulating the experience of being a cat - I had to check it out. While Gato Roboto admittedly doesn’t really scratch the itch of making me feel like I’m a flesh-and-blood kitty either, it certainly is a whole lot more fun though.
I’ll admit right away that this game isn’t anything special in any capacity. This is no Hollow Knight or Blasphemous. It doesn’t have the best combat, nor does it have the best world design. Level design is solid enough, but once again, doesn’t blow my mind or anything. I probably wouldn’t even write this review if I didn’t feel like the game is being viewed a bit unfairly by a lot of die-hard fans of the MV genre who probably expected more out of this than it ever intended to deliver. It does have some surprisingly fun and polished movement mechanics, and above all, it has a lot of charm. At the end of the day it’s just a very cute and well made game.
The game begins with a cutscene of an astronaut/space marine named Gary and his cat flying around some solar system, when they spot a strange planet with conspicuous energy readings. Kiki, the little kitty, being the rascal she is, accidentally walks all over the buttons on the ship’s console, leading it to crash on the planet. The ship crash-lands right on top of some secret tech lab hidden beneath the surface. The pilot is seriously wounded, and sends out Kiki to go investigate the planet in his stead. Your first task is to find one of many pilot-able security mechs hidden throughout the lab, which leads me to the core gameplay mechanic here:
Kiki has 2 modes, one being her normal kitty form in which she can run around pretty fast, is very small (meaning she can fit through all sorts of crevices) and has the ability of climbing just about any wall, which includes the ability to wall jump. She cannot fight back or make use of other abilities though. This is where the other form becomes relevant, the security mech. It can shoot enemies, is a lot heavier than Kiki, and has actual health points. Kiki, other than the mech, dies in a single hit - which makes sense, seeing how she is a small cat. It can also add multiple abilities to its repertoire, like shooting missiles, surviving scorching heat, a double jump, a dash, etc. Standard stuff. Mechanically, it unsurprisingly feels like “kitty meets Metroid”. The suit controls fairly similar to Samus, especially towards the end when you have some mobility upgrades unlocked. That’s not the only inspiration it takes from the Metroid series. Obviously the fact that it’s structured like a MV is one thing, but the whole aesthetic of it, the music, the weapons, the enemies and most importantly, the feeling of being on a lost research station deep in space are all very Metroid-inspired. Kiki will often have to abandon her mech though, and sneak through some sections making use of her small stature. You will find a new suit any time you find a new save room, but you’re vulnerable the entire time you’re not in the suit, making for a very interesting gameplay loop that gives you a similar feeling of “oh thank god, I did it” in a similar way to finding one of Dark Souls’ bonfires.
Combat basically works exactly like Metroid as well, with you alternating between a normal energy gun and missiles, with the latter mostly used during boss fights. There are some cues it takes from other MVs too, like the dash ability for example. Platforming, naturally, also takes the bulk of its inspiration from Metroid, not only in the more obvious ways of copying the typical abilities, but also in the same way that Metroid games typically allow you to sequence break and/or speed run certain sections by grasping the many uses of certain abilities that the game doesn’t tell you about. For example: the missiles are of course mostly used for combat, but also allow you to rocket-jump by jumping right into the explosion for some extra height and reach. This lets you access some later-game upgrades a bit earlier than you’re supposed to. Sadly this doesn’t really make that much of a difference in the greater structure of the game, but it’s neat that the ability to sequence break some of the game with enough skill is in here at all.
Speaking of structure, let’s talk a bit about world layout and level design.
Overall, the layout of the world is kept fairly linearly. In fact, it’s so linear that calling this a “Metroidvania” could perhaps be seen as contentious. Of course, it does have the classic lock-and-key progression system built around acquiring new abilities, you have a winding, vertically stacked map that encourages exploration, and you also have backtracking to previous areas to find new stuff. That is pretty much it, however. There are no grand “AHA” moments about connecting two parts of the map, there are no cool creative shortcuts, no real secret areas and no alternate endings to unlock. It should be mentioned, given the obvious and heavy inspiration from Metroid in particular, that said series also had very linear world structures, especially Fusion and every game after that one.
Structurally, this map is built less like Super Metroid, SOTN or Hollow Knight, and more like one of most Souls-likes. In fact, the world layout is surprisingly similar to that of FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls. You have a starting area that serves mostly as a tutorial but does feature some stuff for you to find if you decide to come back later, which then leads to a central hub area that connects to all other remaining levels. That area is even called the “Nexus”, just like in Demon’s Souls. Other than Demon’s Souls however, Gato Roboto doesn’t allow you to pick between multiple paths, but rather makes you go through them in a linear progression once again, since areas you’re not supposed to be yet are gated from you via lack of certain abilities. While I understand that this was done so the difficulty and pacing made sense all the way until the end, it felt a little constrictive. Perhaps there are ways to sequence break certain parts of the game? I didn’t find any, even though I certainly tried to get into some areas before I was allowed to.
As for the actual areas; I have to admit I didn’t find them particularly memorable. Probably one of the biggest factors for that was which is paradoxically also one of the game’s coolest features; the ability to change the colour palette on the game on the fly. The pro’s of this obviously being: you get full control over this game’s hues and shades. It’s made all the better by the fact that these colour palettes come in the form of cartridges you can find across the map. I was particularly fond of the Goop, Port, Grape, Meowtrix and Coffee Stain modes. The flip side to this being that; if you don’t go out of your way to purposefully change the palette for each new area, they’re going to feel very samey. What’s worse is that I DID do just that, and I still can’t really tell them apart in my head. Of course, colours aren’t the only important part of a level’s aesthetics, the actual design/layout and individual art direction also determines a large part of it. And I would say that the game does a good-enough job in distinguishing the areas gameplay wise.
The first level after the Nexus, the Aqueduct, probably fares best with introducing new, interesting gameplay concepts. As a matter of fact, it’s the only area to introduce and entirely new game mode; the submarine. Trading her mech in for a sub, Kiki can now swim underwater and progress through areas that way. The sub has less health than the mech, but the mech can’t swim in water, obviously. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Gato Roboto’s levels is that all of them (or at least, I think so?) have 2 states. In this case, the Aqueduct is flooded first, requiring you to constantly switch between cat, mech and sub, to then later drain the water, making it much more accessible and allowing you to traverse most of it in your trusty mech. In this case, you’re required to activate three separate drains to allow the system to clear the flooded halls. Every area also obviously features a big boss battle by the end, but I’ll get to that a bit later. Beating this level awards us the spin jump ability, which - just like in Metroid - allows us to break through certain barriers.
The next area is called the “Heater Core”, and it’s exactly what you’d think. The gimmick here, obviously enough, is having to deal with extreme heat. First you’re required to find and disable 3 heater cores, which double as small mini-boss battles. This turns down the heat in many previously inaccessible rooms, letting you explore more until you eventually find a coolant module for your suit, allowing you to freely traverse the rest of the level. Gameplay wise, I think this area was perhaps the most interesting. For beating this area, you’re awarded the “Phase” ability, which lets you dash through enemies and some obstacles, in this case some large walls of fire.
Next up is the Ventilation area which, as you might imagine, consists mostly of very narrow and tight passages, requiring you to mostly ditch your mech and let Kiki find her way through this claustrophobic maze. Since you have no way of fighting back without the suit, most challenges here are built around you avoiding damage entirely rather than combat. A big portion of this comes in the form of a lengthy mini-boss section in which you are chased around a big stretch of map by a bulldozer. The traversal gimmick in this level takes the form of certain ventilators which block you from progressing with huge gusts of wind, requiring you to shut them off. There is also an optional pick up here, the Big Shot module, which is a simple gun enhancement. While not necessary to beat the game, picking it up is definitely recommended.
Finally, the last stretch of the game comes in two halves; first the Incubator area which is a rather short section that’s mostly focused on combat and has a little mix of all previous level hazards here. The thing that makes it special is that it’s stacked to the brim with enemies in test tubes. It’s nothing too special, but there are some more optional pick ups here that are once again definitely recommended. After heading back to the Nexus one last time, it’s off to the final section of the game; the Laboratory.
This is where we should briefly catch up on this game’s story and boss fights. Well, more like boss fight, since we keep fighting the same boss over and over again.
I’ll give a little SPOILER WARNING for the endgame, bosses and conclusion to the story at this point, even if I don’t feel like the story really warrants that, but I don’t know how sensitive someone reading this might be.
This game’s repeating boss comes in the form of an evil mouse, which suspiciously has the ability to talk and comprehend human language. These fights are TOUGH. I would have probably criticised this game for being a bit too easy over all if it weren’t for these battles. The mouse controls different machines in every stage you find it. Every one of these is a multi-phased, fast paced bullet-hell style fight that requires you to be on your absolute A-game to beat them. While they are fun and surprisingly challenging, I would argue that the gap of difficulty between the main game and these boss fights is probably a bit too much. Nothing in the rest of the game prepares you for how rough these are. I will admit that they are thrilling and mechanically quite interesting though.
But just what - or who - is this mouse? If we explore thoroughly, we will come across some video logs from years back, when this station was still being used. On these logs we can find 2 characters in particular; some security guy and, more importantly, the resident scientist who worked on this station. If we find all the logs, we can piece together the story quite easily. The scientist, Otto, has been working on the station for years, but is socially extremely isolated from the rest of the crew, which is mostly made up of armed brutes and grunts. His only companion on this entire station is a little dog, which was initially just brought here as fodder for the autonomous mech suits. The dog is in very bad shape and close to death. He’s initially been given to Otto to fix him up and turn him into a killing machine, but Otto takes pity on the dog and desperately tries to keep it alive, finding a friend in the animal. Over time, his desperation turns into mad obsession, as he steals supplies from the military to keep Barkley (the name he gave the dog) alive. Eventually, the station experiences a big catacylism (I’m sorry, I forgot the details lol) and Otto is forced to transfer his consciousness into the body of a rat/mouse. Still, he is obsessed with keeping Barkley alive, and so hatches a plan to draw in people - like Gary and Kiki, for example. He plans to use Gary’s body to implant his own consciousness into it, and Kiki’s body to do the same with Barkley. During the final confrontation with the rat, it reveals itself as Otto and explains its plan to us. Somewhere along the way, it managed to kidnap Gary while we weren’t looking, and transfers himself into his body, making the final boss fight hit particularly hard, as we have to kill our friend’s body.
After a long and gruelling fight, Otto manages to destroy our suit, and all looks very bleak. We’re about to be transformed into a dog, when Kiki unknowlingly utters the passphrase to unlock the test tubes; “MEOW”. This releases Barkley from the tube, who then suddenly turns on his master, seemingly in strong disapproval of Otto’s actions. Barkley then proceeds to attack Otto/Gary, rendering him either dead or unconcious. After a brief, uh, “conversation” between the cat and the dog, both of them make their way to a secret escape pod, leaving everything behind, including Gary’s body. The game closes on a shot of the rat hanging on to the ship, giving the camera a cheeky little wink. It’s not clear whether or not this is Otto, or somehow Gary, who has been transformed into the rat by Otto. In either case, credits roll, and we’ve beaten AND 100%ed the game at around 3,5 - 4 hours. Or I did, at least. You could probably do it a lot faster than I.
Now, that is admittedly quite short for a game like this. But I honestly wouldn’t say that it’s TOO short. While I agree that the game’s individual moments probably could’ve used a little more room to breathe by making the areas a bit bigger, or more levels to explore could’ve added to the Metroid-esque feeling of uncovering a whole new world, I think the game just prioritised doing as much as possible with as little as possible. There isn’t an ounce of fat on this game, which is something that can’t be said about most Metroidvanias. Even my beloved Hollow Knight and Blasphemous have certain sections that can drag a little, this game has nothing of the sort. It keeps up its level of quality literally from the first minute right until the credits roll. That is a pretty hard thing to do in this genre of game, even if the game’s structure had to suffer a little. But this is a matter of preference more than a fixed law of game design or whatever. I would argue that this game goes for a certain thing and does it masterfully. Now, I will admit that an extra 1 or 2 hours probably wouldn’t have dragged the game down or made it worse in any capacity. At least, it’s certainly nothing I would be actively upset about. I was personally more disappointed by the lack of alternate paths to choose or serious endgame secrets than I was with the runtime. I can enjoy a short game if it’s good, especially if its this dense with content.
Before I end this review - which ultimately took me almost as long to write as it took to beat this game - I have to talk about the game’s OST, mostly because it didn’t really fit anywhere else in the text. It’s fantastic, unqiue, memorable and perhaps my favourite aspect about this game. While, once again, obviously taking some inspiration from Metroid, the influences range far wider than that, to straight up rave and dance music. The soundtrack slaps WAY harder than it has any right to. It’s tasteful, but also playful and funky enough to never get repetitive. It does sound something you’d hear on a proper German techno EP or something. Kinda reminds me of something you might hear on an Alan Backdrop, Monolake or Ben Klock record. It feels less like “video game music” than it feels like some legitimately sick electronic music. Definitely one of my favourite MV soundtracks to date, specifically for being so different and wild. The ambient pieces of music, like the Save Room or Landing Site tracks are spacey, mysterious and droney, and offer a great contrast to the driving, pumping kick drum laden techno tracks of the other levels.
So, in conclusion:
If you have a free afternoon or evening, and you’re a big fan of MVs or even just a well made, nicely polished action-platformer in which you can control a cat in a mech, give this one a try. It’s typically priced somewhere in the range of 5-8€, I even got it for 2. No matter what, I don’t think you’re gonna make much of a mistake in trying this out. Worst case, you spent 5€ on a mediocre experience, best case, you’re gonna love it.
8 / 10
8 / 10
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This was certainly one of the more pleasant gaming-related surprises I experienced this year. I picked up this game entirely on a whim after I saw some YouTuber briefly mention it and talked about how great the art was, and that the player character was a cat. Naturally, after the disappointment that was 2021’s Stray - in which you also ostensibly play as a cat, but only insofar that the character you’re controlling looks like a cat, and only very little in the way of actually simulating the experience of being a cat - I had to check it out. While Gato Roboto admittedly doesn’t really scratch the itch of making me feel like I’m a flesh-and-blood kitty either, it certainly is a whole lot more fun though.
I’ll admit right away that this game isn’t anything special in any capacity. This is no Hollow Knight or Blasphemous. It doesn’t have the best combat, nor does it have the best world design. Level design is solid enough, but once again, doesn’t blow my mind or anything. I probably wouldn’t even write this review if I didn’t feel like the game is being viewed a bit unfairly by a lot of die-hard fans of the MV genre who probably expected more out of this than it ever intended to deliver. It does have some surprisingly fun and polished movement mechanics, and above all, it has a lot of charm. At the end of the day it’s just a very cute and well made game.
The game begins with a cutscene of an astronaut/space marine named Gary and his cat flying around some solar system, when they spot a strange planet with conspicuous energy readings. Kiki, the little kitty, being the rascal she is, accidentally walks all over the buttons on the ship’s console, leading it to crash on the planet. The ship crash-lands right on top of some secret tech lab hidden beneath the surface. The pilot is seriously wounded, and sends out Kiki to go investigate the planet in his stead. Your first task is to find one of many pilot-able security mechs hidden throughout the lab, which leads me to the core gameplay mechanic here:
Kiki has 2 modes, one being her normal kitty form in which she can run around pretty fast, is very small (meaning she can fit through all sorts of crevices) and has the ability of climbing just about any wall, which includes the ability to wall jump. She cannot fight back or make use of other abilities though. This is where the other form becomes relevant, the security mech. It can shoot enemies, is a lot heavier than Kiki, and has actual health points. Kiki, other than the mech, dies in a single hit - which makes sense, seeing how she is a small cat. It can also add multiple abilities to its repertoire, like shooting missiles, surviving scorching heat, a double jump, a dash, etc. Standard stuff. Mechanically, it unsurprisingly feels like “kitty meets Metroid”. The suit controls fairly similar to Samus, especially towards the end when you have some mobility upgrades unlocked. That’s not the only inspiration it takes from the Metroid series. Obviously the fact that it’s structured like a MV is one thing, but the whole aesthetic of it, the music, the weapons, the enemies and most importantly, the feeling of being on a lost research station deep in space are all very Metroid-inspired. Kiki will often have to abandon her mech though, and sneak through some sections making use of her small stature. You will find a new suit any time you find a new save room, but you’re vulnerable the entire time you’re not in the suit, making for a very interesting gameplay loop that gives you a similar feeling of “oh thank god, I did it” in a similar way to finding one of Dark Souls’ bonfires.
Combat basically works exactly like Metroid as well, with you alternating between a normal energy gun and missiles, with the latter mostly used during boss fights. There are some cues it takes from other MVs too, like the dash ability for example. Platforming, naturally, also takes the bulk of its inspiration from Metroid, not only in the more obvious ways of copying the typical abilities, but also in the same way that Metroid games typically allow you to sequence break and/or speed run certain sections by grasping the many uses of certain abilities that the game doesn’t tell you about. For example: the missiles are of course mostly used for combat, but also allow you to rocket-jump by jumping right into the explosion for some extra height and reach. This lets you access some later-game upgrades a bit earlier than you’re supposed to. Sadly this doesn’t really make that much of a difference in the greater structure of the game, but it’s neat that the ability to sequence break some of the game with enough skill is in here at all.
Speaking of structure, let’s talk a bit about world layout and level design.
Overall, the layout of the world is kept fairly linearly. In fact, it’s so linear that calling this a “Metroidvania” could perhaps be seen as contentious. Of course, it does have the classic lock-and-key progression system built around acquiring new abilities, you have a winding, vertically stacked map that encourages exploration, and you also have backtracking to previous areas to find new stuff. That is pretty much it, however. There are no grand “AHA” moments about connecting two parts of the map, there are no cool creative shortcuts, no real secret areas and no alternate endings to unlock. It should be mentioned, given the obvious and heavy inspiration from Metroid in particular, that said series also had very linear world structures, especially Fusion and every game after that one.
Structurally, this map is built less like Super Metroid, SOTN or Hollow Knight, and more like one of most Souls-likes. In fact, the world layout is surprisingly similar to that of FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls. You have a starting area that serves mostly as a tutorial but does feature some stuff for you to find if you decide to come back later, which then leads to a central hub area that connects to all other remaining levels. That area is even called the “Nexus”, just like in Demon’s Souls. Other than Demon’s Souls however, Gato Roboto doesn’t allow you to pick between multiple paths, but rather makes you go through them in a linear progression once again, since areas you’re not supposed to be yet are gated from you via lack of certain abilities. While I understand that this was done so the difficulty and pacing made sense all the way until the end, it felt a little constrictive. Perhaps there are ways to sequence break certain parts of the game? I didn’t find any, even though I certainly tried to get into some areas before I was allowed to.
As for the actual areas; I have to admit I didn’t find them particularly memorable. Probably one of the biggest factors for that was which is paradoxically also one of the game’s coolest features; the ability to change the colour palette on the game on the fly. The pro’s of this obviously being: you get full control over this game’s hues and shades. It’s made all the better by the fact that these colour palettes come in the form of cartridges you can find across the map. I was particularly fond of the Goop, Port, Grape, Meowtrix and Coffee Stain modes. The flip side to this being that; if you don’t go out of your way to purposefully change the palette for each new area, they’re going to feel very samey. What’s worse is that I DID do just that, and I still can’t really tell them apart in my head. Of course, colours aren’t the only important part of a level’s aesthetics, the actual design/layout and individual art direction also determines a large part of it. And I would say that the game does a good-enough job in distinguishing the areas gameplay wise.
The first level after the Nexus, the Aqueduct, probably fares best with introducing new, interesting gameplay concepts. As a matter of fact, it’s the only area to introduce and entirely new game mode; the submarine. Trading her mech in for a sub, Kiki can now swim underwater and progress through areas that way. The sub has less health than the mech, but the mech can’t swim in water, obviously. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Gato Roboto’s levels is that all of them (or at least, I think so?) have 2 states. In this case, the Aqueduct is flooded first, requiring you to constantly switch between cat, mech and sub, to then later drain the water, making it much more accessible and allowing you to traverse most of it in your trusty mech. In this case, you’re required to activate three separate drains to allow the system to clear the flooded halls. Every area also obviously features a big boss battle by the end, but I’ll get to that a bit later. Beating this level awards us the spin jump ability, which - just like in Metroid - allows us to break through certain barriers.
The next area is called the “Heater Core”, and it’s exactly what you’d think. The gimmick here, obviously enough, is having to deal with extreme heat. First you’re required to find and disable 3 heater cores, which double as small mini-boss battles. This turns down the heat in many previously inaccessible rooms, letting you explore more until you eventually find a coolant module for your suit, allowing you to freely traverse the rest of the level. Gameplay wise, I think this area was perhaps the most interesting. For beating this area, you’re awarded the “Phase” ability, which lets you dash through enemies and some obstacles, in this case some large walls of fire.
Next up is the Ventilation area which, as you might imagine, consists mostly of very narrow and tight passages, requiring you to mostly ditch your mech and let Kiki find her way through this claustrophobic maze. Since you have no way of fighting back without the suit, most challenges here are built around you avoiding damage entirely rather than combat. A big portion of this comes in the form of a lengthy mini-boss section in which you are chased around a big stretch of map by a bulldozer. The traversal gimmick in this level takes the form of certain ventilators which block you from progressing with huge gusts of wind, requiring you to shut them off. There is also an optional pick up here, the Big Shot module, which is a simple gun enhancement. While not necessary to beat the game, picking it up is definitely recommended.
Finally, the last stretch of the game comes in two halves; first the Incubator area which is a rather short section that’s mostly focused on combat and has a little mix of all previous level hazards here. The thing that makes it special is that it’s stacked to the brim with enemies in test tubes. It’s nothing too special, but there are some more optional pick ups here that are once again definitely recommended. After heading back to the Nexus one last time, it’s off to the final section of the game; the Laboratory.
This is where we should briefly catch up on this game’s story and boss fights. Well, more like boss fight, since we keep fighting the same boss over and over again.
I’ll give a little SPOILER WARNING for the endgame, bosses and conclusion to the story at this point, even if I don’t feel like the story really warrants that, but I don’t know how sensitive someone reading this might be.
This game’s repeating boss comes in the form of an evil mouse, which suspiciously has the ability to talk and comprehend human language. These fights are TOUGH. I would have probably criticised this game for being a bit too easy over all if it weren’t for these battles. The mouse controls different machines in every stage you find it. Every one of these is a multi-phased, fast paced bullet-hell style fight that requires you to be on your absolute A-game to beat them. While they are fun and surprisingly challenging, I would argue that the gap of difficulty between the main game and these boss fights is probably a bit too much. Nothing in the rest of the game prepares you for how rough these are. I will admit that they are thrilling and mechanically quite interesting though.
But just what - or who - is this mouse? If we explore thoroughly, we will come across some video logs from years back, when this station was still being used. On these logs we can find 2 characters in particular; some security guy and, more importantly, the resident scientist who worked on this station. If we find all the logs, we can piece together the story quite easily. The scientist, Otto, has been working on the station for years, but is socially extremely isolated from the rest of the crew, which is mostly made up of armed brutes and grunts. His only companion on this entire station is a little dog, which was initially just brought here as fodder for the autonomous mech suits. The dog is in very bad shape and close to death. He’s initially been given to Otto to fix him up and turn him into a killing machine, but Otto takes pity on the dog and desperately tries to keep it alive, finding a friend in the animal. Over time, his desperation turns into mad obsession, as he steals supplies from the military to keep Barkley (the name he gave the dog) alive. Eventually, the station experiences a big catacylism (I’m sorry, I forgot the details lol) and Otto is forced to transfer his consciousness into the body of a rat/mouse. Still, he is obsessed with keeping Barkley alive, and so hatches a plan to draw in people - like Gary and Kiki, for example. He plans to use Gary’s body to implant his own consciousness into it, and Kiki’s body to do the same with Barkley. During the final confrontation with the rat, it reveals itself as Otto and explains its plan to us. Somewhere along the way, it managed to kidnap Gary while we weren’t looking, and transfers himself into his body, making the final boss fight hit particularly hard, as we have to kill our friend’s body.
After a long and gruelling fight, Otto manages to destroy our suit, and all looks very bleak. We’re about to be transformed into a dog, when Kiki unknowlingly utters the passphrase to unlock the test tubes; “MEOW”. This releases Barkley from the tube, who then suddenly turns on his master, seemingly in strong disapproval of Otto’s actions. Barkley then proceeds to attack Otto/Gary, rendering him either dead or unconcious. After a brief, uh, “conversation” between the cat and the dog, both of them make their way to a secret escape pod, leaving everything behind, including Gary’s body. The game closes on a shot of the rat hanging on to the ship, giving the camera a cheeky little wink. It’s not clear whether or not this is Otto, or somehow Gary, who has been transformed into the rat by Otto. In either case, credits roll, and we’ve beaten AND 100%ed the game at around 3,5 - 4 hours. Or I did, at least. You could probably do it a lot faster than I.
Now, that is admittedly quite short for a game like this. But I honestly wouldn’t say that it’s TOO short. While I agree that the game’s individual moments probably could’ve used a little more room to breathe by making the areas a bit bigger, or more levels to explore could’ve added to the Metroid-esque feeling of uncovering a whole new world, I think the game just prioritised doing as much as possible with as little as possible. There isn’t an ounce of fat on this game, which is something that can’t be said about most Metroidvanias. Even my beloved Hollow Knight and Blasphemous have certain sections that can drag a little, this game has nothing of the sort. It keeps up its level of quality literally from the first minute right until the credits roll. That is a pretty hard thing to do in this genre of game, even if the game’s structure had to suffer a little. But this is a matter of preference more than a fixed law of game design or whatever. I would argue that this game goes for a certain thing and does it masterfully. Now, I will admit that an extra 1 or 2 hours probably wouldn’t have dragged the game down or made it worse in any capacity. At least, it’s certainly nothing I would be actively upset about. I was personally more disappointed by the lack of alternate paths to choose or serious endgame secrets than I was with the runtime. I can enjoy a short game if it’s good, especially if its this dense with content.
Before I end this review - which ultimately took me almost as long to write as it took to beat this game - I have to talk about the game’s OST, mostly because it didn’t really fit anywhere else in the text. It’s fantastic, unqiue, memorable and perhaps my favourite aspect about this game. While, once again, obviously taking some inspiration from Metroid, the influences range far wider than that, to straight up rave and dance music. The soundtrack slaps WAY harder than it has any right to. It’s tasteful, but also playful and funky enough to never get repetitive. It does sound something you’d hear on a proper German techno EP or something. Kinda reminds me of something you might hear on an Alan Backdrop, Monolake or Ben Klock record. It feels less like “video game music” than it feels like some legitimately sick electronic music. Definitely one of my favourite MV soundtracks to date, specifically for being so different and wild. The ambient pieces of music, like the Save Room or Landing Site tracks are spacey, mysterious and droney, and offer a great contrast to the driving, pumping kick drum laden techno tracks of the other levels.
So, in conclusion:
If you have a free afternoon or evening, and you’re a big fan of MVs or even just a well made, nicely polished action-platformer in which you can control a cat in a mech, give this one a try. It’s typically priced somewhere in the range of 5-8€, I even got it for 2. No matter what, I don’t think you’re gonna make much of a mistake in trying this out. Worst case, you spent 5€ on a mediocre experience, best case, you’re gonna love it.
8 / 10
1998
Metal Gear Solid, even after over two decades, remains one of Kojima’s most innovative, out there and forward thinking games, even if the game can’t help but show its age. While story, cinematography and themes held up incredibly well, the gameplay hasn’t survived the years in quite the same way.
7,5 / 10
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This is one of those games where I’m kind of struggling to come up with unique things to say about it, namely because a game series so ubiquitous and influential as Metal Gear Solid is bound to have been discussed to death for close to 25 years now. There are countless think pieces and articles and video essays about its role as a cultural juggernaut, about how innovative a game it was for its time, about the genius of Kojima, etc. So, instead I’ll try my hardest to simply talk about what I liked and didn’t like about the game, what I think held up well, didn’t hold up well, or was never all that good in the first place.
I think I should start with saying that I have no nostalgic connection to this game, or even this series as a whole. I played MGS1 in April 2023, after only having played 2 other Kojima games the year before, namely MGS5 and the often maligned Death Stranding. (I also played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance but that one isn’t even a Kojima game) I did enjoy both of these games quite a bit, even though both of them are rather divisive, Death Stranding in particular. I mean, I did have more than my fair share of problems with both, and I even though I had a lot of fun with them, I could also see the points of the many detractors of Kojima’s extremely idiosyncratic style of making games. Personally, I’m somewhere in between the two camps of “Kojima is god” and “Kojima is a hack”, often wildly flipping between them on a whim. Often, I’ve heard old school Kojima fans say stuff like “he fell off with MGS4” and that “the first 3 MGS are flawless”. While I can’t speak about those games and related opinions, I can say that MGS1 fit surprisingly well with my impression of the games I actually did play. Which is to say, great in some parts, not so great in others. On the one hand, you have some fantastic stuff that survived the ages in a way that is only possible with Kojima, and on the other hand I have rarely been as frustrated by haphazard design decisions, extremely blatant padding, bad stealth mechanics and lots of other stuff that soured my experience with MGS1 - also only possible with Kojima. But ultimately, like MGS5 and Death Stranding, I did end up liking this game over all, despite its flaws.
I think easily the most impressive part about MGS1 today is its fantastic sense of cinematography. For those not familiar with the PS1-era, it needs to be stated that at that time video game cutscenes - if a game had any cutscenes - were often times not very good, quite short, lacked quite a bit in terms of cinematography and storytelling, and beyond that, were almost always simply FMVs. (“full motion video”, = pre-rendered video files) Even Silent Hill 1, which had absolutely fantastically animated cutscenes at the time, had to fully rely on those FMVs to give the game a feeling of “big budget Hollywood” stuff. Metal Gear Solid 1 is extremely cool and forward thinking in that, not only does the game not use any FMVs whatsoever, but the way the animators used the actual in game graphics and models to direct really compelling and interestingly staged cutscenes is unprecedented.
Not only do the movement of the characters and their delivery of dialogue feel very natural, the camera is almost always placed in interesting positions and even utilises movement during action sequences or otherwise tense moments. This gives the game a far more cinematic feel than just about anything else up to that point. Game designers back often didn’t know all that much about cinematography and story telling, and had to rely on their limited understanding of these things to make everything work. At some points in MGS1, I forgot I was watching highly abstracted, polygonal versions of real people talking and interacting with each other, and fully bought into the illusion that I was watching a film. It really feels like a movie/game hybrid in the best of ways.
Of course, another thing that adds to this is the surprisingly good voice acting. “Surprising” insofar that, once again, at the time video game voice acting tended to be pretty bad. Most of the time the “””actors””” were literally just staff members and programmers without any experience in acting or direction what so ever. While MGS1’s voice acting wouldn’t be anything of particular interest today, this was as close to Hollywood levels of acting you could get in video games at the time. David Hayter as Solid Snake is obviously legendary and immortalised through his “dummy thicc” copy pasta. Oh, and for playing the main character in one of the most acclaimed video game series of all time or whatever. But besides him, the other performances were also really good. I particularly liked Robert Aktin Downes as Master Miller / other characters.
So far so good, great cinematography and voice acting. These are things that Kojima is known for even today, perhaps to the point where this unique selling point itself even kind of became almost flanderised. “Kojima wants to make movies, not games.” And, you know there is a point to that. However, here’s the thing; I don’t really mind it all that much if the story I’m witnessing is actually interesting and told well. And I think, that’s the same for most people, because somehow I don’t hear anywhere near as many people make this complaint with MGS1 than they do with MGS5 and Death Stranding. MGS5 is infamously an unfinished game with an unfinished story, and you can tell. It doesn’t help that the story it tries to tell positions itself as a prequel to over almost every Metal Gear game, retroactively setting up a lot of plot points for the rest of the series, meaning the story makes even less sense if you haven’t played the others first. Death Stranding isn’t unfinished per se, but its story makes no fucking sense and feels like it should be way simpler and to the point than it ended up being. The fact that both of these games also suffer from the most severe case of “Kojima story telling” yet (meaning: and excess of incredibly drawn out and unnecessary information dumps that don’t evolve the plot or characters what so ever and only serve to give the world a fake sense of depth) doesn’t help matters at all.
Needless to say, I expected MGS1 to be just as much of a confusing, nonsensical mess with plot lines that ended nowhere and didn’t really have much of a point. Well, I can happily say that I know understand what old-school Kojima fans were on about when they say the newer games kinda sucked story wise, because unlike the aforementioned games MGS1’s story isn’t just really good, it’s by far the best part of the game.
While we can just jump straight into the actual main plot of the game by hitting new game, the devs provided multiple ways of catching up on the previous games’ plot lines as well as gain more context for the mission you’re currently on. Lingering in the main menu for a while will give you the typical main menu cutscene which will fill you in on some details we’ll get into shortly. The other option comes in the form of a “mission briefing”, in which you’ll be thoroughly informed of the player character’s mission, goal, potential threats, ways in and ways out. You’ll also get a bit of character set up for both Snake and the colonel.
We play as mercenary, freedom fighter and super soldier extraordinaire Solid Snake, aka Snake, aka David, aka Iroqois Pliskin etc. The game takes place some years after the events of both Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, in which Snake invades the private military station / micro nation called “Outer Heaven”, and kills its leader; the greatest soldier of all time, god of combat and patron saint of mercenaries, Big Boss, aka John, aka Jack, aka Naked Snake , aka Ishmael, and so on, who spearheaded all kinds of military organisations, secret government programs, etc. all for one singular goal: to create a nation for soldiers alone. Why? I don’t fucking know, I don’t think I’d be able to comprehend the entirety of Metal Gear Solid lore even IF I played all the games. The reason for our conflict with Big Boss is the titular military tech called “Metal Gear”, which are essentially big old anime mechs, but set in a world basically like ours, where they would undoubtedly be weapons of unbelievable mass destruction. There are a whole lot of details about the story of both MG and MG2 I don’t know about because I haven’t played them yet.
Anyway, back to the plot of MGS. A few years after the events of the aforementioned games, living in isolation somewhere in the Alaskan frozen wastes, Snake is, uh, “contacted” by his old commander, Colonel Roy Campbell. Our guy has achieved legend status for his previous missions and is known as the greatest living warrior, after having defeated and foiled the man who previously held that title. Like I mentioned before, you can choose to receive some extra context by selecting the mission briefing, in which the following happens:
We open up on Solid Snake, stripped naked to a chair inside of a military submarine, being greeted by a mysterious voice which turns out to be the Colonel. Snake, previously having been the top soldier for the US Military special forces, is now retired, living in Alaska, and finds himself detained by a couple of armed soldiers, for the purpose of coercing him to go on one final mission for the US military. We also get introduced to a bunch of other NPCs we’ll get to talk to a lot during this game, namely Dr. Naomi Hunter, Mei Ling, Master Miller, and so on. So, what is the problem, and why is Snake the one who has to solve it?
Our goal is to invade the fictional Alaskan island and former US military outpost “Shadow Moses”, which has been taken over by FOXHOUND after rebelling against their employers. The leaders of FOXHOUND have since threatened the US government with nuclear strikes from the new iteration of the game series’ eponymous fighting robots, the American-produced Metal Gear REX, over the remains of Big Boss and 1 billion dollars cash. Our job is to infiltrate the base, free the various hostages taken by FOXHOUND - including Colonel Campbell’s niece Meryl Silverburgh -, check whether or not Shadow Moses DOES possess the capabilities for said strike, and destroy Metal Gear should the need arise. While we’re there, we’re also tasked with saving both the DARPA chief Donald Anderson, and the ever infamous Dr. Hal “Otacon” (abbreviated from “Otaku-convention”, yes, seriously) Emmerich. Simple enough. Snake isn’t exactly super quick to trust the colonel, and asks for full disclosure regarding the mission details. After getting to know the other characters, and being injected with a healthy dose of nano-machines who will turn out to have a whole bunch of different uses, we set out for the frozen military base.
This is where we should briefly talk about this game’s signature game mechanic you’ve seen referenced a billion times in other games or other media without ever knowing where it originated from: The Soliton radar system. At its most basic it’s a radar system that lets you see enemies from farther away, as well as their effective line of sight / range in the environment. This is what basically makes the stealth system, other than the level design. But the Soliton is also a communication device which let’s you ring up various NPCs back at the home station, who all have different fields of expertise and will give you varying advice depending on the situation - and depending on whether or not they are even qualified to help you in the first place. The amount of different dialogue that these NPCs can present you with depending on the situation is seriously impressive, even for today’s standards. And it’s not all just strictly gameplay related either. Sometimes, especially when any given NPC can’t really help in a situation, they’ll often give you more story context or background on their own character, sometimes even giving away a little too much for their own good - at least, if you’re perceptive. The single biggest thing I’ll praise about the codec calls are that they are a great way to find out what to do in certain boss fights, that would probably have you Google the solution in any other game. Once again, incredibly forward thinking and a fantastic way to future proof your game.
That’s enough set up, we’ll get back to the story in a bit, but for now we ascend from the waves and make our way into the enemy base. So, let’s take the opportunity and talk about the incredibly iconic Shadow Moses:
The game takes place entirely within its confines, and is made up of several smaller sections. The outpost is constructed a bit like something you’d see in a Metroidvania game, with many unlockable shortcuts and doors that are locked from one side, and has some areas that aren’t necessary to complete the game, and instead have upgrades, supplies or other stuff that makes exploring the whole of Shadow Moses worthwhile. Level design is quite good for the most part and works well for a game based around stealth, and surprisingly does more for the experience than the actual mechanics the game provides you with. I will say that it’s nothing too crazy though, and that I’ve seen plenty of stealth-based games do more with similar set ups and mechanics. On the other hand, most of these games came well after this one. Mostly it comes down to stealth being practically necessitated by a lack of useful combat mechanics, more than the designated stealth mechanics in this game being particularly fleshed out.
In either case, the thing that really makes Shadow Moses work for me is the atmosphere. The rough and brutalist metal and concrete structure jutting out from the rocks of this Alaskan island, penetrating through the thick snow and fog. The sound of machines whirring and snow falling and Snake’s footsteps walking through it, the incredibly iconic musical themes in the background… great stuff. It really makes you feel like you’re breaking into a place you’re not supposed to be. The fact that you can switch to first person mode to take a look around, once again underlining the three dimensional nature of this place makes this even more immersive. The many levels inside Shadow Moses are all rather small and quick to traverse, at least at first, and give you plenty of stuff to find if you’re curious enough - and it turns out, you really SHOULD explore, because while a lot of the stuff you can find is optional, some other stuff isn’t, and the game WILL make you go all the way back to retrieve it.
This is kind of a perfect segue to move on to one of the things that exist on the other end of the Kojima extreme for me; the boss fights. I cannot say that I was a big fan of them.
I felt that they are all extremely gimmicky and some relied heavily on the player finding very specific items that would hard lock you out of completing the boss fights until you find them. Sometimes they might require you to find a specific weapon that, like I alluded to before, you could have found if you were observant enough, like one of the mid-game bosses, the first battle against Sniper Wolf. Story context; after having freed Meryl (who is also Snake’s love interest in this game), we lead her through parts of the level until she gets shot by the aforementioned boss while walking through a narrow hallway to a different part of Shadow Moses. Bleeding out on the floor, she’ll be at the mercy of Snake defeating Wolf as quickly as possible. However, should Snake not have brought a PSG-1 sniper rifle with him, the game unironically stops everything and makes you go back to the start of the game to retrieve it, all the while Meryl is bleeding out on the floor, in the cold of an Alaskan winter night, while a deadly enemy sniper is still aiming her sights on our girl. This is, frankly, absurdly out of place, tonally speaking. I get that this fight is hardly doable without a sniper rifle, but having to leave the encounter in the middle of a gunfight while your love interest is literally dying on the floor feels so incredibly off. I have to believe this was some last minute decision, as it makes no sense, dramaturgically speaking. What’s worse is that the game seemingly intends for you to go through whole ordeal, as I don’t think that most people would’ve found the sniper without first fully understanding how this game even works.
Another example, this one particularly egregious for me personally, was Vulcan Raven during the second half of the game. While you don’t technically need a specific weapon to beat him, in praxis you kinda do. Structurally, the boss fight works by putting you in a small rat maze with a guy wearing a heavy mech-suit with mini guns equipped on each arm. Needless to say, if he spots you, he’ll kill you in seconds flat. While you can technically fight him with just about any form of explosive in this game, including the rocket launcher, what you REALLY want to use are claymore mines. The problem being that, once again, you have to go out of your way to search every nook and cranny of this map if you want to find some of them. You can potentially pick them up during a certain boss battle, and some in certain, short sections in between areas. Now, I’ll admit that not picking them up every chance I get was on me. There were plenty of instances where I stepped on some claymores and died, and therefore should’ve known about their presence. The game does tell you about the x-ray vision that lets you see invisible enemies and hidden explosives. However, the game does not tell you that you’ll practically NEED to use them during certain boss battles, at least if you don’t plan on having an aneurysm. I tried this boss fight so many times without them, because I didn’t feel like starting from an earlier save, when that save was at least an hour back. Eventually, however, I caved and loaded an earlier save so I could go up and farm those mines like you’re clearly supposed to. Usually this wouldn’t piss me off so much, but the obtuse way in which this whole strategy is relayed to you, alongside the fact that you’re ostensibly given multiple angles for any boss fight here made this whole section almost unbearably frustrating for me, and made me drop the game for a couple of days. Having one option that is significantly easier and more practical than ANY of the other solutions you technically could use isn’t good design. The worst part is that, even with the intended solution, this fight is still a tedious chore.
And that is sadly true for every single boss in this game. I’m not going into detail on every single boss fight here, but I can confidently say I didn’t enjoy a single one of them except for MAYBE the final one(s). Not even the legendary Psycho Mantis did it for me, but that’s mostly due to the intended solution - switching the controller ports - obviously doesn’t work on emulator. I had to go for the less interesting solution of shooting the statue and then running around the room like crazy trying to get a hit in. I don’t think having access to the intended solution would’ve massively benefitted the fight though.
Something that remains true for every boss fight; if you walk in without enough heals (that is, typically a full stack of them) or god forbid, low health, you’re gonna have a bad time. I understand that this was usually not considered a design flaw since “you could just start from an earlier save”, which was genuinely considered a valid design decision in the late 90’s. For all the shit that the late 2000’s hand-holding design epidemic gets, making it so players don’t lose hours of progress for very simple mistakes was a pretty good thing. Maybe going so hard on the boss encounters isn’t really warranted, but they do present themselves as a rather important part of the story, there are quite a lot of them and most importantly, the regular enemies really don’t offer anything in the way of challenge. This is only a stealth game as long as you feel like playing a stealth game. You can absolutely just walk through and, with enough patience, simply shoot all the enemies without utilising any stealth what so ever. The boss fights are the only instances where the game actually gets a bit challenging, but sadly most of them go about it in the most obnoxious way possible.
Sadly, the boss fights aren’t even my biggest problem, which says a lot because they already pissed me off quite a bit. No, it’s actually the entire second half of the game I have some serious gripes with. The first disc of the game (which is also the first half) is generally paced very well, with good level design, nice stealth sections, and a continuous feeling of progressing forward while also making those little Metroidvania-esque connections in your head about how the map is structured. While backtracking is a thing, it’s kept to a minimum in favour of constantly presenting you with new stuff. The second half is the complete opposite of that.
Backtracking does not only become noticeable, but excessive. The game also isn’t going about implementing it in a way that I would describe as “elegant”, either. Honestly, it’s one of the most offensively obvious examples of padding out a game’s length for no reason other to increase its “runtime” I have ever seen. It is beyond belief to me that this keeps getting ignored in all of those nostalgia-drenched 5 star reviews that go on and on about how beautifully this game has aged, and how it’s one of the best games of all time. This is bad design, and it was bad design for its time as well.
Easily the most infamous example of this - although sadly not the only one - would be the whole ordeal about using the PAL key to deactivate the nuclear launch sequence. Now, the set up is actually quite clever. You spent around half of the game looking for three distinct PALs (permissive action link), knowing that you need them to shut down the launch, since there are three colour-coded modules on the launch console. Thus far you’ve only found one, and time is running out. But then Otacon informs you that you already had all three keys the entire time. Turns out, that one single keycard you found actually includes the other two codes you need. How? The key turns into a different key depending on the temperature. Conceptually, this is really cool and one of the smarter ways to go about it. Gameplay wise, it’s fucking horrible and by far my least favourite section of the game. What’s worse is that it’s right at the end, dragging out the moment you finally get to the final boss even more.
Basically, you’re supposed to go to an area with a certain temperature, stay there for a couple of minutes so the key changes colour, and then get back to the final room. Sounds simple enough. But there are some things that utterly destroy the pacing of this final stretch. First, none of the areas you go to are new. You are required to backtrack to places you’ve already been to hours ago, just to stay a few minutes there and go back. There are no clever shortcuts to make traversing the second half of the map more interesting. You have to fight the exact same enemies every time you go through EITHER way. There is no way to effectively circumnavigate them without being a speed runner or other gamer god. And, on top of that, each trip takes significantly longer than the one before it. Depending on how you play, this could take you anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. This is legit some of the worst cases of padding I have ever seen. This is just straight up filler bullshit. I’m sorry, but I’m gonna call it like it is. It’s dogshit game design.
Now, I think I understand why they did it. Apart from the obvious point (just make the game a little longer), I think it’s structured like this go give the absolute load of codec calls you’ll be receiving a bit more room to breathe. This section is basically where the entire story of MGS1 pulls a complete 180° and makes you realise you didn’t have the full picture. I understand that there needed to be a big focus on that, and that cramming them into a very short gameplay section would’ve probably just overloaded players with info. However, artificially padding out the game just so a few cutscenes have a little extra room to breathe is akin to a cardinal sin of game design for me. Surely there had to have been a better way than this. I’m not gonna harp on for it more than I already have, because I think I’ve made my point.
Luckily the actual story of the game keeps up its quality up until the credits. The final boss is also really fucking cool, story wise. Gameplay, it’s more of what we already got, albeit slightly more thrilling. A good hand-to-hand brawl is just what this story needed, even if Kojima can’t stop shoving it into literally every game he makes. The final turret section is not my favourite but it works well enough and builds tension right until the climax of the story. I’m not gonna go into great detail concerning the overall story; a.) because it’d take way too long and this review is too long as is, and b.) in the slim off-chance that someone who hasn’t played the game fully read this review (If that’s you, hi. What’s up?) they won’t get spoiled too much, at least not about the good parts.
Before I sign off, here are some other notable parts about the game that didn’t fit into the text so far:
The music is generally fantastic. It strikes a nice balance between James Bond-y, funky bass guitar and synth driven tracks and some droney, almost industrial sounding stuff. The standard combat theme is literally iconic, alongside various pieces of sound design in this game, most notably of course the “!” sound. (You just heard it in your head, admit it.) I especially love the song “The Best Is Yet To Come” by Aoife Ní Fhearraigh, absolutely beautiful anti-war song.
While I wasn’t a huge fan of the actual boss battles, I loved the actual characters’ monologues. And that’s saying something, because usually I’m not the biggest fan of overly indulgent monologuing - and no, the irony of saying this while writing a Bachelor thesis’ worth of text is not lost on me. They tell so much about their respective characters and philosophies, and they’re fantastic stand-ins for various aspects of warfare and the ideologies behind it. Their designs are all extremely memorable and iconic.
Speaking of characters, I loved all the codec call characters, and the whole concept of it more than I would anticipate. Having to speak to Mei Ling whenever you want to save gives it so much more meaning. Discovering more and more about both Naomi and Dr. Miller, finding out who (or what) is the enigmatic “Deepthroat” (yes, that’s his actual name, don’t laugh) and being amused by all of Otacon’s weird weeabo antics. The only thing I wish was that maybe ignoring the codec, or at least being able to fully skip certain sections (esp. if you’ve already seen them) was an option sometimes, especially after you died and have to watch a whole 5 minute monologue again.
Snake himself is also a great protagonist. He’s witty, he’s badass and he has a surprisingly fleshed out personality with a lot of nuance. He loves to smoke and he hates being lied to. An appreciator of beautiful women, but not a womaniser. A battle compatriot as well as man with a heart with the size of a mountain. David Hayter is literally perfect as Solid Snake. You can also really tell that Snake really grows as character throughout his mission. Really makes me wish I played the previous entries to have a little more story context.
CONCLUSION:
Ultimately, Metal Gear Solid isn’t a game I would say I love, but it’s definitely a game I deeply respect. It brought so many great innovations to the gaming world. It was one of the most important steps in giving games as a whole a more prestigious connotation than simply being mindless entertainment. It kicked off what could be considered one of the most influential and greatest video game series of all time. But the actual, well, game-part left me exceedingly frustrated the more time I spent on it. While some things aged brilliantly, others aged horribly. It surprises me just how close this game comes to both Metal Gear Solid 5 and Death Stranding for me. All games with great individual moments, overall good systems but a lot of excess fat and unnecessary nonsense that really drags the game down more than it adds to it.
It’s definitely a game that’s a lot more fun to talk and write about than it is to actually play. It tries so many different things, and it’s surprisingly good at a lot of them, but sadly simply overdoes it. If I ever wanted to experience the story again, I would most likely just watch a YT video of it. However, it did make me even more curious to finally fully work my way through this legendary series, and I can’t wait to give Metal Gear Solid 2 a try.
7,5 / 10
7,5 / 10
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This is one of those games where I’m kind of struggling to come up with unique things to say about it, namely because a game series so ubiquitous and influential as Metal Gear Solid is bound to have been discussed to death for close to 25 years now. There are countless think pieces and articles and video essays about its role as a cultural juggernaut, about how innovative a game it was for its time, about the genius of Kojima, etc. So, instead I’ll try my hardest to simply talk about what I liked and didn’t like about the game, what I think held up well, didn’t hold up well, or was never all that good in the first place.
I think I should start with saying that I have no nostalgic connection to this game, or even this series as a whole. I played MGS1 in April 2023, after only having played 2 other Kojima games the year before, namely MGS5 and the often maligned Death Stranding. (I also played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance but that one isn’t even a Kojima game) I did enjoy both of these games quite a bit, even though both of them are rather divisive, Death Stranding in particular. I mean, I did have more than my fair share of problems with both, and I even though I had a lot of fun with them, I could also see the points of the many detractors of Kojima’s extremely idiosyncratic style of making games. Personally, I’m somewhere in between the two camps of “Kojima is god” and “Kojima is a hack”, often wildly flipping between them on a whim. Often, I’ve heard old school Kojima fans say stuff like “he fell off with MGS4” and that “the first 3 MGS are flawless”. While I can’t speak about those games and related opinions, I can say that MGS1 fit surprisingly well with my impression of the games I actually did play. Which is to say, great in some parts, not so great in others. On the one hand, you have some fantastic stuff that survived the ages in a way that is only possible with Kojima, and on the other hand I have rarely been as frustrated by haphazard design decisions, extremely blatant padding, bad stealth mechanics and lots of other stuff that soured my experience with MGS1 - also only possible with Kojima. But ultimately, like MGS5 and Death Stranding, I did end up liking this game over all, despite its flaws.
I think easily the most impressive part about MGS1 today is its fantastic sense of cinematography. For those not familiar with the PS1-era, it needs to be stated that at that time video game cutscenes - if a game had any cutscenes - were often times not very good, quite short, lacked quite a bit in terms of cinematography and storytelling, and beyond that, were almost always simply FMVs. (“full motion video”, = pre-rendered video files) Even Silent Hill 1, which had absolutely fantastically animated cutscenes at the time, had to fully rely on those FMVs to give the game a feeling of “big budget Hollywood” stuff. Metal Gear Solid 1 is extremely cool and forward thinking in that, not only does the game not use any FMVs whatsoever, but the way the animators used the actual in game graphics and models to direct really compelling and interestingly staged cutscenes is unprecedented.
Not only do the movement of the characters and their delivery of dialogue feel very natural, the camera is almost always placed in interesting positions and even utilises movement during action sequences or otherwise tense moments. This gives the game a far more cinematic feel than just about anything else up to that point. Game designers back often didn’t know all that much about cinematography and story telling, and had to rely on their limited understanding of these things to make everything work. At some points in MGS1, I forgot I was watching highly abstracted, polygonal versions of real people talking and interacting with each other, and fully bought into the illusion that I was watching a film. It really feels like a movie/game hybrid in the best of ways.
Of course, another thing that adds to this is the surprisingly good voice acting. “Surprising” insofar that, once again, at the time video game voice acting tended to be pretty bad. Most of the time the “””actors””” were literally just staff members and programmers without any experience in acting or direction what so ever. While MGS1’s voice acting wouldn’t be anything of particular interest today, this was as close to Hollywood levels of acting you could get in video games at the time. David Hayter as Solid Snake is obviously legendary and immortalised through his “dummy thicc” copy pasta. Oh, and for playing the main character in one of the most acclaimed video game series of all time or whatever. But besides him, the other performances were also really good. I particularly liked Robert Aktin Downes as Master Miller / other characters.
So far so good, great cinematography and voice acting. These are things that Kojima is known for even today, perhaps to the point where this unique selling point itself even kind of became almost flanderised. “Kojima wants to make movies, not games.” And, you know there is a point to that. However, here’s the thing; I don’t really mind it all that much if the story I’m witnessing is actually interesting and told well. And I think, that’s the same for most people, because somehow I don’t hear anywhere near as many people make this complaint with MGS1 than they do with MGS5 and Death Stranding. MGS5 is infamously an unfinished game with an unfinished story, and you can tell. It doesn’t help that the story it tries to tell positions itself as a prequel to over almost every Metal Gear game, retroactively setting up a lot of plot points for the rest of the series, meaning the story makes even less sense if you haven’t played the others first. Death Stranding isn’t unfinished per se, but its story makes no fucking sense and feels like it should be way simpler and to the point than it ended up being. The fact that both of these games also suffer from the most severe case of “Kojima story telling” yet (meaning: and excess of incredibly drawn out and unnecessary information dumps that don’t evolve the plot or characters what so ever and only serve to give the world a fake sense of depth) doesn’t help matters at all.
Needless to say, I expected MGS1 to be just as much of a confusing, nonsensical mess with plot lines that ended nowhere and didn’t really have much of a point. Well, I can happily say that I know understand what old-school Kojima fans were on about when they say the newer games kinda sucked story wise, because unlike the aforementioned games MGS1’s story isn’t just really good, it’s by far the best part of the game.
While we can just jump straight into the actual main plot of the game by hitting new game, the devs provided multiple ways of catching up on the previous games’ plot lines as well as gain more context for the mission you’re currently on. Lingering in the main menu for a while will give you the typical main menu cutscene which will fill you in on some details we’ll get into shortly. The other option comes in the form of a “mission briefing”, in which you’ll be thoroughly informed of the player character’s mission, goal, potential threats, ways in and ways out. You’ll also get a bit of character set up for both Snake and the colonel.
We play as mercenary, freedom fighter and super soldier extraordinaire Solid Snake, aka Snake, aka David, aka Iroqois Pliskin etc. The game takes place some years after the events of both Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, in which Snake invades the private military station / micro nation called “Outer Heaven”, and kills its leader; the greatest soldier of all time, god of combat and patron saint of mercenaries, Big Boss, aka John, aka Jack, aka Naked Snake , aka Ishmael, and so on, who spearheaded all kinds of military organisations, secret government programs, etc. all for one singular goal: to create a nation for soldiers alone. Why? I don’t fucking know, I don’t think I’d be able to comprehend the entirety of Metal Gear Solid lore even IF I played all the games. The reason for our conflict with Big Boss is the titular military tech called “Metal Gear”, which are essentially big old anime mechs, but set in a world basically like ours, where they would undoubtedly be weapons of unbelievable mass destruction. There are a whole lot of details about the story of both MG and MG2 I don’t know about because I haven’t played them yet.
Anyway, back to the plot of MGS. A few years after the events of the aforementioned games, living in isolation somewhere in the Alaskan frozen wastes, Snake is, uh, “contacted” by his old commander, Colonel Roy Campbell. Our guy has achieved legend status for his previous missions and is known as the greatest living warrior, after having defeated and foiled the man who previously held that title. Like I mentioned before, you can choose to receive some extra context by selecting the mission briefing, in which the following happens:
We open up on Solid Snake, stripped naked to a chair inside of a military submarine, being greeted by a mysterious voice which turns out to be the Colonel. Snake, previously having been the top soldier for the US Military special forces, is now retired, living in Alaska, and finds himself detained by a couple of armed soldiers, for the purpose of coercing him to go on one final mission for the US military. We also get introduced to a bunch of other NPCs we’ll get to talk to a lot during this game, namely Dr. Naomi Hunter, Mei Ling, Master Miller, and so on. So, what is the problem, and why is Snake the one who has to solve it?
Our goal is to invade the fictional Alaskan island and former US military outpost “Shadow Moses”, which has been taken over by FOXHOUND after rebelling against their employers. The leaders of FOXHOUND have since threatened the US government with nuclear strikes from the new iteration of the game series’ eponymous fighting robots, the American-produced Metal Gear REX, over the remains of Big Boss and 1 billion dollars cash. Our job is to infiltrate the base, free the various hostages taken by FOXHOUND - including Colonel Campbell’s niece Meryl Silverburgh -, check whether or not Shadow Moses DOES possess the capabilities for said strike, and destroy Metal Gear should the need arise. While we’re there, we’re also tasked with saving both the DARPA chief Donald Anderson, and the ever infamous Dr. Hal “Otacon” (abbreviated from “Otaku-convention”, yes, seriously) Emmerich. Simple enough. Snake isn’t exactly super quick to trust the colonel, and asks for full disclosure regarding the mission details. After getting to know the other characters, and being injected with a healthy dose of nano-machines who will turn out to have a whole bunch of different uses, we set out for the frozen military base.
This is where we should briefly talk about this game’s signature game mechanic you’ve seen referenced a billion times in other games or other media without ever knowing where it originated from: The Soliton radar system. At its most basic it’s a radar system that lets you see enemies from farther away, as well as their effective line of sight / range in the environment. This is what basically makes the stealth system, other than the level design. But the Soliton is also a communication device which let’s you ring up various NPCs back at the home station, who all have different fields of expertise and will give you varying advice depending on the situation - and depending on whether or not they are even qualified to help you in the first place. The amount of different dialogue that these NPCs can present you with depending on the situation is seriously impressive, even for today’s standards. And it’s not all just strictly gameplay related either. Sometimes, especially when any given NPC can’t really help in a situation, they’ll often give you more story context or background on their own character, sometimes even giving away a little too much for their own good - at least, if you’re perceptive. The single biggest thing I’ll praise about the codec calls are that they are a great way to find out what to do in certain boss fights, that would probably have you Google the solution in any other game. Once again, incredibly forward thinking and a fantastic way to future proof your game.
That’s enough set up, we’ll get back to the story in a bit, but for now we ascend from the waves and make our way into the enemy base. So, let’s take the opportunity and talk about the incredibly iconic Shadow Moses:
The game takes place entirely within its confines, and is made up of several smaller sections. The outpost is constructed a bit like something you’d see in a Metroidvania game, with many unlockable shortcuts and doors that are locked from one side, and has some areas that aren’t necessary to complete the game, and instead have upgrades, supplies or other stuff that makes exploring the whole of Shadow Moses worthwhile. Level design is quite good for the most part and works well for a game based around stealth, and surprisingly does more for the experience than the actual mechanics the game provides you with. I will say that it’s nothing too crazy though, and that I’ve seen plenty of stealth-based games do more with similar set ups and mechanics. On the other hand, most of these games came well after this one. Mostly it comes down to stealth being practically necessitated by a lack of useful combat mechanics, more than the designated stealth mechanics in this game being particularly fleshed out.
In either case, the thing that really makes Shadow Moses work for me is the atmosphere. The rough and brutalist metal and concrete structure jutting out from the rocks of this Alaskan island, penetrating through the thick snow and fog. The sound of machines whirring and snow falling and Snake’s footsteps walking through it, the incredibly iconic musical themes in the background… great stuff. It really makes you feel like you’re breaking into a place you’re not supposed to be. The fact that you can switch to first person mode to take a look around, once again underlining the three dimensional nature of this place makes this even more immersive. The many levels inside Shadow Moses are all rather small and quick to traverse, at least at first, and give you plenty of stuff to find if you’re curious enough - and it turns out, you really SHOULD explore, because while a lot of the stuff you can find is optional, some other stuff isn’t, and the game WILL make you go all the way back to retrieve it.
This is kind of a perfect segue to move on to one of the things that exist on the other end of the Kojima extreme for me; the boss fights. I cannot say that I was a big fan of them.
I felt that they are all extremely gimmicky and some relied heavily on the player finding very specific items that would hard lock you out of completing the boss fights until you find them. Sometimes they might require you to find a specific weapon that, like I alluded to before, you could have found if you were observant enough, like one of the mid-game bosses, the first battle against Sniper Wolf. Story context; after having freed Meryl (who is also Snake’s love interest in this game), we lead her through parts of the level until she gets shot by the aforementioned boss while walking through a narrow hallway to a different part of Shadow Moses. Bleeding out on the floor, she’ll be at the mercy of Snake defeating Wolf as quickly as possible. However, should Snake not have brought a PSG-1 sniper rifle with him, the game unironically stops everything and makes you go back to the start of the game to retrieve it, all the while Meryl is bleeding out on the floor, in the cold of an Alaskan winter night, while a deadly enemy sniper is still aiming her sights on our girl. This is, frankly, absurdly out of place, tonally speaking. I get that this fight is hardly doable without a sniper rifle, but having to leave the encounter in the middle of a gunfight while your love interest is literally dying on the floor feels so incredibly off. I have to believe this was some last minute decision, as it makes no sense, dramaturgically speaking. What’s worse is that the game seemingly intends for you to go through whole ordeal, as I don’t think that most people would’ve found the sniper without first fully understanding how this game even works.
Another example, this one particularly egregious for me personally, was Vulcan Raven during the second half of the game. While you don’t technically need a specific weapon to beat him, in praxis you kinda do. Structurally, the boss fight works by putting you in a small rat maze with a guy wearing a heavy mech-suit with mini guns equipped on each arm. Needless to say, if he spots you, he’ll kill you in seconds flat. While you can technically fight him with just about any form of explosive in this game, including the rocket launcher, what you REALLY want to use are claymore mines. The problem being that, once again, you have to go out of your way to search every nook and cranny of this map if you want to find some of them. You can potentially pick them up during a certain boss battle, and some in certain, short sections in between areas. Now, I’ll admit that not picking them up every chance I get was on me. There were plenty of instances where I stepped on some claymores and died, and therefore should’ve known about their presence. The game does tell you about the x-ray vision that lets you see invisible enemies and hidden explosives. However, the game does not tell you that you’ll practically NEED to use them during certain boss battles, at least if you don’t plan on having an aneurysm. I tried this boss fight so many times without them, because I didn’t feel like starting from an earlier save, when that save was at least an hour back. Eventually, however, I caved and loaded an earlier save so I could go up and farm those mines like you’re clearly supposed to. Usually this wouldn’t piss me off so much, but the obtuse way in which this whole strategy is relayed to you, alongside the fact that you’re ostensibly given multiple angles for any boss fight here made this whole section almost unbearably frustrating for me, and made me drop the game for a couple of days. Having one option that is significantly easier and more practical than ANY of the other solutions you technically could use isn’t good design. The worst part is that, even with the intended solution, this fight is still a tedious chore.
And that is sadly true for every single boss in this game. I’m not going into detail on every single boss fight here, but I can confidently say I didn’t enjoy a single one of them except for MAYBE the final one(s). Not even the legendary Psycho Mantis did it for me, but that’s mostly due to the intended solution - switching the controller ports - obviously doesn’t work on emulator. I had to go for the less interesting solution of shooting the statue and then running around the room like crazy trying to get a hit in. I don’t think having access to the intended solution would’ve massively benefitted the fight though.
Something that remains true for every boss fight; if you walk in without enough heals (that is, typically a full stack of them) or god forbid, low health, you’re gonna have a bad time. I understand that this was usually not considered a design flaw since “you could just start from an earlier save”, which was genuinely considered a valid design decision in the late 90’s. For all the shit that the late 2000’s hand-holding design epidemic gets, making it so players don’t lose hours of progress for very simple mistakes was a pretty good thing. Maybe going so hard on the boss encounters isn’t really warranted, but they do present themselves as a rather important part of the story, there are quite a lot of them and most importantly, the regular enemies really don’t offer anything in the way of challenge. This is only a stealth game as long as you feel like playing a stealth game. You can absolutely just walk through and, with enough patience, simply shoot all the enemies without utilising any stealth what so ever. The boss fights are the only instances where the game actually gets a bit challenging, but sadly most of them go about it in the most obnoxious way possible.
Sadly, the boss fights aren’t even my biggest problem, which says a lot because they already pissed me off quite a bit. No, it’s actually the entire second half of the game I have some serious gripes with. The first disc of the game (which is also the first half) is generally paced very well, with good level design, nice stealth sections, and a continuous feeling of progressing forward while also making those little Metroidvania-esque connections in your head about how the map is structured. While backtracking is a thing, it’s kept to a minimum in favour of constantly presenting you with new stuff. The second half is the complete opposite of that.
Backtracking does not only become noticeable, but excessive. The game also isn’t going about implementing it in a way that I would describe as “elegant”, either. Honestly, it’s one of the most offensively obvious examples of padding out a game’s length for no reason other to increase its “runtime” I have ever seen. It is beyond belief to me that this keeps getting ignored in all of those nostalgia-drenched 5 star reviews that go on and on about how beautifully this game has aged, and how it’s one of the best games of all time. This is bad design, and it was bad design for its time as well.
Easily the most infamous example of this - although sadly not the only one - would be the whole ordeal about using the PAL key to deactivate the nuclear launch sequence. Now, the set up is actually quite clever. You spent around half of the game looking for three distinct PALs (permissive action link), knowing that you need them to shut down the launch, since there are three colour-coded modules on the launch console. Thus far you’ve only found one, and time is running out. But then Otacon informs you that you already had all three keys the entire time. Turns out, that one single keycard you found actually includes the other two codes you need. How? The key turns into a different key depending on the temperature. Conceptually, this is really cool and one of the smarter ways to go about it. Gameplay wise, it’s fucking horrible and by far my least favourite section of the game. What’s worse is that it’s right at the end, dragging out the moment you finally get to the final boss even more.
Basically, you’re supposed to go to an area with a certain temperature, stay there for a couple of minutes so the key changes colour, and then get back to the final room. Sounds simple enough. But there are some things that utterly destroy the pacing of this final stretch. First, none of the areas you go to are new. You are required to backtrack to places you’ve already been to hours ago, just to stay a few minutes there and go back. There are no clever shortcuts to make traversing the second half of the map more interesting. You have to fight the exact same enemies every time you go through EITHER way. There is no way to effectively circumnavigate them without being a speed runner or other gamer god. And, on top of that, each trip takes significantly longer than the one before it. Depending on how you play, this could take you anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. This is legit some of the worst cases of padding I have ever seen. This is just straight up filler bullshit. I’m sorry, but I’m gonna call it like it is. It’s dogshit game design.
Now, I think I understand why they did it. Apart from the obvious point (just make the game a little longer), I think it’s structured like this go give the absolute load of codec calls you’ll be receiving a bit more room to breathe. This section is basically where the entire story of MGS1 pulls a complete 180° and makes you realise you didn’t have the full picture. I understand that there needed to be a big focus on that, and that cramming them into a very short gameplay section would’ve probably just overloaded players with info. However, artificially padding out the game just so a few cutscenes have a little extra room to breathe is akin to a cardinal sin of game design for me. Surely there had to have been a better way than this. I’m not gonna harp on for it more than I already have, because I think I’ve made my point.
Luckily the actual story of the game keeps up its quality up until the credits. The final boss is also really fucking cool, story wise. Gameplay, it’s more of what we already got, albeit slightly more thrilling. A good hand-to-hand brawl is just what this story needed, even if Kojima can’t stop shoving it into literally every game he makes. The final turret section is not my favourite but it works well enough and builds tension right until the climax of the story. I’m not gonna go into great detail concerning the overall story; a.) because it’d take way too long and this review is too long as is, and b.) in the slim off-chance that someone who hasn’t played the game fully read this review (If that’s you, hi. What’s up?) they won’t get spoiled too much, at least not about the good parts.
Before I sign off, here are some other notable parts about the game that didn’t fit into the text so far:
The music is generally fantastic. It strikes a nice balance between James Bond-y, funky bass guitar and synth driven tracks and some droney, almost industrial sounding stuff. The standard combat theme is literally iconic, alongside various pieces of sound design in this game, most notably of course the “!” sound. (You just heard it in your head, admit it.) I especially love the song “The Best Is Yet To Come” by Aoife Ní Fhearraigh, absolutely beautiful anti-war song.
While I wasn’t a huge fan of the actual boss battles, I loved the actual characters’ monologues. And that’s saying something, because usually I’m not the biggest fan of overly indulgent monologuing - and no, the irony of saying this while writing a Bachelor thesis’ worth of text is not lost on me. They tell so much about their respective characters and philosophies, and they’re fantastic stand-ins for various aspects of warfare and the ideologies behind it. Their designs are all extremely memorable and iconic.
Speaking of characters, I loved all the codec call characters, and the whole concept of it more than I would anticipate. Having to speak to Mei Ling whenever you want to save gives it so much more meaning. Discovering more and more about both Naomi and Dr. Miller, finding out who (or what) is the enigmatic “Deepthroat” (yes, that’s his actual name, don’t laugh) and being amused by all of Otacon’s weird weeabo antics. The only thing I wish was that maybe ignoring the codec, or at least being able to fully skip certain sections (esp. if you’ve already seen them) was an option sometimes, especially after you died and have to watch a whole 5 minute monologue again.
Snake himself is also a great protagonist. He’s witty, he’s badass and he has a surprisingly fleshed out personality with a lot of nuance. He loves to smoke and he hates being lied to. An appreciator of beautiful women, but not a womaniser. A battle compatriot as well as man with a heart with the size of a mountain. David Hayter is literally perfect as Solid Snake. You can also really tell that Snake really grows as character throughout his mission. Really makes me wish I played the previous entries to have a little more story context.
CONCLUSION:
Ultimately, Metal Gear Solid isn’t a game I would say I love, but it’s definitely a game I deeply respect. It brought so many great innovations to the gaming world. It was one of the most important steps in giving games as a whole a more prestigious connotation than simply being mindless entertainment. It kicked off what could be considered one of the most influential and greatest video game series of all time. But the actual, well, game-part left me exceedingly frustrated the more time I spent on it. While some things aged brilliantly, others aged horribly. It surprises me just how close this game comes to both Metal Gear Solid 5 and Death Stranding for me. All games with great individual moments, overall good systems but a lot of excess fat and unnecessary nonsense that really drags the game down more than it adds to it.
It’s definitely a game that’s a lot more fun to talk and write about than it is to actually play. It tries so many different things, and it’s surprisingly good at a lot of them, but sadly simply overdoes it. If I ever wanted to experience the story again, I would most likely just watch a YT video of it. However, it did make me even more curious to finally fully work my way through this legendary series, and I can’t wait to give Metal Gear Solid 2 a try.
7,5 / 10
2021
Cruelty Squad, despite seemingly marketing itself as a shitpost, is genuinely one of the best games I’ve played in a while. A modern masterpiece featuring satisfying ImSim gameplay, a surprising number of deep mechanics and perhaps the most ruthless, scathing satire of late-capitalist ideology in gaming history.
9 / 10
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Cruelty Squad defies explanation and analysis in a way that makes it both extremely tantalising as well as almost completely impossible to write about, at least without typing up a literal master’s thesis. In many ways, it’s a cynical, cruel funhouse mirror of our own deteriorating society, unmasking and amplifying its worst elements in a way that seems almost delighted in how brutal and unfair our environment has become. The society it depicts is deeply disgusting, vile, loathsome, and as a result, so is everyone living within its confines. Human lives are worth less than a Funkopop - sorry, Chunkopop - and capital has evolved beyond simply being the means by which this world’s economy is animated, towards being an actual, literal omnipotent god. This is a world that would haunt even Ayn Rand’s nightmares, a society fundamentally built on the esotericism of the Sigma-CEO-Grindset.
In other ways, Cruelty Squad is a fantastic and (mostly) enjoyable experience that tricks you into thinking you’re just getting some dumb, “xD random” Steam shitpost game, when you’re actually getting the lovechild of Deus Ex and Half-life with an addiction to LSD Dream Emulator with some seriously evil satire of late capitalist consumer culture. It feels like what a middle-aged Immersive Sim would see if it developed full blown, psychedelics-induced paranoid schizophrenia early in its childhood. It’s a violently colourful, lightning paced cacophony of sensory inputs that walks a tight line between melting your brain with complete and utter nonsense and giving you the feeling of experiencing the grandest epiphany known to man. If the societal criticism of something like Disco Elysium is like a fine and elegant sword strike into the heart of capitalist ideology, Cruelty Squad has the energy of a crackhead armed with a shank made from a toothbrush, hacking it to pieces and cannibalising its remains.
You can see, it’s almost impossible to write about this game without going into a frenzy of unnecessary verbal flourishes just to approximate the experience it gives you from the first second onward. So I’ll be going into the rest of this review how I damn well please - just like the Sigma CEO I am.
You play as a total loser, a poor sod falling through the cracks of the system. You have no job and no money. Suddenly you get a call from a friend who calls you a worthless bum and offers you a job as a member of the titular Cruelty Squad, which is basically like Uber, but you order mercenaries instead of drivers. A group of emotionless, braindead corporate liquidators who keep this utterly dystopian gig economy alive through unmitigated, gruesome violence against the enemies of the ruling class.
But before we get into all of that, I’ll start with the least complicated subject - gameplay. OR; so you would think. This game, despite pretending to be some elaborate shitpost, has a boatload of deep and cryptic mechanics that you might only fully grasp on your second or even third playthrough. But let’s start with the basics.
Although it initially presents itself as a fast paced retro shooter like the OG DOOM, Quake, CS or even something like Ultrakill, and the breakneck speed at which your character can potentially move certainly lends itself to that sort of play style. In reality however, this game is actually an Immersive Sim and cleaves much closer to games like Deus Ex, Prey or System Shock (2) than it does Half-life or Call of Duty in terms of overall design. As per usual with that genre, you have a wide assortment of weapons, both melee and ranged, as well as a body augmentation system which lets you unlock passive power ups, special abilities ranging from combat- to platforming-centric, and even some super leftfield shit that I still don’t fully understand to this day. This variety in options, as well as the generally fantastic level design, leads to environments with sheer endless possibilities for emergent gameplay and unique scenarios. Levels are typically constructed as big, open spaces featuring more narrow and maze-like spaces on the inside. These levels are populated by 2 types of NPCs, enemies and civilians. Enemies range from normal(-ish) guys with guns to some creatures that can only be described as truly strange abominations, like giant flower lions or a fleshy bouncy castle. Your targets are usually just civilian-type NPCs, but some can actually fight back.
It needs to be noted that the run-and-gun approach isn’t the only way to play this game - although the game does heavily incentivise playing as quickly and efficiently as possible through the “Mission results” grading system, ranging from C to S. The only thing that’s relevant for this rating is the speed at which you complete the level. There are no penalties for killing civilians, no bonuses for avoiding anyone but the target, no extra points for exploration, and obviously no pacifism rewards. All that matters is getting the job done. The rating doesn’t do anything either, it’s purely for bragging rights. What’s really surprising is just how many different approaches actually work. On my first playthrough I tried playing it like I was playing DOOM but realised that enemies will kill you VERY quickly if you aren’t careful. Which is why I adopted a more Deus Ex-y, stealth and platforming based approach that had me constantly weave in and out of a building, taking careful shots at enemies from far away at first, to then eventually get close and personal and start blasting as soon as the opportunity arose. It was honestly way more fun that I thought at first and I greatly appreciate that, while the game clearly prefers you going out of your way to cause as much mayhem as possible, it still lets you take it nice and slow and pretend you’re Solid Snake if you want to. Ultimately, this is something that every great ImSim should aim for.
Something that differentiates Cruelty Squad a bit from the other ImSims is that inventory management as a mechanic has been completely cut from the game, in favour of a loadout-based approach, where you choose which augmentations and weapons to take with you on your next mission. You can equip up to 2 weapons and 4 augmentations, one for your head, arms, chest and legs. While I do understand the idea behind it - take only 2 weapons with you and search the rest of the level for new and better weapons - I did find it needlessly restrictive. Not unreasonably so, but it was a small annoyance I thought wasn’t really needed. I don’t need a full army’s worth of guns on me at all times, but at least 1 or 2 unlockable extra weapon slots would’ve made for a nice addition for me. I think I might’ve been more ok with it if all manners of extra attacks like grenades, extra weapons, the super kick and so on weren’t also locked behind augmentations - especially on slots like the arm, where you you’d almost always want a completely different augmentation, which in 90% of cases is gonna be the Grappendix.
Why? Because it’s a built in grappling hook (in the form of an appendix) that can latch on to ANYTHING. Yes, anything. That means you have virtually 0 restrictions on where to use this thing, and yes, it’s as game breaking as it sounds. It takes 10.000$ to unlock, but as soon as you do, the real game begins. But here’s the crazy part - it’s not the only aug that lets you completely turn the entire game on its head like that. Some other examples include the Abominator, which lets you reverse gravity at the press of a button. And yeah, again, this is utterly game breaking in the best way possible. I just love how much this game trusts you with doing some wild shit with these augs, and isn’t too concerned about keeping things too “balanced”, or whatever. Matter of fact, often the odds are already so heavily stacked against you that making use of these abilities doesn’t even feel like you’re cheating.
On your first job, you’ll be dropped right into Pharmakokinetiks - that is, if you don’t complete the tutorial level first, in which you can (but don’t have to) complete a little training course at Cruelty Squad HQ to familiarise yourself with the game’s basic mechanics like shooting, platforming, sneaking, opening/circumnavigating doors, etc. There are also a bunch of secrets here, and some stuff that is relevant for the true ending of the game, but more on that later. Back to Pharmakokinetiks, which is a semi openly designed area consisting of a large, central building with multiple ways in or out, including the obligatory air shaft, proving that this IS indeed an immersive sim. Here is where you’re more than likely are gonna be confronted with this game’s approach to shifting difficulty, which is really unique and interesting.
Enemies are fast, aggressive, have good aim and tracking and seem designed to run around in the most unpredictable, skittish pattern imaginable, consequently making hitting them while alerted as hard as possible. Meaning: You’ll more than likely get your ass kicked on your first couple of attempts here. Upon dying for the first time, you’ll be met with the message “Divine Light severed”, your bank account goes -500$ in debt, and the mechanical looking HUD has been replaced for a mix of flesh and metal. Die 4 more times in the same level, and you’ll get the message “Power in Misery - Traversing the gift of death”, the HUD becomes fully fleshy and your boss informs you that: “Due to your wasting of company resources by hogging the genetic recombinator, you've been selected to participate in an experimental biological enhancement program. All your debt is cleared and from now on your body will regenerate by itself. Can't say I envy you though."
So what does any of this mean?
This game has 4 modes of difficulty, and they cannot be actually be picked deliberately, but are rather tied to your actions in this game. You start with the default difficulty, called “Divine Light”, in which enemies deal normal (which is to say, very high) damage and no special bonuses, except for a couple of doors throughout the various levels that can only be accessed while on this difficulty. If you die once in any level, you’ll transition into “Flesh Automaton” mode, in which enemies do half damage, but no other changes. Further deaths eventually transition you into “Power in Misery” mode, which is the mode in which you’ll most likely spend 90% of the game in. Enemies still deal half damage, but there is one door in Pharmakokinetiks with one of the few friendly NPCs inside who informs you of another perk of your new, gross fleshy form: You can EAT dead bodies for a tiny health boost, and also to save some money. How so? Well, because you can also STEAL THEIR ORGANS and sell them on the black market. Due to your newfound appreciation for cannibalising the working class, he considers you family. Finally, there is “Hope Eradicated”, but the game’s first ending can be achieved without ever achieving this mode. Enemies deal full damage, the HUD turns blue, every stage gets new, beefed up enemies and the sky turns red. This mode is only relevant for unlocking the second and then the final, true ending of the game. Again, more on that a bit later.
This sudden and extreme downgrade for the character right at the start of the game can feel extremely disempowering and makes you feel like you failed significantly super early in your playthrough, and that is very clearly by design. It really sets the tone for the rest of the experience, in which you have to effectively climb a mountain of corpses of people who are just as pathetic and sad as you. Everyone, except the TRULY rich, is getting fucked by this system, and no-one is safe from its all-devouring maw. Even the people who would usually be considered rich, like the suburbanites in Paradise, are revealed to be effectively middle-class, due to how immensely more wealthy those at the top actually are compared to even those who can afford big mansions and private security forces.
You can also increase the difficulty for individual levels by selecting “Punshiment mode”. In this mode, enemies will deal twice the damage they would depending on your current difficulty mode. Power in Misery usually gives you 50% enemy damage, this way it’s 100, while on Divine Light or Hope Eradicated, you’ll now take 200% damage, which essentially means you die in one hit. As a trade off, you get twice the reward money AND, if you beat any level on Punishment for the first time, you’ll get restored back to Divine Light. This only works ONCE per level though, if you die at any point after that you’ll be permanently locked out of it until you either a.) get to the Archon Grid mission at around the halfway point (or ending, depending on how committed you are) or b.) find the secret area in Cruelty Squad HQ.
The final, and one of the game’s most important mechanics takes the form of an in-game stock exchange, in which you can buy and sell shares from the many companies existing in this universe. As mentioned, you can also buy and sell organs. Neat. Oh, and fish too, for some reason. Next to finishing missions over and over again, this will be your main way of making money in this game. And just like in real life, this stock exchange is completely arbitrary, doesn’t make a lick of sense and will decide to fuck you over because it feels like it, but once in a blue moon you may get lucky with some unforeseen development in your favour. The only thing I understand about this system is that it resets every time you boot up the game, so you can never be sure which companies might blow up over night, and which ones will suddenly lose you money. There are some companies, and some of the organs and fish that will seemingly always become completely worthless, I’m not sure what triggers this. You can use this money to buy various new augmentations, and even an entire level.
With that all out of the way, let’s get into this game’s level design.
Generally speaking, it’s fantastic. Its biggest influence stems very clearly from the original Deus Ex first and foremost, as the progression in this game works by going from level to level in a linear fashion. These levels are generally designed in a very open manner, allowing multiple ways of access. Let’s take the first level as an example again. In Pharmakokinetiks, you’ll be confronted with finding a single target hiding inside the office building of a local pharmaceutical company. I assume that finding your way in isn’t all that easy at first if you’re not familiar with how these games usually work. Most obviously you have the front door. You could just waltz in guns blazing, but that will more than likely get you killed very quickly. There is a back alley to the right of the entrance gated off by a small fence, next to the only “Power in Misery” door in the game. You could either break down the flimsy wood door with an explosive, or stack a bunch of barrels on top of each other and go over it. Alternatively, you may find your way up a bunch of stacked containers to the left of the building and find your way in via a good, old air vent - which is how I went about it. And those are just 3 of the ways the devs actually intended you can go in. You could also use the baton to allow for small wall jumps up to a window, break it, and go in that way. Or climb on the roof and snipe the enemies from the other side and THEN go in through another window. And that’s all without taking into account the many and varied augmentations you can apply to your character before entering the level, but - you guessed it - more on that later. This all works beautifully and way better than you’d expect at first.
For the most part the gameplay loop for all levels is the same: Go in, kill the target(s), find the exit. But, of course, that’s not all there is to do by a long shot. Every level features an abundance of secrets, both in terms of hidden goodies as well as interesting lore tidbits and, uh, “side quests” as it were. Some levels even feature hidden gateways to other, secret levels in the form of paintings. A few of them are pretty deviously hidden, and require you to come back way later, when you acquired the right augmentations, or “implants” as they are called here. Speaking of which, not all of them have to be bought, some have to be found within levels, just like weapons. The latter has the added caveat of having to be physically held in your hand while leaving the level to be fully unlocked. Needless to say, having only 2 weapon slots can make that process quite challenging if the level you’re in is somehow tricky. The same isn’t true for augs, luckily, those are unlocked as soon as you grab them, and stay that way even if you die in the process of grabbing it.
The next level on the list is already one of my all time favourites, the little town of Paradise. In it, you can actually drive around in a car, which makes the funniest fucking noise known to man when it goes fast. It’s probably THE most openly designed level in the whole game, and this time you have 3 targets. It features probably the most secrets out of any level, has an entire underground section you can only access a bit later in your playthrough, realistically at least. The three targets all live in different houses, and security is tight. This mission really tests your ingenuity first and foremost, as walking in through the front gate is a recipe for disaster every time. If you’re smart and resourceful, like using the baton to wall jump up to places you shouldn’t be yet, you can get some seriously overpowered weapons and augs for the early game here. The level after this one, Sin Space Engineering is constructed more like Pharmakokinetiks, one large, central chamber surrounded by a lot of open space. You can find a whole bunch of weapons and augs here and learn a lot about this world’s lore, as well as find one of the most important NPCs in the game here: The guy with the fishing rod. It might not seem like it, but the fishing rod is your best option for making a fast buck. While organs are usually a quicker way of making smaller amounts of money, some rarer fish can earn you some proper fat sums, up to 1 million for a very particular kind of fish. But others can also easily net you multiple thousands per piece though. Just remember to actually grab the fishing rod on your way out. The next level, Androgen Assault, takes the form of a dark, spooky police station, and it kinda delves into more horror themed topics. The music is dark and oppressive, the monstrous noises coming from all sides are stressful as all hell, and the level introduces you to some of the game’s most irritating enemies.
Generally speaking, I love pretty much all of the levels here, with only some exceptions. The only one I would I say I’m not a huge fan of is Bog Business, which takes place in - you guessed it - a poisonous bog. The poison melts through your healthbar like a 1000° knife through butter, pretty much every enemy has long range weapons and the design isn’t particularly interesting either. The saving grace would be the fact you can find a bunch of goodies, as well as an entire secret level here. While this mission feels kinda annoying to play through, it also feels like that’s the point, like the devs are taking the piss. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the game’s true final level, Trauma Loop. It feels unnecessarily brutal and cruel, yes, even for the final level of a game called “Cruelty Squad”. That last section is nigh on impossible if you don’t know what you’re doing. Some other areas that left me a bit cold were; Apartment Atrocity, which is just a bit short and uninteresting (even IF you get to shoot your landlord in the head, which is always a plus!), Miner’s Miracle, which can get very frustrating with enemy placements on higher difficulties as well as takes too long to get you from the start of the level to where you actually need to go (which means dying here is SUPER punishing) as well as the locked-off section of Cruelty Squad HQ. Other than a story relevant mission, as well as the most broken gun in the game, there isn’t a lot here.
Luckily, the rest of Cruelty Squad’s missions are generally extremely good. If I had to make a tier list, I’d rank the majority of levels in either S or A tier, with only a few in B and only the ones I already mentioned in C and D tier. S Tier would include areas like the aforementioned Paradise or Sin Space Engineering. Or, take the extremely interestingly designed Idiot Party, which involves murdering the members of an elite cult meeting up in the “Rothenburg” Fortress as well as their security forces. The place is basically just one massive hole in the ground, meaning; with enough platforming finesse you can skip the entire thing and get straight to the target, although properly exploring the place is not only worthwhile, but also really fun. Another easy S comes in the form of the Office level, which has the potential to become one of the most chaotic experiences of the game, but also has some of the most interesting, vertical design out of all of them. The grappling hook and super jump upgrades really come into their own here. Finally, perhaps one of my favourite levels in the whole game; the lovely cruise ship extravaganza called “Seaside Shock”. Here, you murder the inhabitants of a Peter Thiel-esque, Libertarian floating city-ship for the ultra rich. It’s one of the largest levels and allows for so many approaches, but I personally loved finding my way to the rooftop and snipe just about every enemy in the game from there. I also went with a run and gun approach as well, and it worked just as beautifully. It also houses another secret level.
There are plenty of other levels in this game, but I don’t feel like going over each and every one here. They’re all at least good, with the best of them being among the best levels in the genre. Once again, I have to note that the level design being generally this good is nothing short of amazing, and once again shows that you should never judge a book by its cover - or a game by its aesthetics.
Speaking of aesthetics, let’s talk about what is easily Cruelty Squad’s most recognisable and infamous aspect: It’s art direction and presentation. Somewhere in between 2000’s Y2K core, generic 80’s Gordon Gecko style office space designs feauting black marble floors all sorts of horrible, corporate taste as well as contrasting colours so unrelenting they come across as some horror version of some really disturbing version of some Nickeoldeon kids show from the naughties. Calling it “beautiful” or even “aesthetically pleasing” is probably not really what most people would agree with, but there is some strange, idiosyncratic appeal to it. Its most obvious influence, at least concerning visuals, is very clearly the ever infamous 1998 PS1 classic “LSD: Dream Emulator” - looking at them side by side, it’s impossible to ignore the inspiration. This general madness also extends to sound design, which has characters talk like a Banjo-Kazooie character from hell, guns sound… very interesting, and the music has this really strange, dream-like quality to it where it always alternates between kinda goofy and shitposty to genuinely quite catchy versions of old, tracker-based game OSTs, once again, Deus Ex being a likely source of inspiration. Also, again, hearing that car sound for the first time might be the hardest I laughed at a piece of sound design, maybe ever. It’s such an inspired overall aesthetic that, despite feeling like a constant all-out assault on your senses, is internally consistent and has a lot of thought behind it.
This is also probably a good point to briefly talk about Ville Kallio, Finnish artist extraordinaire and mastermind behind the production of Cruelty Squad. I’m really not sure just how much Kallio is involved in the actual process of coding or engine work, although judging from their instagram, they do do a lot of modelling and give insight into creating assets for the game. What’s less clear (to me, at least) is how many people are actually involved in the production studio “Consumer Softproducts”, or whether this was essentially all made by Kallio. It’s clear that they were pretty much entirely responsible for the concept, design, writing and art direction of the game, to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that “Consumer Softproducts” is just some alter ego Kallio works under. I guess we’ll never know!
Easily the most impressive thing about Cruelty Squad isn’t its gameplay - although, as already discussed, it’s up there - or its aesthetic or any individual piece of its structure, really. It’s the blend of the individual elements coming together that deliver a hitherto unseen level of idiosyncrasy in its artistic essence. In most contemporary cyberpunk media, there seems to be almost some sort of reformist optimism permeating every facet of the genre. In the vein of “Yeah society kinda sucks but look at all this cool tech! I mean yeah, only the rich and powerful get to benefit from it, but those cool body augmentations sure make up for it, especially if we just kill the bad guys!”. Cruelty Squad’s world, on the other hand, is perhaps THE most pessimistic and apocalyptic version of cyberpunk dystopia since Tsutmo Nihei’s Blame! From 1999. EVERYTHING sucks. Wealth disparity is at a point where people who are literal millionaires are considered barely upper middle class. The elite have transcended into some sort of digitally enhanced giga hive mind and keep the world, aka the economy, running through brutal mass human sacrifice. And like mentioned before, that’s where we come in: Were are nothing but capital’s mercenary. The outer gods of profit maximisation demand blood, and damn it, we are going to deliver it. This is the libertarian dystopia, the world that disconnected AnCaps think they want but truly don’t. No one is safe, not even the people working to uphold the system.
For example; in Sin Space Engineering, we are tasked with murdering the CEO of a big space company. In the words of our boss: "It has come to our attention that the CEO of Advanced Orbital Instruments has been doing too good of a job trying to increase the survival rate of our mission to Mercury, currently estimated at around 20%. This simply won't do as it is first and foremost a sacrificial mission designed to satiate the appetites of some of our higher ups. Once you get rid of him we'll be free to install our own CEO who is more attuned to the concept of mass scale human sacrifice."
So, even a CEO isn’t safe from capital’s wrath, and his reason for, uh, “being let go” wasn’t that he did a bad job at leading the company or being responsible for huge lay offs, no: it’s that he tried to DECREASE the amount of human casualties of a mission that was 100% intended to just kill people. It’s obviously a very extreme and hyperbolised version of a very real, vicious type of logic that permeates every facet of capitalism and its respective branches of ideology while at the same time offering extremely sharp criticism of it. Kallio clearly understands that the individual actors within capitalism, although partially responsible for upholding the system, are they themselves always subject to the logic of the flow of capital first and foremost. In our world, capital(ism) is a mechanism to uphold the integrity of class society first and foremost, and isn’t actually a true individual with agency or a will. In Cruelty Squad, capital has become an actual, omnipotent god that seemingly fused with the ruling class of this world.
This is only a fragment of the surprisingly deep and complex lore that this game features. I feel like I only barely scratched the surface as far as the actual narrative, lore and worldbuilding go. It’s extremely cryptic and features a lot of religious and psychoanalytical imagery here that kinda flew over my head, or at least I couldn’t confidently decipher everything to the point where it made sense. There is also the obsession with flesh and body parts, and how they are considered disgusting, as opposed to the mechanical “Divine Light.” While I am not really all that familiar with the man’s work beyond reading his Wikipedia article and a few very basic concepts, Kallio’s greatest philosophical inspiration seems to come almost entirely from the writings of 20th century French philosopher, Georges Bataille. One of the games 3 endings ends with a passage from one of his works. I’ll be honest, from what I’ve read his stuff is extremely post modern and hyper-intellectual, to the point where a regular old commie like me almost feels a bit alienated by just how academic it all seems. There are way smarter people than I who can properly decipher all of the imagery and game’s plot and how it all relates to Bataille’s work. The thing that is most essential to understand for our purposes here is the idea that; if any given system is unable to absorb excess energy back into itself, it will be released in a wasteful manner.
What I can do is tell you what I THINK the game’s three different endings mean. Please note that lots of people have very different intepretations for this game’s subtext, and this is just what I came up with on a first reading.
First, we must set the stage and explain some of the game’s lore that can be gleamed from talking to the many civilians populating the levels. The most important fact to understand is that the ruling class has somehow discovered resurrection technology and immediately consolidated it for themselves. They’ll occasionally lease out these abilities to other people, say, cold, soulless mercenaries like us. This is why our character keeps coming back after being killed. As previously mentioned, each time we die, our bank account gets debited for 500$, until we are so endebted to the company they decide to test an experimental new form of said resurrection tech, which involves you reconstituting your fleshy body with the flesh of other people. The fact that the rich have found a way to keep death at bay indefinitely has resulted in what you could cynically describe as a massive market crash for the value of life. Life is worth less than the shit stuck on the soles of your combat boots. Literally the organs in your body are all worth more than the sum of their parts. The very concept of life itself has lost any intrinsic value due to the availability of immortality. Profit maximisation has become the be-all-end-all goal for human society, by any means necessary, for no reason other than its own sake. The, uh, “”””innovative”””” power of capitalism has been cranked to 110%, constantly creating new, revolutionary products such as Chunkopops or burger-flavoured coffee, resulting in utterly unchecked, rampant consumerism and complete emotional detachment from reality for just about every person alive.
While we are, at first, simply a gunman mowing down the class enemy (from the POV of the bourgeoisie) at some point the narrative suddenly shifts from killing the people going against company interest to targeting people running the company instead. I’d say it probably happens some time around or after the Idiot Party level, in which I noticed a sharp change in tone coming from our boss, aka The Handler, in which he suddenly delights in the idea of violently murdering what is essentially the Illuminati. But even before that you may notice that the targets you’re getting assigned and the reasons for their liquidation becoming increasingly more arbitrary. In Seaside Shock for example, you’re essentially punishing a bunch of mid-level rich people (as opposed to the unimaginably wealthy ruling class) for trying to attain sovereignity from the system, even though you’d think that - at least according to libertarian thinkers - trying to split off from the government is essentially the point of capitalism. In reality however, capital needs the state to cement its influence over society, and cannot function without it. But it turns out, the ACTUAL reason you’re liquidating them is just so your branch of the conglomerate’s mercenary troops can cash in that scrumptious security department fond. In a later level, Casino Catastrophe, you’re killing the owner of the casino because Corporate Arch-Demoness Elsa Holmes lost a bunch of money there. That’s it, no other reason.
This all culminates in the game’s first final level, the Archon Grid. Here, you are tasked with navigating a vast, abstract level and killing what I identify as the personification of death itself, the demon-like being Abraxas. A giant, three headed monster with his hands in a position evocative of depictions of Baphomet. The name “Abraxas” is often used as an alternative name, or even form for God in Gnosticism, but originates from Hellenistic-Egyptian magical papyri where he is described as a “powerful demon”. This interpretation seems to have stuck with most Christian scholars and philosophers, who identified this name as being connected to Satanic cults. After killing him by shooting his three heads, the wall behind him opens, we walk through and are greeted with the first ending, known as “ENTRAPMENT”.
We walk across a flat plane with some NPCs walking around there as well. The sun is in the sky, dancing to a strange tune. The game hits us with the following text:
YOU EMERGE FROM A LONG AND WEARY SLEEP. THE WORLD APPEARS AS A LARGE FLAT PLANE OF OPPORTUNITY. THE SKY IS BOUNDLESS AND BLUE. YOU ARE AMONG FRIENDS. THE AIR IS FRESH WITH THE SCENT OF THE OCEAN. YOU HAVE LEARNED ACCEPTANCE AND FORGIVENESS. BUT YOU LACK KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING. YOU WILL BE TRAPPED FOREVER. THE PAST IS EVER-PRESENT. THE SUN SMILES AT YOU WITH ETERNAL MALICE.
While I’m sure there is a book’s worth of stuff to unpack here, my interpretation of this whole ordeal is fairly simple: We are liberating the power of immortality from the hands of the elite, and apply it on a world wide scale. We killed the demon of death, that was previously worshipped by the elite, so now the power of death is no more, and everyone is now immortal. However, we didn’t really solve the problem of human life being worthless; in fact, we just made it way worse. We will never be able to escape this living hell. The world keeps rotting, and we are now doomed to inhabit it forever. Life will continue for all eternity, robbing it of what little value it had to begin with.
The word “Archon” has multiple meanings, 2 of which seem directly related to the nature of the Grid. The first, classical use refers to the simple Greek word for “ruler”. This, of course, makes sense, since the Archon Grid effectively houses the source of the ruling class’s power. It’s the Gnostic use of it that seems more apt, though. In this definition, an Archon is an angelic/demonic entity that actually built the physical world and are tasked with prevent immortal souls from leaving the material realm trapping them inside of mortal bodies. In some interpretations, such as Basilides’, Abraxas is actually the “Great Archon” and presides over 365 Archons.
The second ending requires us to unlock the hardest difficulty of this game, “Hope Eradicated”. You can either find an shrine containing the blue orb inside the Archon Grid, or in a secret area in CSHQ. You can also find the “Cursed Torch” aug in Paradise, which emulates the effect. The second might be the most popular spot to pick it up, since to unlock the second ending, you have to unlock a big, mysterious door that’s been there from the start, and kill a damn-near invincible target at the HQ. But before we do that, we have to go back to Pharmakokinetiks while in Hope Eradicated and find a secret door. In this door, there is an NPC who hooks us up with a “Soul simulator”, which unlocks “DEATH mode” for us. This brings with it a whole number of benefits, but most importantly for our purposes, it lets us pass a hallway after the big mysterious door which would otherwise instantly kill us. There are ways to skip this, but those are primarily speedrun strats, rather than being intended. Back to the HQ target. This guy has a gorillion HP, can kill you in one or two hits and is extremely aggressive. There are a couple of ways to deal with this bloke, but the most straightforward would be to find the ZKZ Transactional Rifle in this level, which scales with your net worth. If your fortune consists of 1 million or more, the gun will kill just about anything in this game in 1 shot. This also applies if enemies hold it though, and it still scales off YOUR net worth. There are ways of killing the HQ target without the TR, but they require a bit more thought on the player’s end, are are more like fail saves, so people don’t get stuck here when they can’t find the rifle.
In either case, after killing the HQ target, you’ll be once again met with a bit of text. This ending is colloquially known as “LIFE”.
I WEEP.
YOU HAVE THE SOUL OF AN EMPEROR.
SACRIFICIAL HERO. BLESSED BY PRIMORDIAL LUCK. YOUR FRIENDS ARE IN HELL YET YOU SMILE.
ONLY GOOD THINGS WILL COME TO SOMEONE LIKE YOU.
SET GOALS. HAVE A TEN YEAR PLAN. INVEST. WAKE UP EARLY. CEO MINDSET.
GOOD LUCK.
This one is a little less clear to me, but I understood it the following way:
Somehow, through the killing of the HQ target - who might the boss of the cruelty squad? - you somehow are granted access to the soul of life itself. You have ascended to some sort of godhood, aka, you have become a high net worth individual who has climbed the corporate ladder. You are now part of the elite. You have survived the rat race while “your friends” all died and have been crushed by the wheel of capitalism. You ascended to the ruling class. You have convinced yourself that you aren’t an empty husk devoid of emotions. Life congratulates you on achieving financial independence. But you are not done. You are the only one who has actually worked to change how things are, and there is still more to be done. You may be rich now, but truly you’re no freer than you were before. Your life is still intrinsically worthless. Society is still crumbling.
It all makes more sense in the context of the third, and true ending.
To truly finish the game you need to beat its final mission, Trauma Loop. This mission unlocks only after you’ve beaten every single stage in the game, even the secret ones, including a level that you can unlock for 1 Million $ in the augmentation screen: House. Like the name suggests, you are a home owner now. Now more stinking landlords, no more rent. You can buy it before achieving the second ending, but considering that ending sets itself up where it kinda expects you to find the Transactional Rifle, which requires you to have a million bucks to effectively use it, I think the game only expects you to buy it AFTER achieving the second ending. You are now wealthy and part of the elite, the world is immortal. Time to buy a house!
Near the village the house resides in, you can find what are essentially the gods of this world: The Triagons. There are a few mentions of them here and there throughout the game, but here is where we REALLY learn about them. The three triagons are massive snake-like entities with a giant ball for their head and named “Malice”, “Life”, and “Death” respectively. Visually they are fairly reminiscent of Abraxas, and I think this is an extremely important fact.
Now, this next part is about to get really abstract, and there’s a good chance I’m not fully getting the lore behind these guys, but I’ll try and give my best explanation of what’s happening here.
The first Triagon, Malice, is effectively the creator of life. It took the sun’s seemingly endless flow of energy and used the energy to create life. Life in this context is seen like a disease, spreading and multiplying. This form of life is unbridled and chaotic, a massive organism that only consumes. The second Triagon, Life, gives form to this misshapen form of energy in the way of bodies made of flesh and blood, regulating its flow to self-contained systems and limiting the excess of waste. With the invention of bodies come limits. Existence becomes scarce and segmented. Suffering is created through experiencing life in a limited, physical form that is subject to pain and fear. So we have a world populated by fleshy automatons, carrying within them unlimited life - but no value to any of it. While there are emotions and feelings already, life itself has nothing to distinguish itself from, nothing to compare it to.
This is where the third Triagon comes in; Death. To briefly reiterate the aforementioned concept by Georges Bataille; if any system is unable to reintegrate excess energy into itself, the energy will be released in a wasteful manner. But what if the opposite were true? The third Triagon effectively introduces death into this loop, imbuing the energy within the fleshy bodies with monumental intrinsic value, creating “souls”. Death is what gives life meaning, which differentiates existence from non-existence. Where there is no end, there can be no beginning. According to the lore “The hole was quickly mended, and the overpowering transmission of value was cut short”. The discovery of resurrection technology takes away the value that the third triagon gave to living. The concept of death introduces strife, conflict and discord. But at the same time, struggle begets meaning. Through taking it all away, life stagnates, and now only money and power are the only things with intrinsic value. There is nothing to live for other than the maximisation of capital, if living itself is nothing to strive for anymore.
We are presented with the option of killing the three heads, just as we did with Abraxas. For killing the lowest of the three heads, we are gifted Golem Exoskeleton, greatly increasing our health and melee power if we choose to put in on. The second gives us a semi-automatic shotgun, one of the best weapons in the game. The final Triagon grants us “financial freedom”, in the form of 1,000,000$ transferred directly to our bank account. Killing them isn’t necessary to unlock the final ending, but will leave you with permanent changes to the game in the form of a green and purple colour scheme during Hope Eradicated (instead of the previously red and green colour scheme) as well as their heads being visible in place of the sun, instead of what would usually be Abraxas.
Onto the final level; Trauma Loop.
We have reached the end. Aeons have passed since we “””liberated””” the world from death, and everything has gone to shit - more so than before, even. We find ourselves in a dark world, devoid of light. This level is fucking brutal, even on normal difficulty. Initially I tried to beat it on Hope Eradicated but gave up after getting killed in the first two rooms for an hour straight. The use of augmentations has been blocked in this area, and you need to kill a specific NPC to allow their use again; the problem is that this NPC is located very close to the end, so you realistically have to finish the level without augs at least for the first time, unless you’re willing to kill the NPC and then do the entire level again - albeit a lot easier. Personally, I wasn’t too much of a fan of this one, because like I said earlier in this review; it feels almost unnecessarily punishing and cruel, even for this game - yes EVEN on normal difficulty. I do have to admit to looking up how to effectively navigate this level, and how to beat the bottom section of this map.
Like the Archon Grid, this level is extremely abstract and doesn’t really resemble anything normal in particular, it consists of ruined bits of buildings floating in a dark, endless void. Our mission is to “locate the Cradle of Life”, which takes the form of a perfectly round ball, like the Triagons’ heads. This makes me think that this “Trauma Loop” is actually some sort of representation of life itself. Life IS the trauma loop. An endless cycle of pain, suffering, death and rebirth. At the heart of this, well, malicious loop is none other than the first Triagon. At the very bottom, Malice waits for us surrounded by a veritable army of the game’s hardest enemies. Getting here can take quite some time, and these guys will fuck you up instantly, so at this point you REALLY have to watch out unless you want to start again from the top. I found this section to be unbelievably frustrating, and it almost made me not want to go through with it, but luckily I did come back another day to finish the job. While other levels did sometimes go a bit overkill with throwing a whole bunch of super tough enemies at you, this part here felt like the devs just giving you the bird and laughing at you for trying to beat their game. While I understand it in the context of Cruelty Squad, I can’t say I felt like getting this obnoxious with your level design and enemy placements added all that much in the way of immersion in this regard. Seriously, do NOT try this level on Hope Eradicated unless you have some SERIOUSLY high tolerance for frustration.
Ultimately, we persevere and confront - and likely kill - the Triagon of Malice. We are presented with the game’s final ending, “DEATH”.
And like before, we are met with some text, but this time it’s a lot more and gets quite lengthy, so I will not copy paste it into this already super-long essay, you can simply read it HERE.
If you paid attention to this game’s story at all, the meaning of this ending should be fairly obvious. We ended the Trauma Loop. Where as in the first ending we ended death for all, resulting in life becoming utterly meaningless, and the second ending saw us try and carve out our own meaning in the way of “LIVING THE GRINDSET, BABY” even if it meant stepping over everyone’s dead bodies, the third ending has our character make the only sensible choice left: To end this entire nightmare once and for all; we give death back to the world. And for the first time in the history of this world, this seems to actually change things. The text presents us with a whole bunch of impressions; child hood memories, the sensation of taste and smell, of feelings like lust and sadness, of the feeling of the warmth of the sun on your skin, of bitter tears of pain. Maybe this is from before we all became immortal. Maybe these are the feelings we couldn’t feel in this infinitely recurring nightmare. We can finally feel again. Live again. We are meant to die. And that’s okay. No one else understands this. They all still cling to what they know, even if it’s literally the thing eating away at their soul. And so, like the game states, “In your violent mercy, you terminate the world life”. We are met with the image of a large, golden tree and the words “GOLDEN AGE” appearing triumphantly on the screen. A new life begins.
If you’ve played Dark Souls before, or any other game that deals with mass scale immortality/undeath, this sort of ending is something you’ve probably seen before. It’s the benevolence of letting an immortal world finally die. The comfort of eternal rest after infinite suffering. But it’s more than just about the esoteric concepts of life and death; I very much think it also speaks to US directly. To reconsider the system we live in. To consider that, for society to truly live, to truly evolve, our old system of economics needs to die. To build a new one from scratch. To not give in to the cynicism of late capitalist consumer culture. To not believe the lies that a better world isn’t possible. To reject the idea of things like Chunkpops and Coffee burgers as “innovation under capitalism”, but to recognise them as distractions meant to drag us away from what we truly need; actual, lasting change. Value to our lives outside of our jobs and the things we buy. To be people again, with thoughts and feelings. To be humans with souls, instead of just flesh automatons.
It is genuinely shocking to me just how wonderfully optimistic this final ending is. What a sudden rush of genuine, heartfelt emotion and love for humanity. Coming from a game so fundamentally violent and cruel in its world-building, deeply cynical in its story telling and satire and sheer contempt for each and every person in this universe, this ending is like a punch in the face. Like a lotus flower emerging from a poisonous bog.
I truly and honestly did not expect this game to be as deep as it is. This will be one of my go-to games whenever I see the argument pop up that “Games cannot and never will be art”. The sheer density of subjects being approached here is mind bending.
To summarise what little I have to criticise in this game, I think some changes to the games balancing system would be nice and could make for an even more enjoyable gameplay experience. Things like more additional weapon slots, armour being not TOTALLY worthless (because, honestly, then why even have it in the game at all?), perhaps a slight tweak to enemy AI to make them not AS frustrating to deal with when alerted, nerfing poison, improving some of the more annoying missions, more options to deal with armoured opponents, etc. I guess some of the numbers could use some tweaking as well, even on the easiest difficulty it still feels a bit too easy to be killed by some random stray bullet. On the flipside, Hope Eradicated makes almost any level damn near un-completable for me. But honestly, I’m thinking REALLY hard here trying to even come up with things to criticise. There genuinely isn’t a lot of in this game I would describe as “flawed”, other than the aforementioned balancing issues.
This really comes as close to a modern masterpiece as it gets, and I could very well see Cruelty Squad as a serious contender for “Game of the Decade”, if its influence will be as wide spread as I imagine it to be. If this game gets some DLC or a sequel in the near future, I think we could be looking at a perfect 10.
I LOVED this game, and even though it’s already a cult classic with an absurdly dedicated community behind it - especially all the people pushing its boundaries in terms of silly speed runs - it still feels criminally underrated. I haven’t been this wowed by a game’s anti-capitalist message since Disco Elysium, and I honestly find this game’s approach to the subject even more personally interesting. And beyond that, this game is just fun and entertaining as hell, and extremely rewarding to master.
A fantastic experience for all Sigma CEOs, Grindset advocates, Datura-megadosing business gurus, Elon Musk worshippers and violent, bloodthirsty goons looking to improve their social standing.
9 / 10
9 / 10
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Cruelty Squad defies explanation and analysis in a way that makes it both extremely tantalising as well as almost completely impossible to write about, at least without typing up a literal master’s thesis. In many ways, it’s a cynical, cruel funhouse mirror of our own deteriorating society, unmasking and amplifying its worst elements in a way that seems almost delighted in how brutal and unfair our environment has become. The society it depicts is deeply disgusting, vile, loathsome, and as a result, so is everyone living within its confines. Human lives are worth less than a Funkopop - sorry, Chunkopop - and capital has evolved beyond simply being the means by which this world’s economy is animated, towards being an actual, literal omnipotent god. This is a world that would haunt even Ayn Rand’s nightmares, a society fundamentally built on the esotericism of the Sigma-CEO-Grindset.
In other ways, Cruelty Squad is a fantastic and (mostly) enjoyable experience that tricks you into thinking you’re just getting some dumb, “xD random” Steam shitpost game, when you’re actually getting the lovechild of Deus Ex and Half-life with an addiction to LSD Dream Emulator with some seriously evil satire of late capitalist consumer culture. It feels like what a middle-aged Immersive Sim would see if it developed full blown, psychedelics-induced paranoid schizophrenia early in its childhood. It’s a violently colourful, lightning paced cacophony of sensory inputs that walks a tight line between melting your brain with complete and utter nonsense and giving you the feeling of experiencing the grandest epiphany known to man. If the societal criticism of something like Disco Elysium is like a fine and elegant sword strike into the heart of capitalist ideology, Cruelty Squad has the energy of a crackhead armed with a shank made from a toothbrush, hacking it to pieces and cannibalising its remains.
You can see, it’s almost impossible to write about this game without going into a frenzy of unnecessary verbal flourishes just to approximate the experience it gives you from the first second onward. So I’ll be going into the rest of this review how I damn well please - just like the Sigma CEO I am.
You play as a total loser, a poor sod falling through the cracks of the system. You have no job and no money. Suddenly you get a call from a friend who calls you a worthless bum and offers you a job as a member of the titular Cruelty Squad, which is basically like Uber, but you order mercenaries instead of drivers. A group of emotionless, braindead corporate liquidators who keep this utterly dystopian gig economy alive through unmitigated, gruesome violence against the enemies of the ruling class.
But before we get into all of that, I’ll start with the least complicated subject - gameplay. OR; so you would think. This game, despite pretending to be some elaborate shitpost, has a boatload of deep and cryptic mechanics that you might only fully grasp on your second or even third playthrough. But let’s start with the basics.
Although it initially presents itself as a fast paced retro shooter like the OG DOOM, Quake, CS or even something like Ultrakill, and the breakneck speed at which your character can potentially move certainly lends itself to that sort of play style. In reality however, this game is actually an Immersive Sim and cleaves much closer to games like Deus Ex, Prey or System Shock (2) than it does Half-life or Call of Duty in terms of overall design. As per usual with that genre, you have a wide assortment of weapons, both melee and ranged, as well as a body augmentation system which lets you unlock passive power ups, special abilities ranging from combat- to platforming-centric, and even some super leftfield shit that I still don’t fully understand to this day. This variety in options, as well as the generally fantastic level design, leads to environments with sheer endless possibilities for emergent gameplay and unique scenarios. Levels are typically constructed as big, open spaces featuring more narrow and maze-like spaces on the inside. These levels are populated by 2 types of NPCs, enemies and civilians. Enemies range from normal(-ish) guys with guns to some creatures that can only be described as truly strange abominations, like giant flower lions or a fleshy bouncy castle. Your targets are usually just civilian-type NPCs, but some can actually fight back.
It needs to be noted that the run-and-gun approach isn’t the only way to play this game - although the game does heavily incentivise playing as quickly and efficiently as possible through the “Mission results” grading system, ranging from C to S. The only thing that’s relevant for this rating is the speed at which you complete the level. There are no penalties for killing civilians, no bonuses for avoiding anyone but the target, no extra points for exploration, and obviously no pacifism rewards. All that matters is getting the job done. The rating doesn’t do anything either, it’s purely for bragging rights. What’s really surprising is just how many different approaches actually work. On my first playthrough I tried playing it like I was playing DOOM but realised that enemies will kill you VERY quickly if you aren’t careful. Which is why I adopted a more Deus Ex-y, stealth and platforming based approach that had me constantly weave in and out of a building, taking careful shots at enemies from far away at first, to then eventually get close and personal and start blasting as soon as the opportunity arose. It was honestly way more fun that I thought at first and I greatly appreciate that, while the game clearly prefers you going out of your way to cause as much mayhem as possible, it still lets you take it nice and slow and pretend you’re Solid Snake if you want to. Ultimately, this is something that every great ImSim should aim for.
Something that differentiates Cruelty Squad a bit from the other ImSims is that inventory management as a mechanic has been completely cut from the game, in favour of a loadout-based approach, where you choose which augmentations and weapons to take with you on your next mission. You can equip up to 2 weapons and 4 augmentations, one for your head, arms, chest and legs. While I do understand the idea behind it - take only 2 weapons with you and search the rest of the level for new and better weapons - I did find it needlessly restrictive. Not unreasonably so, but it was a small annoyance I thought wasn’t really needed. I don’t need a full army’s worth of guns on me at all times, but at least 1 or 2 unlockable extra weapon slots would’ve made for a nice addition for me. I think I might’ve been more ok with it if all manners of extra attacks like grenades, extra weapons, the super kick and so on weren’t also locked behind augmentations - especially on slots like the arm, where you you’d almost always want a completely different augmentation, which in 90% of cases is gonna be the Grappendix.
Why? Because it’s a built in grappling hook (in the form of an appendix) that can latch on to ANYTHING. Yes, anything. That means you have virtually 0 restrictions on where to use this thing, and yes, it’s as game breaking as it sounds. It takes 10.000$ to unlock, but as soon as you do, the real game begins. But here’s the crazy part - it’s not the only aug that lets you completely turn the entire game on its head like that. Some other examples include the Abominator, which lets you reverse gravity at the press of a button. And yeah, again, this is utterly game breaking in the best way possible. I just love how much this game trusts you with doing some wild shit with these augs, and isn’t too concerned about keeping things too “balanced”, or whatever. Matter of fact, often the odds are already so heavily stacked against you that making use of these abilities doesn’t even feel like you’re cheating.
On your first job, you’ll be dropped right into Pharmakokinetiks - that is, if you don’t complete the tutorial level first, in which you can (but don’t have to) complete a little training course at Cruelty Squad HQ to familiarise yourself with the game’s basic mechanics like shooting, platforming, sneaking, opening/circumnavigating doors, etc. There are also a bunch of secrets here, and some stuff that is relevant for the true ending of the game, but more on that later. Back to Pharmakokinetiks, which is a semi openly designed area consisting of a large, central building with multiple ways in or out, including the obligatory air shaft, proving that this IS indeed an immersive sim. Here is where you’re more than likely are gonna be confronted with this game’s approach to shifting difficulty, which is really unique and interesting.
Enemies are fast, aggressive, have good aim and tracking and seem designed to run around in the most unpredictable, skittish pattern imaginable, consequently making hitting them while alerted as hard as possible. Meaning: You’ll more than likely get your ass kicked on your first couple of attempts here. Upon dying for the first time, you’ll be met with the message “Divine Light severed”, your bank account goes -500$ in debt, and the mechanical looking HUD has been replaced for a mix of flesh and metal. Die 4 more times in the same level, and you’ll get the message “Power in Misery - Traversing the gift of death”, the HUD becomes fully fleshy and your boss informs you that: “Due to your wasting of company resources by hogging the genetic recombinator, you've been selected to participate in an experimental biological enhancement program. All your debt is cleared and from now on your body will regenerate by itself. Can't say I envy you though."
So what does any of this mean?
This game has 4 modes of difficulty, and they cannot be actually be picked deliberately, but are rather tied to your actions in this game. You start with the default difficulty, called “Divine Light”, in which enemies deal normal (which is to say, very high) damage and no special bonuses, except for a couple of doors throughout the various levels that can only be accessed while on this difficulty. If you die once in any level, you’ll transition into “Flesh Automaton” mode, in which enemies do half damage, but no other changes. Further deaths eventually transition you into “Power in Misery” mode, which is the mode in which you’ll most likely spend 90% of the game in. Enemies still deal half damage, but there is one door in Pharmakokinetiks with one of the few friendly NPCs inside who informs you of another perk of your new, gross fleshy form: You can EAT dead bodies for a tiny health boost, and also to save some money. How so? Well, because you can also STEAL THEIR ORGANS and sell them on the black market. Due to your newfound appreciation for cannibalising the working class, he considers you family. Finally, there is “Hope Eradicated”, but the game’s first ending can be achieved without ever achieving this mode. Enemies deal full damage, the HUD turns blue, every stage gets new, beefed up enemies and the sky turns red. This mode is only relevant for unlocking the second and then the final, true ending of the game. Again, more on that a bit later.
This sudden and extreme downgrade for the character right at the start of the game can feel extremely disempowering and makes you feel like you failed significantly super early in your playthrough, and that is very clearly by design. It really sets the tone for the rest of the experience, in which you have to effectively climb a mountain of corpses of people who are just as pathetic and sad as you. Everyone, except the TRULY rich, is getting fucked by this system, and no-one is safe from its all-devouring maw. Even the people who would usually be considered rich, like the suburbanites in Paradise, are revealed to be effectively middle-class, due to how immensely more wealthy those at the top actually are compared to even those who can afford big mansions and private security forces.
You can also increase the difficulty for individual levels by selecting “Punshiment mode”. In this mode, enemies will deal twice the damage they would depending on your current difficulty mode. Power in Misery usually gives you 50% enemy damage, this way it’s 100, while on Divine Light or Hope Eradicated, you’ll now take 200% damage, which essentially means you die in one hit. As a trade off, you get twice the reward money AND, if you beat any level on Punishment for the first time, you’ll get restored back to Divine Light. This only works ONCE per level though, if you die at any point after that you’ll be permanently locked out of it until you either a.) get to the Archon Grid mission at around the halfway point (or ending, depending on how committed you are) or b.) find the secret area in Cruelty Squad HQ.
The final, and one of the game’s most important mechanics takes the form of an in-game stock exchange, in which you can buy and sell shares from the many companies existing in this universe. As mentioned, you can also buy and sell organs. Neat. Oh, and fish too, for some reason. Next to finishing missions over and over again, this will be your main way of making money in this game. And just like in real life, this stock exchange is completely arbitrary, doesn’t make a lick of sense and will decide to fuck you over because it feels like it, but once in a blue moon you may get lucky with some unforeseen development in your favour. The only thing I understand about this system is that it resets every time you boot up the game, so you can never be sure which companies might blow up over night, and which ones will suddenly lose you money. There are some companies, and some of the organs and fish that will seemingly always become completely worthless, I’m not sure what triggers this. You can use this money to buy various new augmentations, and even an entire level.
With that all out of the way, let’s get into this game’s level design.
Generally speaking, it’s fantastic. Its biggest influence stems very clearly from the original Deus Ex first and foremost, as the progression in this game works by going from level to level in a linear fashion. These levels are generally designed in a very open manner, allowing multiple ways of access. Let’s take the first level as an example again. In Pharmakokinetiks, you’ll be confronted with finding a single target hiding inside the office building of a local pharmaceutical company. I assume that finding your way in isn’t all that easy at first if you’re not familiar with how these games usually work. Most obviously you have the front door. You could just waltz in guns blazing, but that will more than likely get you killed very quickly. There is a back alley to the right of the entrance gated off by a small fence, next to the only “Power in Misery” door in the game. You could either break down the flimsy wood door with an explosive, or stack a bunch of barrels on top of each other and go over it. Alternatively, you may find your way up a bunch of stacked containers to the left of the building and find your way in via a good, old air vent - which is how I went about it. And those are just 3 of the ways the devs actually intended you can go in. You could also use the baton to allow for small wall jumps up to a window, break it, and go in that way. Or climb on the roof and snipe the enemies from the other side and THEN go in through another window. And that’s all without taking into account the many and varied augmentations you can apply to your character before entering the level, but - you guessed it - more on that later. This all works beautifully and way better than you’d expect at first.
For the most part the gameplay loop for all levels is the same: Go in, kill the target(s), find the exit. But, of course, that’s not all there is to do by a long shot. Every level features an abundance of secrets, both in terms of hidden goodies as well as interesting lore tidbits and, uh, “side quests” as it were. Some levels even feature hidden gateways to other, secret levels in the form of paintings. A few of them are pretty deviously hidden, and require you to come back way later, when you acquired the right augmentations, or “implants” as they are called here. Speaking of which, not all of them have to be bought, some have to be found within levels, just like weapons. The latter has the added caveat of having to be physically held in your hand while leaving the level to be fully unlocked. Needless to say, having only 2 weapon slots can make that process quite challenging if the level you’re in is somehow tricky. The same isn’t true for augs, luckily, those are unlocked as soon as you grab them, and stay that way even if you die in the process of grabbing it.
The next level on the list is already one of my all time favourites, the little town of Paradise. In it, you can actually drive around in a car, which makes the funniest fucking noise known to man when it goes fast. It’s probably THE most openly designed level in the whole game, and this time you have 3 targets. It features probably the most secrets out of any level, has an entire underground section you can only access a bit later in your playthrough, realistically at least. The three targets all live in different houses, and security is tight. This mission really tests your ingenuity first and foremost, as walking in through the front gate is a recipe for disaster every time. If you’re smart and resourceful, like using the baton to wall jump up to places you shouldn’t be yet, you can get some seriously overpowered weapons and augs for the early game here. The level after this one, Sin Space Engineering is constructed more like Pharmakokinetiks, one large, central chamber surrounded by a lot of open space. You can find a whole bunch of weapons and augs here and learn a lot about this world’s lore, as well as find one of the most important NPCs in the game here: The guy with the fishing rod. It might not seem like it, but the fishing rod is your best option for making a fast buck. While organs are usually a quicker way of making smaller amounts of money, some rarer fish can earn you some proper fat sums, up to 1 million for a very particular kind of fish. But others can also easily net you multiple thousands per piece though. Just remember to actually grab the fishing rod on your way out. The next level, Androgen Assault, takes the form of a dark, spooky police station, and it kinda delves into more horror themed topics. The music is dark and oppressive, the monstrous noises coming from all sides are stressful as all hell, and the level introduces you to some of the game’s most irritating enemies.
Generally speaking, I love pretty much all of the levels here, with only some exceptions. The only one I would I say I’m not a huge fan of is Bog Business, which takes place in - you guessed it - a poisonous bog. The poison melts through your healthbar like a 1000° knife through butter, pretty much every enemy has long range weapons and the design isn’t particularly interesting either. The saving grace would be the fact you can find a bunch of goodies, as well as an entire secret level here. While this mission feels kinda annoying to play through, it also feels like that’s the point, like the devs are taking the piss. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the game’s true final level, Trauma Loop. It feels unnecessarily brutal and cruel, yes, even for the final level of a game called “Cruelty Squad”. That last section is nigh on impossible if you don’t know what you’re doing. Some other areas that left me a bit cold were; Apartment Atrocity, which is just a bit short and uninteresting (even IF you get to shoot your landlord in the head, which is always a plus!), Miner’s Miracle, which can get very frustrating with enemy placements on higher difficulties as well as takes too long to get you from the start of the level to where you actually need to go (which means dying here is SUPER punishing) as well as the locked-off section of Cruelty Squad HQ. Other than a story relevant mission, as well as the most broken gun in the game, there isn’t a lot here.
Luckily, the rest of Cruelty Squad’s missions are generally extremely good. If I had to make a tier list, I’d rank the majority of levels in either S or A tier, with only a few in B and only the ones I already mentioned in C and D tier. S Tier would include areas like the aforementioned Paradise or Sin Space Engineering. Or, take the extremely interestingly designed Idiot Party, which involves murdering the members of an elite cult meeting up in the “Rothenburg” Fortress as well as their security forces. The place is basically just one massive hole in the ground, meaning; with enough platforming finesse you can skip the entire thing and get straight to the target, although properly exploring the place is not only worthwhile, but also really fun. Another easy S comes in the form of the Office level, which has the potential to become one of the most chaotic experiences of the game, but also has some of the most interesting, vertical design out of all of them. The grappling hook and super jump upgrades really come into their own here. Finally, perhaps one of my favourite levels in the whole game; the lovely cruise ship extravaganza called “Seaside Shock”. Here, you murder the inhabitants of a Peter Thiel-esque, Libertarian floating city-ship for the ultra rich. It’s one of the largest levels and allows for so many approaches, but I personally loved finding my way to the rooftop and snipe just about every enemy in the game from there. I also went with a run and gun approach as well, and it worked just as beautifully. It also houses another secret level.
There are plenty of other levels in this game, but I don’t feel like going over each and every one here. They’re all at least good, with the best of them being among the best levels in the genre. Once again, I have to note that the level design being generally this good is nothing short of amazing, and once again shows that you should never judge a book by its cover - or a game by its aesthetics.
Speaking of aesthetics, let’s talk about what is easily Cruelty Squad’s most recognisable and infamous aspect: It’s art direction and presentation. Somewhere in between 2000’s Y2K core, generic 80’s Gordon Gecko style office space designs feauting black marble floors all sorts of horrible, corporate taste as well as contrasting colours so unrelenting they come across as some horror version of some really disturbing version of some Nickeoldeon kids show from the naughties. Calling it “beautiful” or even “aesthetically pleasing” is probably not really what most people would agree with, but there is some strange, idiosyncratic appeal to it. Its most obvious influence, at least concerning visuals, is very clearly the ever infamous 1998 PS1 classic “LSD: Dream Emulator” - looking at them side by side, it’s impossible to ignore the inspiration. This general madness also extends to sound design, which has characters talk like a Banjo-Kazooie character from hell, guns sound… very interesting, and the music has this really strange, dream-like quality to it where it always alternates between kinda goofy and shitposty to genuinely quite catchy versions of old, tracker-based game OSTs, once again, Deus Ex being a likely source of inspiration. Also, again, hearing that car sound for the first time might be the hardest I laughed at a piece of sound design, maybe ever. It’s such an inspired overall aesthetic that, despite feeling like a constant all-out assault on your senses, is internally consistent and has a lot of thought behind it.
This is also probably a good point to briefly talk about Ville Kallio, Finnish artist extraordinaire and mastermind behind the production of Cruelty Squad. I’m really not sure just how much Kallio is involved in the actual process of coding or engine work, although judging from their instagram, they do do a lot of modelling and give insight into creating assets for the game. What’s less clear (to me, at least) is how many people are actually involved in the production studio “Consumer Softproducts”, or whether this was essentially all made by Kallio. It’s clear that they were pretty much entirely responsible for the concept, design, writing and art direction of the game, to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that “Consumer Softproducts” is just some alter ego Kallio works under. I guess we’ll never know!
Easily the most impressive thing about Cruelty Squad isn’t its gameplay - although, as already discussed, it’s up there - or its aesthetic or any individual piece of its structure, really. It’s the blend of the individual elements coming together that deliver a hitherto unseen level of idiosyncrasy in its artistic essence. In most contemporary cyberpunk media, there seems to be almost some sort of reformist optimism permeating every facet of the genre. In the vein of “Yeah society kinda sucks but look at all this cool tech! I mean yeah, only the rich and powerful get to benefit from it, but those cool body augmentations sure make up for it, especially if we just kill the bad guys!”. Cruelty Squad’s world, on the other hand, is perhaps THE most pessimistic and apocalyptic version of cyberpunk dystopia since Tsutmo Nihei’s Blame! From 1999. EVERYTHING sucks. Wealth disparity is at a point where people who are literal millionaires are considered barely upper middle class. The elite have transcended into some sort of digitally enhanced giga hive mind and keep the world, aka the economy, running through brutal mass human sacrifice. And like mentioned before, that’s where we come in: Were are nothing but capital’s mercenary. The outer gods of profit maximisation demand blood, and damn it, we are going to deliver it. This is the libertarian dystopia, the world that disconnected AnCaps think they want but truly don’t. No one is safe, not even the people working to uphold the system.
For example; in Sin Space Engineering, we are tasked with murdering the CEO of a big space company. In the words of our boss: "It has come to our attention that the CEO of Advanced Orbital Instruments has been doing too good of a job trying to increase the survival rate of our mission to Mercury, currently estimated at around 20%. This simply won't do as it is first and foremost a sacrificial mission designed to satiate the appetites of some of our higher ups. Once you get rid of him we'll be free to install our own CEO who is more attuned to the concept of mass scale human sacrifice."
So, even a CEO isn’t safe from capital’s wrath, and his reason for, uh, “being let go” wasn’t that he did a bad job at leading the company or being responsible for huge lay offs, no: it’s that he tried to DECREASE the amount of human casualties of a mission that was 100% intended to just kill people. It’s obviously a very extreme and hyperbolised version of a very real, vicious type of logic that permeates every facet of capitalism and its respective branches of ideology while at the same time offering extremely sharp criticism of it. Kallio clearly understands that the individual actors within capitalism, although partially responsible for upholding the system, are they themselves always subject to the logic of the flow of capital first and foremost. In our world, capital(ism) is a mechanism to uphold the integrity of class society first and foremost, and isn’t actually a true individual with agency or a will. In Cruelty Squad, capital has become an actual, omnipotent god that seemingly fused with the ruling class of this world.
This is only a fragment of the surprisingly deep and complex lore that this game features. I feel like I only barely scratched the surface as far as the actual narrative, lore and worldbuilding go. It’s extremely cryptic and features a lot of religious and psychoanalytical imagery here that kinda flew over my head, or at least I couldn’t confidently decipher everything to the point where it made sense. There is also the obsession with flesh and body parts, and how they are considered disgusting, as opposed to the mechanical “Divine Light.” While I am not really all that familiar with the man’s work beyond reading his Wikipedia article and a few very basic concepts, Kallio’s greatest philosophical inspiration seems to come almost entirely from the writings of 20th century French philosopher, Georges Bataille. One of the games 3 endings ends with a passage from one of his works. I’ll be honest, from what I’ve read his stuff is extremely post modern and hyper-intellectual, to the point where a regular old commie like me almost feels a bit alienated by just how academic it all seems. There are way smarter people than I who can properly decipher all of the imagery and game’s plot and how it all relates to Bataille’s work. The thing that is most essential to understand for our purposes here is the idea that; if any given system is unable to absorb excess energy back into itself, it will be released in a wasteful manner.
What I can do is tell you what I THINK the game’s three different endings mean. Please note that lots of people have very different intepretations for this game’s subtext, and this is just what I came up with on a first reading.
First, we must set the stage and explain some of the game’s lore that can be gleamed from talking to the many civilians populating the levels. The most important fact to understand is that the ruling class has somehow discovered resurrection technology and immediately consolidated it for themselves. They’ll occasionally lease out these abilities to other people, say, cold, soulless mercenaries like us. This is why our character keeps coming back after being killed. As previously mentioned, each time we die, our bank account gets debited for 500$, until we are so endebted to the company they decide to test an experimental new form of said resurrection tech, which involves you reconstituting your fleshy body with the flesh of other people. The fact that the rich have found a way to keep death at bay indefinitely has resulted in what you could cynically describe as a massive market crash for the value of life. Life is worth less than the shit stuck on the soles of your combat boots. Literally the organs in your body are all worth more than the sum of their parts. The very concept of life itself has lost any intrinsic value due to the availability of immortality. Profit maximisation has become the be-all-end-all goal for human society, by any means necessary, for no reason other than its own sake. The, uh, “”””innovative”””” power of capitalism has been cranked to 110%, constantly creating new, revolutionary products such as Chunkopops or burger-flavoured coffee, resulting in utterly unchecked, rampant consumerism and complete emotional detachment from reality for just about every person alive.
While we are, at first, simply a gunman mowing down the class enemy (from the POV of the bourgeoisie) at some point the narrative suddenly shifts from killing the people going against company interest to targeting people running the company instead. I’d say it probably happens some time around or after the Idiot Party level, in which I noticed a sharp change in tone coming from our boss, aka The Handler, in which he suddenly delights in the idea of violently murdering what is essentially the Illuminati. But even before that you may notice that the targets you’re getting assigned and the reasons for their liquidation becoming increasingly more arbitrary. In Seaside Shock for example, you’re essentially punishing a bunch of mid-level rich people (as opposed to the unimaginably wealthy ruling class) for trying to attain sovereignity from the system, even though you’d think that - at least according to libertarian thinkers - trying to split off from the government is essentially the point of capitalism. In reality however, capital needs the state to cement its influence over society, and cannot function without it. But it turns out, the ACTUAL reason you’re liquidating them is just so your branch of the conglomerate’s mercenary troops can cash in that scrumptious security department fond. In a later level, Casino Catastrophe, you’re killing the owner of the casino because Corporate Arch-Demoness Elsa Holmes lost a bunch of money there. That’s it, no other reason.
This all culminates in the game’s first final level, the Archon Grid. Here, you are tasked with navigating a vast, abstract level and killing what I identify as the personification of death itself, the demon-like being Abraxas. A giant, three headed monster with his hands in a position evocative of depictions of Baphomet. The name “Abraxas” is often used as an alternative name, or even form for God in Gnosticism, but originates from Hellenistic-Egyptian magical papyri where he is described as a “powerful demon”. This interpretation seems to have stuck with most Christian scholars and philosophers, who identified this name as being connected to Satanic cults. After killing him by shooting his three heads, the wall behind him opens, we walk through and are greeted with the first ending, known as “ENTRAPMENT”.
We walk across a flat plane with some NPCs walking around there as well. The sun is in the sky, dancing to a strange tune. The game hits us with the following text:
YOU EMERGE FROM A LONG AND WEARY SLEEP. THE WORLD APPEARS AS A LARGE FLAT PLANE OF OPPORTUNITY. THE SKY IS BOUNDLESS AND BLUE. YOU ARE AMONG FRIENDS. THE AIR IS FRESH WITH THE SCENT OF THE OCEAN. YOU HAVE LEARNED ACCEPTANCE AND FORGIVENESS. BUT YOU LACK KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING. YOU WILL BE TRAPPED FOREVER. THE PAST IS EVER-PRESENT. THE SUN SMILES AT YOU WITH ETERNAL MALICE.
While I’m sure there is a book’s worth of stuff to unpack here, my interpretation of this whole ordeal is fairly simple: We are liberating the power of immortality from the hands of the elite, and apply it on a world wide scale. We killed the demon of death, that was previously worshipped by the elite, so now the power of death is no more, and everyone is now immortal. However, we didn’t really solve the problem of human life being worthless; in fact, we just made it way worse. We will never be able to escape this living hell. The world keeps rotting, and we are now doomed to inhabit it forever. Life will continue for all eternity, robbing it of what little value it had to begin with.
The word “Archon” has multiple meanings, 2 of which seem directly related to the nature of the Grid. The first, classical use refers to the simple Greek word for “ruler”. This, of course, makes sense, since the Archon Grid effectively houses the source of the ruling class’s power. It’s the Gnostic use of it that seems more apt, though. In this definition, an Archon is an angelic/demonic entity that actually built the physical world and are tasked with prevent immortal souls from leaving the material realm trapping them inside of mortal bodies. In some interpretations, such as Basilides’, Abraxas is actually the “Great Archon” and presides over 365 Archons.
The second ending requires us to unlock the hardest difficulty of this game, “Hope Eradicated”. You can either find an shrine containing the blue orb inside the Archon Grid, or in a secret area in CSHQ. You can also find the “Cursed Torch” aug in Paradise, which emulates the effect. The second might be the most popular spot to pick it up, since to unlock the second ending, you have to unlock a big, mysterious door that’s been there from the start, and kill a damn-near invincible target at the HQ. But before we do that, we have to go back to Pharmakokinetiks while in Hope Eradicated and find a secret door. In this door, there is an NPC who hooks us up with a “Soul simulator”, which unlocks “DEATH mode” for us. This brings with it a whole number of benefits, but most importantly for our purposes, it lets us pass a hallway after the big mysterious door which would otherwise instantly kill us. There are ways to skip this, but those are primarily speedrun strats, rather than being intended. Back to the HQ target. This guy has a gorillion HP, can kill you in one or two hits and is extremely aggressive. There are a couple of ways to deal with this bloke, but the most straightforward would be to find the ZKZ Transactional Rifle in this level, which scales with your net worth. If your fortune consists of 1 million or more, the gun will kill just about anything in this game in 1 shot. This also applies if enemies hold it though, and it still scales off YOUR net worth. There are ways of killing the HQ target without the TR, but they require a bit more thought on the player’s end, are are more like fail saves, so people don’t get stuck here when they can’t find the rifle.
In either case, after killing the HQ target, you’ll be once again met with a bit of text. This ending is colloquially known as “LIFE”.
I WEEP.
YOU HAVE THE SOUL OF AN EMPEROR.
SACRIFICIAL HERO. BLESSED BY PRIMORDIAL LUCK. YOUR FRIENDS ARE IN HELL YET YOU SMILE.
ONLY GOOD THINGS WILL COME TO SOMEONE LIKE YOU.
SET GOALS. HAVE A TEN YEAR PLAN. INVEST. WAKE UP EARLY. CEO MINDSET.
GOOD LUCK.
This one is a little less clear to me, but I understood it the following way:
Somehow, through the killing of the HQ target - who might the boss of the cruelty squad? - you somehow are granted access to the soul of life itself. You have ascended to some sort of godhood, aka, you have become a high net worth individual who has climbed the corporate ladder. You are now part of the elite. You have survived the rat race while “your friends” all died and have been crushed by the wheel of capitalism. You ascended to the ruling class. You have convinced yourself that you aren’t an empty husk devoid of emotions. Life congratulates you on achieving financial independence. But you are not done. You are the only one who has actually worked to change how things are, and there is still more to be done. You may be rich now, but truly you’re no freer than you were before. Your life is still intrinsically worthless. Society is still crumbling.
It all makes more sense in the context of the third, and true ending.
To truly finish the game you need to beat its final mission, Trauma Loop. This mission unlocks only after you’ve beaten every single stage in the game, even the secret ones, including a level that you can unlock for 1 Million $ in the augmentation screen: House. Like the name suggests, you are a home owner now. Now more stinking landlords, no more rent. You can buy it before achieving the second ending, but considering that ending sets itself up where it kinda expects you to find the Transactional Rifle, which requires you to have a million bucks to effectively use it, I think the game only expects you to buy it AFTER achieving the second ending. You are now wealthy and part of the elite, the world is immortal. Time to buy a house!
Near the village the house resides in, you can find what are essentially the gods of this world: The Triagons. There are a few mentions of them here and there throughout the game, but here is where we REALLY learn about them. The three triagons are massive snake-like entities with a giant ball for their head and named “Malice”, “Life”, and “Death” respectively. Visually they are fairly reminiscent of Abraxas, and I think this is an extremely important fact.
Now, this next part is about to get really abstract, and there’s a good chance I’m not fully getting the lore behind these guys, but I’ll try and give my best explanation of what’s happening here.
The first Triagon, Malice, is effectively the creator of life. It took the sun’s seemingly endless flow of energy and used the energy to create life. Life in this context is seen like a disease, spreading and multiplying. This form of life is unbridled and chaotic, a massive organism that only consumes. The second Triagon, Life, gives form to this misshapen form of energy in the way of bodies made of flesh and blood, regulating its flow to self-contained systems and limiting the excess of waste. With the invention of bodies come limits. Existence becomes scarce and segmented. Suffering is created through experiencing life in a limited, physical form that is subject to pain and fear. So we have a world populated by fleshy automatons, carrying within them unlimited life - but no value to any of it. While there are emotions and feelings already, life itself has nothing to distinguish itself from, nothing to compare it to.
This is where the third Triagon comes in; Death. To briefly reiterate the aforementioned concept by Georges Bataille; if any system is unable to reintegrate excess energy into itself, the energy will be released in a wasteful manner. But what if the opposite were true? The third Triagon effectively introduces death into this loop, imbuing the energy within the fleshy bodies with monumental intrinsic value, creating “souls”. Death is what gives life meaning, which differentiates existence from non-existence. Where there is no end, there can be no beginning. According to the lore “The hole was quickly mended, and the overpowering transmission of value was cut short”. The discovery of resurrection technology takes away the value that the third triagon gave to living. The concept of death introduces strife, conflict and discord. But at the same time, struggle begets meaning. Through taking it all away, life stagnates, and now only money and power are the only things with intrinsic value. There is nothing to live for other than the maximisation of capital, if living itself is nothing to strive for anymore.
We are presented with the option of killing the three heads, just as we did with Abraxas. For killing the lowest of the three heads, we are gifted Golem Exoskeleton, greatly increasing our health and melee power if we choose to put in on. The second gives us a semi-automatic shotgun, one of the best weapons in the game. The final Triagon grants us “financial freedom”, in the form of 1,000,000$ transferred directly to our bank account. Killing them isn’t necessary to unlock the final ending, but will leave you with permanent changes to the game in the form of a green and purple colour scheme during Hope Eradicated (instead of the previously red and green colour scheme) as well as their heads being visible in place of the sun, instead of what would usually be Abraxas.
Onto the final level; Trauma Loop.
We have reached the end. Aeons have passed since we “””liberated””” the world from death, and everything has gone to shit - more so than before, even. We find ourselves in a dark world, devoid of light. This level is fucking brutal, even on normal difficulty. Initially I tried to beat it on Hope Eradicated but gave up after getting killed in the first two rooms for an hour straight. The use of augmentations has been blocked in this area, and you need to kill a specific NPC to allow their use again; the problem is that this NPC is located very close to the end, so you realistically have to finish the level without augs at least for the first time, unless you’re willing to kill the NPC and then do the entire level again - albeit a lot easier. Personally, I wasn’t too much of a fan of this one, because like I said earlier in this review; it feels almost unnecessarily punishing and cruel, even for this game - yes EVEN on normal difficulty. I do have to admit to looking up how to effectively navigate this level, and how to beat the bottom section of this map.
Like the Archon Grid, this level is extremely abstract and doesn’t really resemble anything normal in particular, it consists of ruined bits of buildings floating in a dark, endless void. Our mission is to “locate the Cradle of Life”, which takes the form of a perfectly round ball, like the Triagons’ heads. This makes me think that this “Trauma Loop” is actually some sort of representation of life itself. Life IS the trauma loop. An endless cycle of pain, suffering, death and rebirth. At the heart of this, well, malicious loop is none other than the first Triagon. At the very bottom, Malice waits for us surrounded by a veritable army of the game’s hardest enemies. Getting here can take quite some time, and these guys will fuck you up instantly, so at this point you REALLY have to watch out unless you want to start again from the top. I found this section to be unbelievably frustrating, and it almost made me not want to go through with it, but luckily I did come back another day to finish the job. While other levels did sometimes go a bit overkill with throwing a whole bunch of super tough enemies at you, this part here felt like the devs just giving you the bird and laughing at you for trying to beat their game. While I understand it in the context of Cruelty Squad, I can’t say I felt like getting this obnoxious with your level design and enemy placements added all that much in the way of immersion in this regard. Seriously, do NOT try this level on Hope Eradicated unless you have some SERIOUSLY high tolerance for frustration.
Ultimately, we persevere and confront - and likely kill - the Triagon of Malice. We are presented with the game’s final ending, “DEATH”.
And like before, we are met with some text, but this time it’s a lot more and gets quite lengthy, so I will not copy paste it into this already super-long essay, you can simply read it HERE.
If you paid attention to this game’s story at all, the meaning of this ending should be fairly obvious. We ended the Trauma Loop. Where as in the first ending we ended death for all, resulting in life becoming utterly meaningless, and the second ending saw us try and carve out our own meaning in the way of “LIVING THE GRINDSET, BABY” even if it meant stepping over everyone’s dead bodies, the third ending has our character make the only sensible choice left: To end this entire nightmare once and for all; we give death back to the world. And for the first time in the history of this world, this seems to actually change things. The text presents us with a whole bunch of impressions; child hood memories, the sensation of taste and smell, of feelings like lust and sadness, of the feeling of the warmth of the sun on your skin, of bitter tears of pain. Maybe this is from before we all became immortal. Maybe these are the feelings we couldn’t feel in this infinitely recurring nightmare. We can finally feel again. Live again. We are meant to die. And that’s okay. No one else understands this. They all still cling to what they know, even if it’s literally the thing eating away at their soul. And so, like the game states, “In your violent mercy, you terminate the world life”. We are met with the image of a large, golden tree and the words “GOLDEN AGE” appearing triumphantly on the screen. A new life begins.
If you’ve played Dark Souls before, or any other game that deals with mass scale immortality/undeath, this sort of ending is something you’ve probably seen before. It’s the benevolence of letting an immortal world finally die. The comfort of eternal rest after infinite suffering. But it’s more than just about the esoteric concepts of life and death; I very much think it also speaks to US directly. To reconsider the system we live in. To consider that, for society to truly live, to truly evolve, our old system of economics needs to die. To build a new one from scratch. To not give in to the cynicism of late capitalist consumer culture. To not believe the lies that a better world isn’t possible. To reject the idea of things like Chunkpops and Coffee burgers as “innovation under capitalism”, but to recognise them as distractions meant to drag us away from what we truly need; actual, lasting change. Value to our lives outside of our jobs and the things we buy. To be people again, with thoughts and feelings. To be humans with souls, instead of just flesh automatons.
It is genuinely shocking to me just how wonderfully optimistic this final ending is. What a sudden rush of genuine, heartfelt emotion and love for humanity. Coming from a game so fundamentally violent and cruel in its world-building, deeply cynical in its story telling and satire and sheer contempt for each and every person in this universe, this ending is like a punch in the face. Like a lotus flower emerging from a poisonous bog.
I truly and honestly did not expect this game to be as deep as it is. This will be one of my go-to games whenever I see the argument pop up that “Games cannot and never will be art”. The sheer density of subjects being approached here is mind bending.
To summarise what little I have to criticise in this game, I think some changes to the games balancing system would be nice and could make for an even more enjoyable gameplay experience. Things like more additional weapon slots, armour being not TOTALLY worthless (because, honestly, then why even have it in the game at all?), perhaps a slight tweak to enemy AI to make them not AS frustrating to deal with when alerted, nerfing poison, improving some of the more annoying missions, more options to deal with armoured opponents, etc. I guess some of the numbers could use some tweaking as well, even on the easiest difficulty it still feels a bit too easy to be killed by some random stray bullet. On the flipside, Hope Eradicated makes almost any level damn near un-completable for me. But honestly, I’m thinking REALLY hard here trying to even come up with things to criticise. There genuinely isn’t a lot of in this game I would describe as “flawed”, other than the aforementioned balancing issues.
This really comes as close to a modern masterpiece as it gets, and I could very well see Cruelty Squad as a serious contender for “Game of the Decade”, if its influence will be as wide spread as I imagine it to be. If this game gets some DLC or a sequel in the near future, I think we could be looking at a perfect 10.
I LOVED this game, and even though it’s already a cult classic with an absurdly dedicated community behind it - especially all the people pushing its boundaries in terms of silly speed runs - it still feels criminally underrated. I haven’t been this wowed by a game’s anti-capitalist message since Disco Elysium, and I honestly find this game’s approach to the subject even more personally interesting. And beyond that, this game is just fun and entertaining as hell, and extremely rewarding to master.
A fantastic experience for all Sigma CEOs, Grindset advocates, Datura-megadosing business gurus, Elon Musk worshippers and violent, bloodthirsty goons looking to improve their social standing.
9 / 10
2018
The Messenger is an interesting take on NES-era game design with cool art and music, but its central “twist” leaves a lot to be desired. What are, at their core, good levels and mechanics are held back by terrible pacing and frustrating design decisions.
6 / 10
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This is a game I wish I could like more than I do. And that’s kinda sad, because when I first started playing it, I thought this could very well enter my top games of this year. When I think about it, it has all the hallmarks of a great game. Its mechanics are certainly very polished, to the point where it’s hard to believe that this was really made by a small Indie studio. The music is very memorable, and the art style(s) look fantastic.
And yet, somehow I found myself increasingly annoyed with this game, the longer I played it. Something just doesn’t feel quite right with it all, and despite some great ideas here, The Messenger’s individual elements somehow add up to less than the sum of its part. The thing is, I even heard from a friend how they found this game very disappointing, which I found strange because it seemed pretty cool to me. But I realised what he meant at the half-way point at the latest.
It definitely starts out very strong. At first, it presents itself as a fairly simple, 8-bit NES-Ninja Gaiden-style, old-school action-platformer. You start the game as a young ninja, who receives a magic scroll that he has to carry up a mountain after his village has been destroyed by demons - simple enough. Some small bits of exposition out of the way, and we’re thrown right into the first level.
Let’s talk about the gameplay then; for what it does in the early levels, it’s more than enough. Combat is snappy and quick. You only have 2 weapons; a sword, and some shuriken you can unlock super early (you could also ignore them for the whole game though). Enemies tend to die in a single hit, with some exceptions that take 2-3 hits to kill. The trade off for this: they respawn literally as soon as the screen rolls past them. Again, absolutely fine for an old-school, linear NES-style platformer that doesn’t really expect you to do much backtracking. There is no dash move, so you have to dodge enemy attacks purely with proper positioning and jumping. This is all very fun. Nothing special, or crazy or hugely innovative, but a nice throwback to some nostalgic 8-bit platformers.
The next few levels are fine as well, and they introduce some of the game’s permanent power ups. The first level also gave you the wall climb ability, but the next levels make more use of progression upgrades. This is, of course, some foreshadowing into the game’s major “twist”. At this point in my playthrough it’s been quite fun, and I blasted through almost half of the early game within 2 hours. I did notice a significant increase in difficulty quite early on, but so far nothing too egregious.
I can’t really say when exactly my experience with this game went from mostly enjoyable to downright laborious, but I think it must’ve been around the Searing Cracks or Glacial Peak levels when I couldn’t stop noticing that “this is a bit frustrating.” It was a pretty gradual progression to that point. I can’t even really say what exactly it was, maybe it’s a mix of a lot of things. The fact that enemy variety is a bit lacking - there are maybe 20 unique enemies throughout the ENTIRE game, and at this point it’s maybe half of that - certainly doesn’t help with the fact that a single mistake can kill you and send you back to the checkpoint. I think my biggest problem are what feel like extremely cheap, trolly ways to kill the player, like: (including but not limited to) instant-kill traps, platforming sections that expect WAY more of you than it should (given your extremely limited air mobility), projectiles or enemies that come out of nowhere when you’re mid air, etc. To make it short: a lot of the game’s “challenges” feel like you don’t have any real way of anticipating whatever comes next. It feels very “trial and error”.
If the game had kept this style of gameplay up until the end, I’d probably still really like it. A great old school platformer with some (appropriately) frustrating sections. A love letter to old school games. But sadly, this isn’t where it ends.
No, this game has a “twist”. It’s not exactly a secret since it was heavily featured in the marketing, but around 30-40% through this game, it suddenly changes art styles from 8-bit to 16-bit (or, NES to SNES), which is diegetically contextualised as “travelling through time”, as well as shift from a level-to-level type progression system into full-blown Metroidvania.
Both of that sounds extremely cool, and like an absolute no-brainer. But sadly, I have almost equally as many issues with both, and I happen to think that the game was pretty good UP UNTIL this point. See, what I did like about The Messenger’s early game is how fun it is to rush through these levels at (relatively) breakneck speed. But the MV approach here slows that pacing down to a crawl. Now you suddenly have to go back to every single level, backtrack through almost all of them - through areas you’ve already been to - just to get to some short spots within those areas where you can now change the time period manually. Again, this sounds really cool in principle, but ultimately it changes very little of actual substance here. The most it’ll do with these time-changing puzzle rooms is to very slightly alter their layouts, and make some paths impassable (or the reverse) in either mode. Very occasionally it’ll even his feels like an insane waste of potential. No new enemies, no extra abilities, no time-exclusive zones, nothing. For what feels like 90% of the game, you’re going to look at the same enemies, areas and bosses, regardless of NES or SNES era. This was by far the biggest disappointment for me with this whole game. Here we have this twist that’s been built up for literally half of the game, AND was used as the main selling point, and it doesn’t do anything interesting with it.
What’s worse is how the switch to MV completely destroys this game’s previously very good pacing. Where the game would throw you from one area to the next and keep this gravy train going, the second half pulls the brakes HARD. Running from one area to the next is fine if you do it ONCE. If you have to do it over and over again, it gets real tedious real fast.
It’s really unfortunate just how inconsistent this whole experience is. Some levels are fun, others are tedious. Some are clever, others are just annoying. Levels feel like there’s no rhyme or reason to their structure, it’s just random platform challenge after platform challenge. What’s worse is that this game seemingly paid no attention to the fact that IF you’re going to make a Metroidvania without readily available fast travel you need to account for it by making the world efficiently traversable on foot. Getting anywhere takes bloody ages, and forces you through areas you’ve already cleared 20 times by this point. Other MVs understand this perfectly, deliberately designing their world specifically around it. The Messenger feels like somebody created a bunch of platforming levels and tried to retroactively and haphazardly create some “connection parts” between them. This would all be fine if the truly excessive amounts of backtracking in this game felt like there was ANY point to it. But it truly feels like more than half it could’ve been cut down if they just allowed you to fast-travel between checkpoints rather than letting you WALK through all of it again and again.
Something equally and annoying and tedious would be this game’s writing for me. Now, this truly is a matter of taste, and humour differs widely between people, but GODDAMN am I fucking sick and tired of “meta-humour”. I can’t stand it at this point. “BRO did you realise you’re actually playing a VIDEO GAME!?!?” Yes. Yes, I did. It’s one thing if the humour is actually clever and makes a point, like The Stanley Parable, or Undertale or even something like Hotline Miami. This just feels super uninspired and tired. I can honestly say I did not really enjoy the humour here, which is wild considering how much praise it got.
I wanna quickly talk about the boss fights, and highlight another design decision I really do not understand; the amount of waiting you have to do in ALL boss fights. All of them demand that you simply stand or walk around and avoid damage, without anything you can do to somehow cut down the time, or play more efficiently. To me, this is one of the golden rules of any combat system; NEVER rely on waiting as one the core mechanics of any fight. It’s boring at best, and downright infuriating if the boss is somehow difficult. Luckily I can say that the vast majority of bosses are very easy, and only took me about 5 tries at the most. The final boss in particular feels like an absolute joke considering what you fought before. The sad thing is that the combat system does feel nice and it could totally work, but it really IS the designs of the bosses themselves that are the issue here.
At least the game is quite short. I think I was done with all of it after 15-ish hours, I even went out of my way to gather as many collectibles I could be bothered with. I wanna say it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, but that wouldn’t be quite true, by the end I was kinda hoping for it to be over soon.
In conclusion, there will be certainly a lot of people that will really like this game. I’ll say that I noticed that there was a tendency for people that usually don’t really play MVs to like it, while the opposite seems to be true for people who are big fans of the MV genre. There is certainly a lot of love and passion in this game, it’s just sad that it all kind of ended up as a middling experience for me.
6 / 10
6 / 10
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This is a game I wish I could like more than I do. And that’s kinda sad, because when I first started playing it, I thought this could very well enter my top games of this year. When I think about it, it has all the hallmarks of a great game. Its mechanics are certainly very polished, to the point where it’s hard to believe that this was really made by a small Indie studio. The music is very memorable, and the art style(s) look fantastic.
And yet, somehow I found myself increasingly annoyed with this game, the longer I played it. Something just doesn’t feel quite right with it all, and despite some great ideas here, The Messenger’s individual elements somehow add up to less than the sum of its part. The thing is, I even heard from a friend how they found this game very disappointing, which I found strange because it seemed pretty cool to me. But I realised what he meant at the half-way point at the latest.
It definitely starts out very strong. At first, it presents itself as a fairly simple, 8-bit NES-Ninja Gaiden-style, old-school action-platformer. You start the game as a young ninja, who receives a magic scroll that he has to carry up a mountain after his village has been destroyed by demons - simple enough. Some small bits of exposition out of the way, and we’re thrown right into the first level.
Let’s talk about the gameplay then; for what it does in the early levels, it’s more than enough. Combat is snappy and quick. You only have 2 weapons; a sword, and some shuriken you can unlock super early (you could also ignore them for the whole game though). Enemies tend to die in a single hit, with some exceptions that take 2-3 hits to kill. The trade off for this: they respawn literally as soon as the screen rolls past them. Again, absolutely fine for an old-school, linear NES-style platformer that doesn’t really expect you to do much backtracking. There is no dash move, so you have to dodge enemy attacks purely with proper positioning and jumping. This is all very fun. Nothing special, or crazy or hugely innovative, but a nice throwback to some nostalgic 8-bit platformers.
The next few levels are fine as well, and they introduce some of the game’s permanent power ups. The first level also gave you the wall climb ability, but the next levels make more use of progression upgrades. This is, of course, some foreshadowing into the game’s major “twist”. At this point in my playthrough it’s been quite fun, and I blasted through almost half of the early game within 2 hours. I did notice a significant increase in difficulty quite early on, but so far nothing too egregious.
I can’t really say when exactly my experience with this game went from mostly enjoyable to downright laborious, but I think it must’ve been around the Searing Cracks or Glacial Peak levels when I couldn’t stop noticing that “this is a bit frustrating.” It was a pretty gradual progression to that point. I can’t even really say what exactly it was, maybe it’s a mix of a lot of things. The fact that enemy variety is a bit lacking - there are maybe 20 unique enemies throughout the ENTIRE game, and at this point it’s maybe half of that - certainly doesn’t help with the fact that a single mistake can kill you and send you back to the checkpoint. I think my biggest problem are what feel like extremely cheap, trolly ways to kill the player, like: (including but not limited to) instant-kill traps, platforming sections that expect WAY more of you than it should (given your extremely limited air mobility), projectiles or enemies that come out of nowhere when you’re mid air, etc. To make it short: a lot of the game’s “challenges” feel like you don’t have any real way of anticipating whatever comes next. It feels very “trial and error”.
If the game had kept this style of gameplay up until the end, I’d probably still really like it. A great old school platformer with some (appropriately) frustrating sections. A love letter to old school games. But sadly, this isn’t where it ends.
No, this game has a “twist”. It’s not exactly a secret since it was heavily featured in the marketing, but around 30-40% through this game, it suddenly changes art styles from 8-bit to 16-bit (or, NES to SNES), which is diegetically contextualised as “travelling through time”, as well as shift from a level-to-level type progression system into full-blown Metroidvania.
Both of that sounds extremely cool, and like an absolute no-brainer. But sadly, I have almost equally as many issues with both, and I happen to think that the game was pretty good UP UNTIL this point. See, what I did like about The Messenger’s early game is how fun it is to rush through these levels at (relatively) breakneck speed. But the MV approach here slows that pacing down to a crawl. Now you suddenly have to go back to every single level, backtrack through almost all of them - through areas you’ve already been to - just to get to some short spots within those areas where you can now change the time period manually. Again, this sounds really cool in principle, but ultimately it changes very little of actual substance here. The most it’ll do with these time-changing puzzle rooms is to very slightly alter their layouts, and make some paths impassable (or the reverse) in either mode. Very occasionally it’ll even his feels like an insane waste of potential. No new enemies, no extra abilities, no time-exclusive zones, nothing. For what feels like 90% of the game, you’re going to look at the same enemies, areas and bosses, regardless of NES or SNES era. This was by far the biggest disappointment for me with this whole game. Here we have this twist that’s been built up for literally half of the game, AND was used as the main selling point, and it doesn’t do anything interesting with it.
What’s worse is how the switch to MV completely destroys this game’s previously very good pacing. Where the game would throw you from one area to the next and keep this gravy train going, the second half pulls the brakes HARD. Running from one area to the next is fine if you do it ONCE. If you have to do it over and over again, it gets real tedious real fast.
It’s really unfortunate just how inconsistent this whole experience is. Some levels are fun, others are tedious. Some are clever, others are just annoying. Levels feel like there’s no rhyme or reason to their structure, it’s just random platform challenge after platform challenge. What’s worse is that this game seemingly paid no attention to the fact that IF you’re going to make a Metroidvania without readily available fast travel you need to account for it by making the world efficiently traversable on foot. Getting anywhere takes bloody ages, and forces you through areas you’ve already cleared 20 times by this point. Other MVs understand this perfectly, deliberately designing their world specifically around it. The Messenger feels like somebody created a bunch of platforming levels and tried to retroactively and haphazardly create some “connection parts” between them. This would all be fine if the truly excessive amounts of backtracking in this game felt like there was ANY point to it. But it truly feels like more than half it could’ve been cut down if they just allowed you to fast-travel between checkpoints rather than letting you WALK through all of it again and again.
Something equally and annoying and tedious would be this game’s writing for me. Now, this truly is a matter of taste, and humour differs widely between people, but GODDAMN am I fucking sick and tired of “meta-humour”. I can’t stand it at this point. “BRO did you realise you’re actually playing a VIDEO GAME!?!?” Yes. Yes, I did. It’s one thing if the humour is actually clever and makes a point, like The Stanley Parable, or Undertale or even something like Hotline Miami. This just feels super uninspired and tired. I can honestly say I did not really enjoy the humour here, which is wild considering how much praise it got.
I wanna quickly talk about the boss fights, and highlight another design decision I really do not understand; the amount of waiting you have to do in ALL boss fights. All of them demand that you simply stand or walk around and avoid damage, without anything you can do to somehow cut down the time, or play more efficiently. To me, this is one of the golden rules of any combat system; NEVER rely on waiting as one the core mechanics of any fight. It’s boring at best, and downright infuriating if the boss is somehow difficult. Luckily I can say that the vast majority of bosses are very easy, and only took me about 5 tries at the most. The final boss in particular feels like an absolute joke considering what you fought before. The sad thing is that the combat system does feel nice and it could totally work, but it really IS the designs of the bosses themselves that are the issue here.
At least the game is quite short. I think I was done with all of it after 15-ish hours, I even went out of my way to gather as many collectibles I could be bothered with. I wanna say it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, but that wouldn’t be quite true, by the end I was kinda hoping for it to be over soon.
In conclusion, there will be certainly a lot of people that will really like this game. I’ll say that I noticed that there was a tendency for people that usually don’t really play MVs to like it, while the opposite seems to be true for people who are big fans of the MV genre. There is certainly a lot of love and passion in this game, it’s just sad that it all kind of ended up as a middling experience for me.
6 / 10
Ender Lilies is a solid game which is sometimes elevated to a very good game by its presentation and especially its superb OST, but stops short of being fantastic due to a lack of polish and an identity that truly sets it apart. Still, a strong and under-appreciated entry into the Metroidvania genre.
7,5 / 10
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The market for Metroidvanias is certainly a bit oversaturated at this point in time, considering there seems to be a new one coming out every other week. It’s understandable that a lot of devs want to jump on this train; it’s a great way to combine a lot of different game design elements into a fun and cohesive experience that feels like a real journey through a vast world and usually offers ample challenge for players to overcome. While a lot of them try and take their inspiration from older games in the genre, the vast majority of modern MVs tend to closely follow in the footsteps of one game in particular; Hollow Knight.
Perhaps this is why Ender Lilies seems to have largely flown under the radar for most people. Even some die-hard fans of the genre seem to have missed it. Make no mistake, this game isn’t exactly subtle about its influence from HK. Visually alone, you’d be hard pressed not to feel reminded of it a little bit. It has the same tragic and forlorn atmosphere, beautifully detailed background art, melancholic background music, tough, “Souls-like” combat (meaning “animation-based, high commitment attacks and fairly dangerous enemies”) and most other trappings of that specific niche. But this isn’t just a HK-clone, even if it occasionally veers a bit too close into the direction that some games like Gleamlight, Lotus Knight or Crowsworn went into. Whereas the others here seem to purposefully, almost deceptively try to lure you into playing them by specifically targeting Hollow Knight fans, Ender Lilies does seem like it’s genuinely trying its best to be its own thing, even if it doesn’t always succeed in that endeavour.
It’s definitely not for a lack of trying, and I can say one thing for certain: This game does not feel like a cynical cash grab. Ender Lilies clearly had a lot of passion and love behind its creation, and if nothing else, it’s a very promising title from an upcoming indie studio. It does a lot of things very well. But at the same time, it often feels weirdly unfinished and frustratingly inconsistent when it comes the fine details and polish. It’s a very solid title with no real critical flaw, but a lot of little annoyances that might add up to a “death by a thousand cuts” situation for some people. Personally, I wasn’t THAT bothered by most of it until I reached the later areas, where these issues became a bit more noticeable.
A good example for the general trend with Ender Lilies is the world design. For the most part, it’s quite good and at some points even manages to be great! While the early areas after the tutorial aren’t very complex or hard, they’re absolutely fine for what they are. They even telegraph some secrets and inaccessible areas for you to return to later. Unfortunately, I think this aspect is a little haphazardly implemented though. Fast travelling is available from the start - an unusual choice for a MV/Soulslike - and includes every checkpoint, of which there are quite a few. This kind of leads the game to rely on this system a little too much, meaning you’ll find yourself often teleporting between random areas to explore rooms you’ve already been to because the world isn’t really designed to be quickly traversed on foot. It becomes even stranger when you end up opening up shortcuts to areas you’ve already been to and completely cleared out - although you could easily argue that these are meant to facilitate a more non-linear approach to exploring the world. And it works quite well in that regard. I know I totally went off the beaten path multiple times and only realised it much later. I just wish that these connections and short cuts could’ve been handled a bit more elegantly. It sometimes feels like they were placed there as an afterthought, more than being an intentional piece of game design.
The world feels fairly large for a small-ish indie Metroidvania. It’s not the gargantuan size of Hollow Knight’s Hallownest, or even Blasphemous’ Custodia but it certainly feels larger than something like the Ori games, and it does so - mostly - without it getting stale, and that by itself is already a huge compliment. It’s just sad that most of the levels here feel somewhat clichéd in terms of visual identity, setting and memorability. A village and forest section in the beginning, 2 separate castles (right next to each other no less) dark and dank catacombs, and even a sewer/prison area. As far as creativity goes, this just feels like the absolute bare minimum, like someone just checked the essentials off a list of “obligatory MV world design elements”. At least the final area, the Verboten Domain feels a bit more unique, with its fungus-infected, poisonous, purple vibes and thick atmosphere. What’s more is that the actual art direction and music for these areas are always really good, but I’ll get more into that later.
The actual level design is more varied. Like I mentioned before, the early areas are fine, but nothing special. Both are quite linear in their progression, with some side paths to explore at the most, or a short fork in the path which tends to converge again in the next room. They do offer quite a bit for players choosing to return at a later point, when they have more power ups and higher stats, and that’s something I appreciate, this game isn’t afraid to put some of its most important secrets into some seemingly inconspicuous places and asking you to remember it - although the map attempts to help you in that regard (more on that later). The areas after this thankfully do become a lot more open and allow for noticeably less linear travel through them. I particularly like the two castle areas, even if they do feel somewhat similar, but lore-wise I got the feeling that this was kinda the point. While other areas sometimes boil down to a lot of long, huge hallways filled with enemies with not much in the way of actual level design, the castles, especially the Twin Spires, get pretty creative with some of their set ups. Elegant short cuts and expert-level recontextualisation of previous obstacles, as well as some pretty interesting enemy set ups. The less likely I am inclined to run past the majority of enemies, the better. I also enjoy the aesthetic of a truly ancient castle perched between the mountains, covered under a thick layer of snow. The music is fantastic too, but that’s a given for the whole game.
I wasn’t as big a fan of the 2 last areas, the Stockade and Verboten Domain. While both do feature some clever level design ideas, an unfortunate amount of rooms are just brutally long hallways filled to the brim with extremely spongy enemies, some of which can teleport directly on top of you. It’s nothing absolutely egregious or anything, but having to repeat these areas with nothing more engaging to do than fighting or running past what feels like an endless amount of enemies gets pretty boring pretty quickly. It’s not helped by the fact that the game rarely - if ever - asks anything in the way of platforming from you either. The strange thing is, the mechanics would be here, it’s just that the level design doesn’t really make use of Lily’s surprisingly flexible air mobility. That is, unless you’re looking to complete the game’s true ending, where there will be the occasional platforming section that are so much harder to pull off than literally anything else in this game, it feels downright out of place. I suspect that these were added at the last minute, as the entire endgame feels a bit rushed, at least in terms of level design and interesting gameplay ideas. Fighting over-tuned enemies can only remain engaging for so long.
At this point I have to talk about the only thing I genuinely hate about this game; its map. It’s ugly, unintuitive and manages a very interesting, albeit unintentional tight rope walk where it’s completely unintelligible at first and you have no fucking clue what you’re looking at, but as soon as you understand what it does, it spoils literally EVERYTHING in that area; whether there are still any collectibles, how many paths lead to and away from it and even where they are. The larger the map becomes, the less you feel like you’re getting a grasp on it, because everything looks the same from start to finish. Trying to figure out how to navigate this map was a fight I didn’t know I was getting into.
Speaking of fighting, let’s move on to the most recognisable element of this game; its spirit/Stand-based combat system. It was featured heavily in the marketing and seems to have been the initial draw for a lot of people. Lily is a small child, and thus is obviously rather incapable of fighting all those zombie soldiers and eldritch abominations herself. That’s what our spirit friends are for. She starts off with just single spirit companion, the Umbral Knight, who works as your typical sword moveset and by defeating the many bosses and mini-bosses of this game we gain a new spirit to fight alongside our player character each time. Lily is instead capable of using the typical “genre abilities”, like a double jump, dash, wall climb, hookshot, etc, which are unlocked by defeating the main bosses. There is a considerable number of these spirit-attacks ranging from melee to ranged magic attacks to AOEs to DoTs, and you can equip up to 6 of them at a time, which makes for a surprisingly deep moveset and “build variety” on the player’s part. You can swap these out at every check point, and you can upgrade them individually. Playing around with this system is very fun and I didn’t anticipate enjoying it as much as I did. I do have to admit that this system isn’t really as revolutionary as some people make it out to be though; these are all effectively still just weapons and/or spells. They basically work exactly like in the older Souls games, with a limited amount of charges per spell with some of them being able to string combos. It’s really just an aesthetic choice, gameplay wise these work exactly like they would in any other Metroidvania/Souls-like. On the other hand, I had much more fun with this than I had with the Ori games’ or The Messenger’s combat, for example. Learning what all the different spells do and how they interact with each other is very engaging.
I always say that a game’s combat system is only ever as good as the enemies and bosses you use it against. So how does Ender Lilies fare in that regard?
I can happily say: fairly well, actually. The enemy variety is surprisingly high and repetition is kept to a sensible margin. Their move-sets are varied, differ in speeds, ferocity and damage and they are - with some exceptions - always fun to fight. They always telegraph their attacks in a fair and understandable manner. The character designs could be a bit more interesting and unique, but it’s fine. It works for what it’s going for, even if I feel like a more recognisable design scheme for the average enemy would’ve done wonders for memorability. The mini bosses are basically powered up regular enemies with some additions to their move-set and a massively increased health pool. As mentioned before, they’ll always give you a new combat ability, often their own signature attack. These fights are ok for the most part, but nothing special, I would hesitate to call them “bosses”. The actual bosses range from really good to quite annoying. I personally really liked both Dark Witch Elaine and Knight Commander Julius the best, while I really dislike the two bosses that make use of additional enemies during the fight: Hoenir, Master of the Abyss and the final boss, the Blighted Lord. This combat system really doesn’t feel like its designed to constantly fight multiple enemies at once, which is made worse by the fact that in both cases the ads immediately respawn, which in practice kinda forces you to ignore them because killing them is literally pointless. This, on the other hand, makes it harder to pay attention to what the boss is doing, and cost me a bunch of lives in both cases. I especially disliked Hoenir because on top of endlessly spawning ads, he also keeps running away. (Elden Beast flash back intensifies) Luckily the other bosses are mostly very fun to fight and don’t rely on cheap stuff like this.
The one thing I’ll say about ALL enemies, bosses included, is that they feel needlessly spongey at all times. No matter which level you are, and even if you complete a harder area and then come back to an easier one later, enemies will STILL take multiple hits to take down. The only time when you’ll feel TRULY powerful is when you’ll return to the very first few areas to complete whatever you missed initially. Initially I liked that enemies could withstand multiple hits, but later areas go so overkill with the amount of enemies in a single room that their general tankiness just led to me avoiding them entirely a lot of the time. This isn’t exactly helped by the fact that, in both the Stockade and Verboten Domain areas, the difficulty (or rather, enemy damage) increases dramatically. It almost feels like Lily just got reset to level 1.
Speaking of the levelling; I still don’t really understand what it does. Is it health? Damage? Both? You can increase both health and damage in other ways though. A bit confusing imo, but nothing too egregious.
With most of the gameplay stuff out of the way, let’s talk about story and lore. Initially I was quite dismissive of the story and lore, as I found the presentation of it very cliché and overdone. Something, something kingdom was good, then calamity happened and now everyone’s a zombie. A very typical and average Dark Souls-esque story about how fucked up the world is. And in a way, it IS that, but it’s also a very personal and emotional story about finding your purpose and finding out who you even are, and when I realised this towards the end I found myself appreciating it all a lot more. There is some genuine heart and profundity to it all. All the sadder that they chose to go with the “read a billion in-game texts and listen to people shout a bunch of cryptic nonsense at you”. You know, the typical “ahh.. Margriel… Forgive me.. I only meant to protect you… arggh..” type beat. I genuinely believe the story would’ve had MUCH more impact on the player if they went about it in a more direct way involving an actual narrative that doesn’t take place in item descriptions. I obviously love this stuff in Soulsborne games, or Blasphemous or other games that are more about the “how’s” and “why’s” of an event, rather than the “who’s”, but here it felt weirdly unfitting. That being said, as soon as the story DID start to click for me, I really liked it. It’s quite a heartfelt and emotional story about a little girl trying to find her place and purpose in a hostile world, and an old knight who still struggles with the guilt of not having been able to uphold his vow. I even got a bit emotional at the end, and that’s a sign that I did appreciate it after all. It’s just sad that the emotional heart of this story was buried so deep beneath what felt like fluff.
Finally, let’s talk about the game’s strongest aspect by far: presentation.
The art style, especially when it comes to the world and levels, is generally very good to fantastic. The background art is beautiful and extremely detailed, and tells a lot of the game’s story. The lighting and colours are generally very lush and give a good dynamic to it all. While it does start off a bit monochromatic, it’s nowhere near as bad as other examples in the genre, this game is generally quite colourful despite the black and white colour-scheme of the promotional material. Especially areas like the Witch Coven or Verboten Domain feel like they can barely contain the explosively colourful background trying to creep in. It really feels like a big budget game with a lot of creative energy behind it. The character animations are generally also very good, with only a select few instances of it feeling awkward. Like mentioned before, character designs are generally good, but could’ve certainly been more unique and original. I’m wondering whether the anime style of presentation might have added to it feeling a bit generic at times. Sadly, the same can be also said for the design concepts behind the areas. While they are technically and artistically great, conceptually they are a bit tame, like they went out of their way to not include anything that was too wild or out of the ordinary.
The sound design is weird. Sometimes it’s very good and spacey, and feels very elegant and well mixed, and then other actions simply don’t have any sounds associated with them. The sword strikes sound great, the foot steps sound like plastic. Some sounds are extremely intricate, while others are ripped straight from sound libraries without anything done to them. It’s noticeable enough to pull me out of the experience occasionally, and that’s probably the most critical mistake a game like this can make. Sound design IS important, and it’s sad to see that it clearly wasn’t a priority here.
It’s the music that TRULY elevates this game though. All the area tunes are extremely catchy and memorable and communicate the sadness and tragedy of this world better than any other aspect of this game. The boss themes, while not as memorable, are also very creative and comment on their respective bosses’ personalities very well. I keep listening to the game’s OST during work, and I genuinely love some of the tracks so much I’m considering sampling them for my own music. Especially the main theme, the White Parish theme and some of the post-boss songs are hauntingly beautiful, and during the credits I almost shed a little tear because it all added up so well in that moment. Music truly is one of the most important aspects of a game, and I think Ender Lilies is a prime example of that.
And that’s the thing with this game; it’s sometimes genuinely great and clearly knows what it’s doing, and then other times, it’ll fumble some really basic stuff in a way that even amateur game designers should know better. Sometimes the devs have a stroke of genius, and then other times, they’ll go with the absolute bare minimum. And I think this is most noticeable when it comes to the game’s overall place in the genre:
What really sets Ender Lilies apart? What is the draw that’s supposed to pull people in? What is this game’s identity? It feels like it’s so busy trying to appeal to all sorts of MV audiences that it forgot to really work out its own personality, it’s own pull. The art direction and music ARE great, but games like Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, Super Metroid, CV: Symphony of the Night, Ori, Axiom Verge.. all of these games have fantastic art direction and music, but they also have their own identity, both in terms of art AND gameplay. It’s even worse since the game orients itself very clearly around Hollow Knight in particular, and goes for a very similar style of presentation but doesn’t really quite reach the heights that HK did, neither in art, music NOR in gameplay. If I had to choose between HK and EL to recommend to a friend who’s trying to get into Metroidvanias, there’d be no contest - especially since Ender Lilies is twice as expensive as Hollow Knight. The only reason I would ever recommend EL over HK would be for it’s significantly lighter difficulty and shorter run-time.
I realise that this review probably sounded a bit negative overall, but don’t let that fool you. This IS a really good game. It’s an extremely solid Metroidvania / Souls-like. Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t have any real critical flaws. It has very enjoyable gameplay, a non-linear map that feels appropriately large, amazing art and music, it has no bullshit areas, and doesn’t drag on forever. It just has a lot of minor disappointments and annoyances that may or may not add up to a legitimate grievance, depending on who’s playing. And I won’t lie, these things do annoy me and kinda break my heart, because this game would really have deserved a lot more polish.
The reason I genuinely really like this game, and consider it not only worth your time but one of the better experiences I’ve had in a while is simple; it has heart. It has a soul. It’s a passion project by a couple of people that clearly love the Metroidvania genre, and cared a lot about the story they were trying to tell. It’s not a cynical, self-referential, meta-humour ridden “””clever””” game, nor is it a soulless, predatory cash grab, it’s a game that’s not afraid to pull on your heartstrings and present you with some actual emotion here and there. Again, I REALLY like this game, and I think every fan of Metroidvania games ought to give this one a shot. Even though I have problems with it, I enjoyed it more than other MVs I’ve played recently, including Salt & Sanctuary, The Messenger, Metroid: Dread and both Ori’s, and I think that’s saying something. All things considered, I do think this game is underrated. It genuinely is a very fun game, with an extremely solid foundation, and I could see a sequel ironing out a lot of the kinks, creating a truly fantastic gaming experience in the process.
I think there are a lot of people who would probably get a lot out of this. I’ll definitely give it a second playthrough some time in the future.
7,5 / 10
7,5 / 10
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The market for Metroidvanias is certainly a bit oversaturated at this point in time, considering there seems to be a new one coming out every other week. It’s understandable that a lot of devs want to jump on this train; it’s a great way to combine a lot of different game design elements into a fun and cohesive experience that feels like a real journey through a vast world and usually offers ample challenge for players to overcome. While a lot of them try and take their inspiration from older games in the genre, the vast majority of modern MVs tend to closely follow in the footsteps of one game in particular; Hollow Knight.
Perhaps this is why Ender Lilies seems to have largely flown under the radar for most people. Even some die-hard fans of the genre seem to have missed it. Make no mistake, this game isn’t exactly subtle about its influence from HK. Visually alone, you’d be hard pressed not to feel reminded of it a little bit. It has the same tragic and forlorn atmosphere, beautifully detailed background art, melancholic background music, tough, “Souls-like” combat (meaning “animation-based, high commitment attacks and fairly dangerous enemies”) and most other trappings of that specific niche. But this isn’t just a HK-clone, even if it occasionally veers a bit too close into the direction that some games like Gleamlight, Lotus Knight or Crowsworn went into. Whereas the others here seem to purposefully, almost deceptively try to lure you into playing them by specifically targeting Hollow Knight fans, Ender Lilies does seem like it’s genuinely trying its best to be its own thing, even if it doesn’t always succeed in that endeavour.
It’s definitely not for a lack of trying, and I can say one thing for certain: This game does not feel like a cynical cash grab. Ender Lilies clearly had a lot of passion and love behind its creation, and if nothing else, it’s a very promising title from an upcoming indie studio. It does a lot of things very well. But at the same time, it often feels weirdly unfinished and frustratingly inconsistent when it comes the fine details and polish. It’s a very solid title with no real critical flaw, but a lot of little annoyances that might add up to a “death by a thousand cuts” situation for some people. Personally, I wasn’t THAT bothered by most of it until I reached the later areas, where these issues became a bit more noticeable.
A good example for the general trend with Ender Lilies is the world design. For the most part, it’s quite good and at some points even manages to be great! While the early areas after the tutorial aren’t very complex or hard, they’re absolutely fine for what they are. They even telegraph some secrets and inaccessible areas for you to return to later. Unfortunately, I think this aspect is a little haphazardly implemented though. Fast travelling is available from the start - an unusual choice for a MV/Soulslike - and includes every checkpoint, of which there are quite a few. This kind of leads the game to rely on this system a little too much, meaning you’ll find yourself often teleporting between random areas to explore rooms you’ve already been to because the world isn’t really designed to be quickly traversed on foot. It becomes even stranger when you end up opening up shortcuts to areas you’ve already been to and completely cleared out - although you could easily argue that these are meant to facilitate a more non-linear approach to exploring the world. And it works quite well in that regard. I know I totally went off the beaten path multiple times and only realised it much later. I just wish that these connections and short cuts could’ve been handled a bit more elegantly. It sometimes feels like they were placed there as an afterthought, more than being an intentional piece of game design.
The world feels fairly large for a small-ish indie Metroidvania. It’s not the gargantuan size of Hollow Knight’s Hallownest, or even Blasphemous’ Custodia but it certainly feels larger than something like the Ori games, and it does so - mostly - without it getting stale, and that by itself is already a huge compliment. It’s just sad that most of the levels here feel somewhat clichéd in terms of visual identity, setting and memorability. A village and forest section in the beginning, 2 separate castles (right next to each other no less) dark and dank catacombs, and even a sewer/prison area. As far as creativity goes, this just feels like the absolute bare minimum, like someone just checked the essentials off a list of “obligatory MV world design elements”. At least the final area, the Verboten Domain feels a bit more unique, with its fungus-infected, poisonous, purple vibes and thick atmosphere. What’s more is that the actual art direction and music for these areas are always really good, but I’ll get more into that later.
The actual level design is more varied. Like I mentioned before, the early areas are fine, but nothing special. Both are quite linear in their progression, with some side paths to explore at the most, or a short fork in the path which tends to converge again in the next room. They do offer quite a bit for players choosing to return at a later point, when they have more power ups and higher stats, and that’s something I appreciate, this game isn’t afraid to put some of its most important secrets into some seemingly inconspicuous places and asking you to remember it - although the map attempts to help you in that regard (more on that later). The areas after this thankfully do become a lot more open and allow for noticeably less linear travel through them. I particularly like the two castle areas, even if they do feel somewhat similar, but lore-wise I got the feeling that this was kinda the point. While other areas sometimes boil down to a lot of long, huge hallways filled with enemies with not much in the way of actual level design, the castles, especially the Twin Spires, get pretty creative with some of their set ups. Elegant short cuts and expert-level recontextualisation of previous obstacles, as well as some pretty interesting enemy set ups. The less likely I am inclined to run past the majority of enemies, the better. I also enjoy the aesthetic of a truly ancient castle perched between the mountains, covered under a thick layer of snow. The music is fantastic too, but that’s a given for the whole game.
I wasn’t as big a fan of the 2 last areas, the Stockade and Verboten Domain. While both do feature some clever level design ideas, an unfortunate amount of rooms are just brutally long hallways filled to the brim with extremely spongy enemies, some of which can teleport directly on top of you. It’s nothing absolutely egregious or anything, but having to repeat these areas with nothing more engaging to do than fighting or running past what feels like an endless amount of enemies gets pretty boring pretty quickly. It’s not helped by the fact that the game rarely - if ever - asks anything in the way of platforming from you either. The strange thing is, the mechanics would be here, it’s just that the level design doesn’t really make use of Lily’s surprisingly flexible air mobility. That is, unless you’re looking to complete the game’s true ending, where there will be the occasional platforming section that are so much harder to pull off than literally anything else in this game, it feels downright out of place. I suspect that these were added at the last minute, as the entire endgame feels a bit rushed, at least in terms of level design and interesting gameplay ideas. Fighting over-tuned enemies can only remain engaging for so long.
At this point I have to talk about the only thing I genuinely hate about this game; its map. It’s ugly, unintuitive and manages a very interesting, albeit unintentional tight rope walk where it’s completely unintelligible at first and you have no fucking clue what you’re looking at, but as soon as you understand what it does, it spoils literally EVERYTHING in that area; whether there are still any collectibles, how many paths lead to and away from it and even where they are. The larger the map becomes, the less you feel like you’re getting a grasp on it, because everything looks the same from start to finish. Trying to figure out how to navigate this map was a fight I didn’t know I was getting into.
Speaking of fighting, let’s move on to the most recognisable element of this game; its spirit/Stand-based combat system. It was featured heavily in the marketing and seems to have been the initial draw for a lot of people. Lily is a small child, and thus is obviously rather incapable of fighting all those zombie soldiers and eldritch abominations herself. That’s what our spirit friends are for. She starts off with just single spirit companion, the Umbral Knight, who works as your typical sword moveset and by defeating the many bosses and mini-bosses of this game we gain a new spirit to fight alongside our player character each time. Lily is instead capable of using the typical “genre abilities”, like a double jump, dash, wall climb, hookshot, etc, which are unlocked by defeating the main bosses. There is a considerable number of these spirit-attacks ranging from melee to ranged magic attacks to AOEs to DoTs, and you can equip up to 6 of them at a time, which makes for a surprisingly deep moveset and “build variety” on the player’s part. You can swap these out at every check point, and you can upgrade them individually. Playing around with this system is very fun and I didn’t anticipate enjoying it as much as I did. I do have to admit that this system isn’t really as revolutionary as some people make it out to be though; these are all effectively still just weapons and/or spells. They basically work exactly like in the older Souls games, with a limited amount of charges per spell with some of them being able to string combos. It’s really just an aesthetic choice, gameplay wise these work exactly like they would in any other Metroidvania/Souls-like. On the other hand, I had much more fun with this than I had with the Ori games’ or The Messenger’s combat, for example. Learning what all the different spells do and how they interact with each other is very engaging.
I always say that a game’s combat system is only ever as good as the enemies and bosses you use it against. So how does Ender Lilies fare in that regard?
I can happily say: fairly well, actually. The enemy variety is surprisingly high and repetition is kept to a sensible margin. Their move-sets are varied, differ in speeds, ferocity and damage and they are - with some exceptions - always fun to fight. They always telegraph their attacks in a fair and understandable manner. The character designs could be a bit more interesting and unique, but it’s fine. It works for what it’s going for, even if I feel like a more recognisable design scheme for the average enemy would’ve done wonders for memorability. The mini bosses are basically powered up regular enemies with some additions to their move-set and a massively increased health pool. As mentioned before, they’ll always give you a new combat ability, often their own signature attack. These fights are ok for the most part, but nothing special, I would hesitate to call them “bosses”. The actual bosses range from really good to quite annoying. I personally really liked both Dark Witch Elaine and Knight Commander Julius the best, while I really dislike the two bosses that make use of additional enemies during the fight: Hoenir, Master of the Abyss and the final boss, the Blighted Lord. This combat system really doesn’t feel like its designed to constantly fight multiple enemies at once, which is made worse by the fact that in both cases the ads immediately respawn, which in practice kinda forces you to ignore them because killing them is literally pointless. This, on the other hand, makes it harder to pay attention to what the boss is doing, and cost me a bunch of lives in both cases. I especially disliked Hoenir because on top of endlessly spawning ads, he also keeps running away. (Elden Beast flash back intensifies) Luckily the other bosses are mostly very fun to fight and don’t rely on cheap stuff like this.
The one thing I’ll say about ALL enemies, bosses included, is that they feel needlessly spongey at all times. No matter which level you are, and even if you complete a harder area and then come back to an easier one later, enemies will STILL take multiple hits to take down. The only time when you’ll feel TRULY powerful is when you’ll return to the very first few areas to complete whatever you missed initially. Initially I liked that enemies could withstand multiple hits, but later areas go so overkill with the amount of enemies in a single room that their general tankiness just led to me avoiding them entirely a lot of the time. This isn’t exactly helped by the fact that, in both the Stockade and Verboten Domain areas, the difficulty (or rather, enemy damage) increases dramatically. It almost feels like Lily just got reset to level 1.
Speaking of the levelling; I still don’t really understand what it does. Is it health? Damage? Both? You can increase both health and damage in other ways though. A bit confusing imo, but nothing too egregious.
With most of the gameplay stuff out of the way, let’s talk about story and lore. Initially I was quite dismissive of the story and lore, as I found the presentation of it very cliché and overdone. Something, something kingdom was good, then calamity happened and now everyone’s a zombie. A very typical and average Dark Souls-esque story about how fucked up the world is. And in a way, it IS that, but it’s also a very personal and emotional story about finding your purpose and finding out who you even are, and when I realised this towards the end I found myself appreciating it all a lot more. There is some genuine heart and profundity to it all. All the sadder that they chose to go with the “read a billion in-game texts and listen to people shout a bunch of cryptic nonsense at you”. You know, the typical “ahh.. Margriel… Forgive me.. I only meant to protect you… arggh..” type beat. I genuinely believe the story would’ve had MUCH more impact on the player if they went about it in a more direct way involving an actual narrative that doesn’t take place in item descriptions. I obviously love this stuff in Soulsborne games, or Blasphemous or other games that are more about the “how’s” and “why’s” of an event, rather than the “who’s”, but here it felt weirdly unfitting. That being said, as soon as the story DID start to click for me, I really liked it. It’s quite a heartfelt and emotional story about a little girl trying to find her place and purpose in a hostile world, and an old knight who still struggles with the guilt of not having been able to uphold his vow. I even got a bit emotional at the end, and that’s a sign that I did appreciate it after all. It’s just sad that the emotional heart of this story was buried so deep beneath what felt like fluff.
Finally, let’s talk about the game’s strongest aspect by far: presentation.
The art style, especially when it comes to the world and levels, is generally very good to fantastic. The background art is beautiful and extremely detailed, and tells a lot of the game’s story. The lighting and colours are generally very lush and give a good dynamic to it all. While it does start off a bit monochromatic, it’s nowhere near as bad as other examples in the genre, this game is generally quite colourful despite the black and white colour-scheme of the promotional material. Especially areas like the Witch Coven or Verboten Domain feel like they can barely contain the explosively colourful background trying to creep in. It really feels like a big budget game with a lot of creative energy behind it. The character animations are generally also very good, with only a select few instances of it feeling awkward. Like mentioned before, character designs are generally good, but could’ve certainly been more unique and original. I’m wondering whether the anime style of presentation might have added to it feeling a bit generic at times. Sadly, the same can be also said for the design concepts behind the areas. While they are technically and artistically great, conceptually they are a bit tame, like they went out of their way to not include anything that was too wild or out of the ordinary.
The sound design is weird. Sometimes it’s very good and spacey, and feels very elegant and well mixed, and then other actions simply don’t have any sounds associated with them. The sword strikes sound great, the foot steps sound like plastic. Some sounds are extremely intricate, while others are ripped straight from sound libraries without anything done to them. It’s noticeable enough to pull me out of the experience occasionally, and that’s probably the most critical mistake a game like this can make. Sound design IS important, and it’s sad to see that it clearly wasn’t a priority here.
It’s the music that TRULY elevates this game though. All the area tunes are extremely catchy and memorable and communicate the sadness and tragedy of this world better than any other aspect of this game. The boss themes, while not as memorable, are also very creative and comment on their respective bosses’ personalities very well. I keep listening to the game’s OST during work, and I genuinely love some of the tracks so much I’m considering sampling them for my own music. Especially the main theme, the White Parish theme and some of the post-boss songs are hauntingly beautiful, and during the credits I almost shed a little tear because it all added up so well in that moment. Music truly is one of the most important aspects of a game, and I think Ender Lilies is a prime example of that.
And that’s the thing with this game; it’s sometimes genuinely great and clearly knows what it’s doing, and then other times, it’ll fumble some really basic stuff in a way that even amateur game designers should know better. Sometimes the devs have a stroke of genius, and then other times, they’ll go with the absolute bare minimum. And I think this is most noticeable when it comes to the game’s overall place in the genre:
What really sets Ender Lilies apart? What is the draw that’s supposed to pull people in? What is this game’s identity? It feels like it’s so busy trying to appeal to all sorts of MV audiences that it forgot to really work out its own personality, it’s own pull. The art direction and music ARE great, but games like Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, Super Metroid, CV: Symphony of the Night, Ori, Axiom Verge.. all of these games have fantastic art direction and music, but they also have their own identity, both in terms of art AND gameplay. It’s even worse since the game orients itself very clearly around Hollow Knight in particular, and goes for a very similar style of presentation but doesn’t really quite reach the heights that HK did, neither in art, music NOR in gameplay. If I had to choose between HK and EL to recommend to a friend who’s trying to get into Metroidvanias, there’d be no contest - especially since Ender Lilies is twice as expensive as Hollow Knight. The only reason I would ever recommend EL over HK would be for it’s significantly lighter difficulty and shorter run-time.
I realise that this review probably sounded a bit negative overall, but don’t let that fool you. This IS a really good game. It’s an extremely solid Metroidvania / Souls-like. Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t have any real critical flaws. It has very enjoyable gameplay, a non-linear map that feels appropriately large, amazing art and music, it has no bullshit areas, and doesn’t drag on forever. It just has a lot of minor disappointments and annoyances that may or may not add up to a legitimate grievance, depending on who’s playing. And I won’t lie, these things do annoy me and kinda break my heart, because this game would really have deserved a lot more polish.
The reason I genuinely really like this game, and consider it not only worth your time but one of the better experiences I’ve had in a while is simple; it has heart. It has a soul. It’s a passion project by a couple of people that clearly love the Metroidvania genre, and cared a lot about the story they were trying to tell. It’s not a cynical, self-referential, meta-humour ridden “””clever””” game, nor is it a soulless, predatory cash grab, it’s a game that’s not afraid to pull on your heartstrings and present you with some actual emotion here and there. Again, I REALLY like this game, and I think every fan of Metroidvania games ought to give this one a shot. Even though I have problems with it, I enjoyed it more than other MVs I’ve played recently, including Salt & Sanctuary, The Messenger, Metroid: Dread and both Ori’s, and I think that’s saying something. All things considered, I do think this game is underrated. It genuinely is a very fun game, with an extremely solid foundation, and I could see a sequel ironing out a lot of the kinks, creating a truly fantastic gaming experience in the process.
I think there are a lot of people who would probably get a lot out of this. I’ll definitely give it a second playthrough some time in the future.
7,5 / 10
1999
Silent Hill remains one of the best horror experiences of all time. A nightmarish yet sometimes serene atmosphere, great sound design, and surprisingly deep world building explain why it’s still so beloved to this day. Outdated controls and lame boss fights are annoying, but a small price to pay for a game this special.
9 / 10
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[MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING! This is a review AND a commentary, and as such I’ll be talking about close to everything that’s going on in this game. If you have any intention of playing the game yourself, definitely do that before reading this.]
Silent Hill is a true classic. There is a reason it has become practically synonymous with atmospheric, psychological horror. The mere image of a suburban scene enveloped in fog is enough for a sizeable amount of people to go “That’s like Silent Hill!”, and reminiscing about the time when they first experienced stepping into this lost little town.
For me, this was only a few weeks ago (at the time of me writing this) and yet I feel like I’ve known and loved this game my whole life. I know that SH2 is the one that REALLY blew up and gained a massive cult following, but I wanted to start where it all began, and I’m glad I did. It gets regularly overshadowed by its progeny (perhaps for a good reason, I wouldn’t know as I haven’t played them yet) but I genuinely believe that, even without a boatload of sequels and spin offs, this would have become one for the history books regardless.
This has been the scariest game I’ve ever played, without a doubt. While I have experienced worse individual moments of shock,(i.e. worse jump scares) in plenty of other media, no other game or film has ever managed to constantly put me on edge the way Silent Hill did. And, like any fan of this series will be able to tell you, it does this by doing one thing better than any other: atmosphere. It does this without barely any real jump scares throughout the whole duration, which is especially impressive given how easy it would’ve been to just pack the game with them.
Before starting the game I was fairly certain that the extreme pixellation and often rather goofy-looking PS1 aesthetics were enough to probably take away a lot of the horror experience, but I’m happy to say I was very wrong. If anything, the lossy, grainy textures and strange, mechanical animations only accentuate the whole experience quite a bit. Also, the more abstracted enemy designs actually heighten the strange, otherworldly horror that this game goes for. And really, that is one of the strongest compliments I can give this game: Despite it being over 20 years old and a lot coming after it, it’s STILL one of the most genuinely creepy games out there.
But that alone a classic does not make. What really turns Silent Hill into generation defining cultural behemoth is what lies beneath the doom and gloom; a deeply tragic and melancholic core.
Equal parts bleak and serene, this game draws you into its nightmare the same way the eponymous town does with this game’s protagonist, Harry Mason - although, we could just as easily argue the town itself being the actual main character. As if descending into a dream, we suddenly, and without any real explanation, find ourselves in the eponymous city. Any recollection of our previous life is hazy at best, and only possible to be gleamed at all by carefully watching the intro cinematic. At first, I assumed that this was just a supercut of all cutscenes in the game set to some nice 90’s alt rock to set the mood but it actually sets up the story too.
We see Harry driving towards the popular tourist destination Silent Hill, at the behest of his daughter Cheryl, who really wanted to go here for vacation. On their way there, a mysterious teenage girl suddenly appears in the middle of the road, causing Harry to crash his car. When he comes to he finds himself in the middle of a town drenched in a deep, unyielding fog. While he doesn’t seem to be injured, he finds that his daughter has disappeared.
And this is where we start the actual game. No fancy intro, no long, drawn out cutscene; you’re thrust right into the maw of dread. Immediately I noticed that this game works completely without any HUD, from start to finish, which I think definitely heightens the sense of immersion the player feels. This is stark contrast to not only most horror games, but almost any games for the time. Where other titles would clutter the screen with various stats and meters, Silent Hill lets its environment take the front stage without any obstructions.
From the first second, we can already witness one of the defining factors of the intensely thick atmosphere Silent Hill conjures at just about every moment; Akira Yamaoka’s haunting, industrial Yamaha-synth soundscapes droning away, the sounds undulating like a person going in and out of consciousness. Ranging from intensely dark and oppressive cacophony, like something out of a Throbbing Gristle or Coil record, to heart-wrenchingly beautiful and melancholic Alt-rock guitar licks that give the feeling being in a 90’s high school romance movie. It needs to be thoroughly acknowledged just how much Yamaoka clearly understands this series and its tone.
The thick fog that permeates every square inch of the map isn’t just an aesthetic choice - although it is that too, and what an iconic one at that. No, it’s also used to mask the unfortunately low draw distance of the PS1 in a way that allows the game world to feel much larger, while also allowing for seamless traversal, at least within certain zones. The streets are wide, the houses all neatly rowed next to each other. Both are completely empty. Not a single person in sight. In a way Silent Hill’s fog kind reminds me of Demon’s Souls use of the same concept (or rather, the other way around) - the fog represents to us the loss of our sanity, the line between dream and reality. More than just existing here, it almost seems like the town is literally being devoured by the fog; the envoy of the true horror yet to come.
Speaking of which, let’s get back to the story. Harry climbs out of the wreckage of his car and finds his daughter gone. Not a single person in sight. After aimlessly walking through the town for a bit, we can see Cheryl in the distance but she somehow doesn’t seem to notice us. We chase after her a while until we come across an alley - THE alley. We enter and notice that things have.. changed. Without warning darkness falls upon the town. The alley has gotten narrower, the walls replaced with filthy rust, the ground with rickety metal grates. It terminates in a dead end, with a burnt corpse covered in rags adorning the wall. Before we even realise what the hell is happening, we’re getting ganked to death by a bunch of little nightmare monsters.
This whole bit is brilliant. The opening minutes leading up the alley are perhaps one of my favourite moments in the whole game. The way things go from 0 to 100 in less than a minute is legitimately genius. It sets up the core dynamic and mood of the game so damn well. If the eerie, foggy landscape wasn’t enough to make you feel uneasy, this should’ve done the trick. It teaches you that you can never know what to expect. Things might go awry before you know it. The game also shows off its cinematic chops here, utilising the camera to its fullest extent with strange angles and very deliberate movement, which is in very stark contrast to the completely static cameras of most other horror games at the time. Where games like Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark would focus on inventory management and difficulty, or puzzle solving respectively, Silent Hill clearly puts its main focus on being as cinematic as possible.
Once again Harry wakes up but this time finds himself in a diner, alongside Officer Cybil, a cop from the next town over who caught wind of every person in Silent Hill mysteriously disappearing - we can even see her drive past us in the opening cinematic. After telling her that we’re looking for our daughter, and that we’re not leaving without her, she hands us a gun. That took me a bit by surprise. You’d be forgiven in thinking that this game was fairly combat free, given its reputation of being more about atmosphere, but you’d be very wrong. This game has a LOT of combat, much more than you’d think. I’ll be getting into why I find this to be a strange choice a bit later, but for now, our new cop friend tells us to be careful with the gun and to think about who we’re about to shoot with it before she leaves to get some backup.
If only she stayed for a minute longer, she could’ve helped us with the flying bat demon that just crashed through the window and is now trying to eat our face. After disposing of that thing (after dying to it a bunch of times because we embarrassingly didn’t understand how to use the gun at first) we’re off to explore the town, but not before grabbing the single most essential tool in the whole game: the radio.
It will alert you of nearby enemies by emitting a shrill, fire alarm-like siren. This may initially seem rather counterproductive in terms of cultivating dread in the player, since you’re almost always tipped off to nearby enemies. But like I said before, this game conjures dread not by shoving things into your face, but rather by doing the opposite, hiding the scary things outside of your immediate view. In a game that is this focused on survival and effective exploration, being able to hear them beforehand not only feels more fair, but also somehow more tense. There is always a mini-decision going on in the back of your head: “Do I fight or do I flee?”
While exploring the town, we realise that we are utterly trapped here. There is no apparent way in or out, since all streets in this place terminate abruptly into the abyss. An endless, grey, foggy chasm on all sides. This extends to roads inside of the town, meaning certain paths are completely blocked off and you have to find your way around them. What’s worse is that we’re not alone after all… patrolling the streets are various monsters ranging from dogs to bats to something more humanoid, all skinless and/or burnt. This is some nice foreshadowing into the nature of this place, as the theme of burnt bodies continues throughout the game. To navigate this town, we receive a map which Harry (or someone/something else) will continuously fill out with more hints and markers, though they only show up on the map you have to pull up every time.
While the map does help with navigation, the player is largely on their own when it comes to progressing the story. Speaking of which, after a while, the player will find a house with a door with three locks, which after opening will end the “tutorial section”. After going through said door, darkness suddenly falls over the town. The grey fog has gone, and in its place has come the night. Visibility is even lower than before, and the monsters more aggressive.
But we have to find Cheryl. We can’t give up. Through gathering context clues, we realise we have to visit the local Midswich Elementary School, which was previously blocked off. This is the game’s first “real level”. This place feels more like a typical “dungeon”, and is structured a bit more traditionally. In general, this will be the core loop for the rest of the game, a mix between scouring the “open world” for direction, and then having to clear a more claustrophobic, confined dungeon-like space. The levels are typically multi-storied places with lots of locked doors, elevators, traps and shortcuts built in there.
Inside the school, we encounter the secondary core gameplay element: Puzzle solving. I’ll come out and say that this aspect is a little hit or miss, and was sadly one of the few things that tended to pull me out of the experience, rather into it. To me, the best puzzles here were the ones that felt like they had an actual, diegetic connection to the events of the game. The sad truth is that the vast majority of them don’t. They feel more like fairly standard point-and-click type puzzles which require more moon-logic than I would have liked. Most of the time, you’re confronted with fairly simple logic puzzles, which require you to look for certain items inside the level and use them in the right place, i.e. finding a bottle of hydrochloric acid and realising you’re meant to drizzle some of it on a petrified hand grasping a medal, which you need to open the door to another part of the map. You get the idea. It feels surprisingly video gamey for a project that seems to be very careful to NOT do stuff like this otherwise.
Like I said, the better puzzles are the ones that feel like they have an actual connection to the story, like the Clock Tower puzzle, which is at the core of the other, smaller puzzles. Through solving them, and reading clues written into some school books at the start of the level, we attain 2 medals and turn on the power inside the clock tower. We crawl inside it and suddenly find ourselves somewhere.. else.
An empty school is already a bit creepy, due to its nature as a liminal space. The uncanniness of such spaces manifests when viewing a location, which usually has a purpose, outside of that context. To experience it outside of its designated raison d'etre. A schoolhouse is supposed to have teachers and students in it. An empty schoolhouse is alienated from its purpose, and therefore strange. It is not really a place. It's nowhere. It’s pretty wild to me how well the dev team understood and applied these deeply hauntological, postmodern themes about the uncanniness of lost futures and alienation back when these concepts were still fairly novel. One might even argue that Silent Hill and its copycats perhaps played no small part in spreading them. But all of that is just the beginning of this rabbit hole.
After passing through a short tunnel, we find ourselves in the same level again, only this time we’re not greeted by a normal, albeit creepy school, but rather a horrifying, blood and rust drenched nightmare version of it. We remember; this is just like the death alley in the beginning. Red, almost organic seeming coloration taints the walls. The floor has been replaced by a rusty, rickety metal grating, the abyss literally beneath your feet, a great black chasm waiting to devour you and everything here. The otherworld has invaded reality again, and this time you’re caught right in the middle of it. You’re expected to navigate the school again, but this time rooms have been swapped, doors that were previously open are now locked, and vice versa. The amount of enemies has increased, the level which has previously been uncanny and vaguely threatening is now outright terrifying and trying to kill you, to drag you down into the depths.
This is genius on so many levels, and perhaps one of my favourite moments in horror, maybe ever. The dread that unfolds here is of an intensely psychological nature and has layers upon layers to unravel. Silent Hill is incredibly good at putting you at unease throughout the whole game, while still being able to consistently pull the rug from under your feet.
While exploring the second instance of the school, we’ll discover more puzzles, more enemies and more clues. One of them is absolutely essential to actually beating the first real boss the game throws at you. After figuring out you need to start the school’s boiler to beckon this level’s boss fight, we descend down into the cellar. The boss resembles a wyrm but its face is split in the middle, giving it the ability to eat you in a single gulp. Through finding the aforementioned clue in the form of a fairy tale involving a hunter killing a drake by shooting an arrow directly into its mouth, we figure out we can do the same. If you happen to find this clue before engaging that thing, it’s barely even a fight. Either way it’s over in about 10-20 seconds.
This is where I have to get a bit more into the game’s combat.
Generally, it’s not great. I get that it’s a PS1 game, and that the extremely clunky and inconsistent auto-aim is still the best possible way of going out it without making it extremely frustrating. It still feels extremely inconsistent and a bit braindead at times, like you’re just endlessly pumping bullets into enemies. If this was just for the regular mobs, I’d be fine with it, but the bosses generally adhere to the same rule; empty your clip into it until it dies. Doesn’t matter if it’s a skinless dog or literally Satan himself, if you can shoot it, you can kill it. Melee weapons feel even worse and are borderline unusable in boss fights. The lack of any health pick ups during boss fights can also turn each encounter into a terribly frustrating ordeal if you happened to walk into one without an appropriate number of them in your inventory.
In the best cases the bosses are over and done with quickly, like Split Head, but more often than not, they either require you to run around the arena like a madman, trying to reposition so you can get a few shots in, or even worse, require you understand some random ass gimmick like during the Cybil boss fight, where you have to make her completely empty her gun so she can’t shoot you anymore, and then have to run laps around her trying to shoot approximately 700 bullets into her chest. Alternatively, if you manage to complete a certain side quest and carry a weird potion to the end of the game, you can use it on her, which apparently returns Cybil back to normal, expelling the demonic hold somehow and skipping the boss fight altogether. The problem is that this little fun fact - the potion’s anti-demonic properties - isn’t told to you literally until the final boss of the game, which BTW isn’t even a guaranteed outcome. It only happens IF you save Kaufmann, another NPC who can be very easily missed, and IF you also find said potion. I do not understand why they decided to make this whole interaction THIS cryptic, especially since if you do manage to save Cybil, Harry drops the absolute lore bombshell that Cheryl is ——— SPOILER ALTERT ——— actually adopted.
It’s not just the frustrating mechanical aspects - I can accept those as a product of their time - but also the contextualisation of combat. As mentioned before, the game has you engage in a surprising amount of it, and everything here is killable by raw physical violence. Not only does this feel weirdly inappropriate for what is ostensibly an invasion from another realm of existence, but Harry really doesn’t strike me as a battle hardened war veteran either. The actual game doesn’t really talk about Harry’s background, although some external sources like the novelisation (which came out many years after the fact) say that Harry is a writer, focussing on family matters and home security. This makes Harry’s high proficiency with firearms and melee weapons slightly more believable, but not by much. I get that we’re supposed to take this as him being a loving father, diving into the depths of hell to save his daughter but it feels kinda strange considering that Resident Evil’s protagonists - who are, by all accounts, actually trained in combat - generally have a MUCH harder time dealing with monsters than the guy who writes books on how to secure your house and got a gun handed to him by a random police woman.
Back to the story. We’ve braved the school in both versions and are done fighting the wyrm monster. Harry experiences a vision of a girl who looks an awful lot like Cheryl, but it dissipates before we understand what’s going on. We are teleported back into the real world, and we are greeted by the old, familiar fog. But something has happened: Rather than being weird or uncanny, the fog now has an almost relieving quality to it. Nothing changed, it’s just that the foggy town now seems almost serene in comparison to the absolute hell we just went through. I love this duality so much; it gives you some desperately needed reprieve from the intensely stressful otherworld sections without ever taking the foot of the gas entirely. The fog has now become the new “normal”. This is, by far, my favourite moment in the game and encapsulates the feeling that this series is going for so well.
After this whole ordeal, a nice little jog is exactly what we need. We just heard a church bell ringing in the distance, so off we go to investigate. There we will find one of the more important characters in this game, Dahlia Gillespie, who informs us that she knows we’re here for “the girl”. She informs us that the town is being swallowed by darkness and that the “Mark of Samael” is upon us, the pyramid shaped symbol which could be seen in the school’s courtyard. According to Dahlia, it represents the demons’ attempts to invade our world, but more on that later. We get a new item from her, the “Flauros”, an enigmatic, pyramid shaped object that’s supposed to help us defeat the darkness. She also tells us to go to Alchemilla hospital, leaving just as suddenly as she appeared.
At the hospital, we meet another very important NPC, Dr. Michael Kaufmann. After almost killing us with his gun, we briefly discuss the situation at hand before he leaves again, leaving us alone in this hospital. Curiously enough, completing this NPC’s side quest is essential go attain the good ending, which would’ve never crossed my mind before knowing about it.
The hospital itself works basically the same as the school. Go through a bunch of rooms, solve a bunch of puzzles that involve grabbing certain key items. The enemies here are a bit tougher, the place is bigger, and the psychological horror aspects keep getting more intense and unpredictable. For example, take the 1st floor ladies restroom randomly teleporting you a floor higher, without explanation. While here, you should definitely look around for a broken vial of a mysterious, red liquid called “Aglaphotis”, and, more importantly, the extremely easy to miss plastic bottle which you can use to take a sample of said liquid with you - this is important to get the best ending in the game, and I have to admit I was kinda miffed at just how easily missable this whole side quest is. I feel like having something this impactful be hidden behind such a seemingly inconspicuous interaction is obtuse to the point of being unfair. You only ever find out what this strange liquid even does during the ending cutscene. I get that they made it deliberately hard to find to facilitate multiple play-throughs, but this legitimately felt impossible to figure out without a guide - I’m saying this because I found the other important side quest without looking up anything, and just using intuition.
After a while, we come across the hospital’s elevator, which is our main mode of transportation through the 3 floors and basement. But then suddenly, without really calling attention to itself, a “4th floor” button appears on the lift’s panel where there previously was nothing. Connoisseurs of Japanese culture and media will immediately notice the connection to the common phenomenon of omitting a 4th floor from houses due to superstition; it’s very similar to how in the West, esp. America, many buildings simply won’t have a 13th floor, skipping directly from 12 to 14.
Upon taking the lift to the 4th floor, darkness falls yet again, but this time even more seamlessly. We have entered the otherworld again. But we also experience a vision of the same girl from the school, this time we see her entering an old antique shop. Just like the school before it, the game makes you go through (almost) the whole hospital again and rediscover it, making you go through a series of increasingly cryptic puzzles and riddles. Once again, they are pretty hit or miss. Long story short, you unlock the hospital’s basement - but not the regular basement, but rather the basement beneath the basement. In place of the standard, rusty metal walls of the otherworld, we have an oppressively dark, claustrophobic hallway with rickety wooden walls, reminiscent of an abandoned mineshaft more than a hospital. It’s seriously creepy and perhaps the most uncanny environment of the whole game. Down here we find a single hospital bed, with a picture of the girl we keep seeing in our visions, which reveals her name to be “Alessa”. After doing what we can, we head back to the room where we first found Kaufmann, only to find someone else hiding here.
A young, beautiful nurse cowers underneath a desk. Elated at the sight of another person, she embraces us and asks us what’s going on. She introduces herself as Lisa Garland. She also has no idea what’s going on and says she simply woke up here without any idea how she got here. Scared shitless, she obviously doesn’t know anything about Cheryl, or even what the hell is happening here. Next to that, she also isn’t aware of any secret basements in the hospital. Suddenly, our conversation is interrupted by a severe shot of pain and Harry loses consciousness. Upon regaining it, we find ourselves in the same room yet again, but daylight has returned, we’re back in the “””normal””” world. I was a bit surprised to see this section capped off without any boss fight, but considering that combat really isn’t this game’s strong suit, I can’t say I was disappointed.
Lisa is gone, but instead Dahlia enters the room and spouts off more cryptic nonsense about the world being swallowed and how we’re the only one able to save it, yadayada. Bottom line: We have to find the “second church”, and we should head to the town’s old antique shop.
From this point onwards, the game changes quite a bit. For one, we don’t have any more big, complex dungeon-like areas, at least, not until the very end. Instead, when arriving at the shop we find the so called “second church”, a small altar of worship, seemingly in service to some demonic entity. Cybil is there too, and after almost shooting her (omg, foreshadowing???) we discuss the whole situation with her, including Daliah’s strange musings on the town being devoured by darkness, to which Cybil hilariously responds with: “Must be on drugs.” She also tells us that she thinks she saw a little girl walk, or rather, float towards the lake. After revealing a hidden path behind a bookshelf, Harry steps in and finds the “other church” Dahlia told us about, only to suddenly disappear without a trace.
We find ourselves in the hospital again, talking to Lisa in the same room we found her before. Lisa then tells us some things about the town’s history, and about how Dahlia is known around town as a strange woman. Before we can ask more, we lose consciousness again. We then find ourselves in the antique shop again, but Cybil is gone and we have transitioned into the otherworld once more, but this time, the whole town has gone to shit.
From this point onward, the game fully descends into a near infinite abyss of stress and dread. Where the game previously balanced the mood between hell and fogworld, this bare minimum of comfort has been stripped away too, at least for now. While this arguably makes for an extremely powerful horror moment and still sticks with me to this day, gameplay wise it boiled down to running past everything as fast as I could whenever I wasn’t inside a building. Enemies are way too numerous and persistent to be worth fighting at this point. Harry realises that Lisa is probably his best bet at finding a way to the lake, and decides that he needs to find her again, so back to the hospital we go - only, the way there is obviously completely blocked off, so we need to take a detour through the town hall.
Another extremely cool moment comes when Harry enters the mall, where a stack of old TVs will suddenly all simultaneously turn on. On them, you can see Cheryl, apparently in a state of fear, occasionally interrupted by the so-called “Mark of Samael”. Once this is done with, the search continues. During the exploration of this mall, the ground suddenly breaks away beneath us at some point and - without warning - drops us right into a boss fight with a nasty slug monster. Once again, you defeat it by shooting at it until it dies. Thrilling.
That distraction out of the way, back on our way to the hospital. We ask Lisa how to get to the lake, and she informs us of an old sewer that runs beneath the town and connects the town to the resort area. When Harry attempts to leave, Lisa begs him not to abandon her again. Harry offers to take her with him, but she insists that she feels like she cannot leave this place, no matter what.
After this, we leave the hospital only to realise that the world has changed yet again. Where there were previously streets, there remains only a single, linear path, leading from the clinic to a strange rooftop. This is when our old friend the slug monster joins us again, only this time it has fully metamorphosed into a big old moth demon. Like the other fight, just empty your clip into that thing and don’t forget to heal occasionally. Having the player fight that thing again after what feels like 30-50 minutes tops feels like a very strange design choice, especially considering that this thing doesn’t even seem to have much to do with the plot at all. Regardless, killing the beast finally returns us to the “normal” world again, after what feels like a lifetime.
Sadly I have to admit that from this point onward, the plot and a lot of game design decisions kinda lost me the further it went on. Not that any of it was outright terrible, but admittedly I find darting from one place to the next without any reason to fight less engaging than the gameplay loop of the previous half, where you were mostly on your own to figure out what to do next. The plot also seems to lose what little footing it had in this world, which made it even harder for me to follow what was even going on at this point. The sewer section, as you might imagine, is a totally bog standard, linear walkway which feels more like an action-sequence than horror, but that is going to be a theme for the rest of Silent Hill. The psychological survival-horror edge of the game makes way for a more action-y, combat-centred approach and I can’t say I’m a fan. While it’s not on the level of Bloodborne, where you are by far the scariest thing in that universe, being this powerful and having access to this many weapons can make the game feel less tense than it probably intended. The fact that you rarely, if ever get any downtime from running from one place to the next like a madman also adds to this - you just get kinda used to it by the end.
The saving grace here would be the fact that Kaufmann’s side quest comes into full motion, and offers a desperately needed reprieve from the “run like a madman” routine. You can find him - or completely miss him - in the resort area, in Annie’s Bar, where you’ll have to same him from a mumbler. If you missed this, you just locked yourself out of the Good and Good+ endings. Luckily, the location is rather hard to miss, and inside you’ll simply shoot the monster that attacked him. Without so much as a thank you, Kaufmann leaves, but not without dropping a motel key, alongside a safe combination. In said motel, you’ll find the only other surviving sample of Aglaphotis, the red liquid with mysterious properties. The very second you locate it, Kaufmann shows up and snatches it from your hand. While this feels annoying on the surface, this is actually what you WANT to happen. Overall, this is a nice distraction and something to break up the pace, I just wish there was more of it. By this point, you’ve probably also gathered that Dr. Michael Kaufmann was heavily involved in the drug trade of a local substance known as “PTV” which is said to possess strong hallucinogenic properties, and is used by almost everyone in town, but especially a certain collective of people that will become relevant shortly. There are many news articles in town talking about disappearing police men, and other strange happenings in connection to said drug.
After this, back to the regularly scheduled programming; a whole lot of manic running. Suddenly, it gets dark again, but this time no dream, no losing consciousness, no strange feelings; it just happens. This world is now changing rapidly and violently. Inside a boat cabin, we come upon Cybil again, and Dahlia joins the party. She tells us about how dire the situation is, and that we need to hurry. The gang decides that our best bet is for Harry to search the nearby Lighthouse, and Cybil to go to the Amusement Park. While the gameplay loop has suffered a bit since the halfway point, the cinematography and atmosphere absolutely didn’t. The game still impresses with very experimental camera angles and intense sound design, and it’s not gonna stop now. Up on the lighthouse, we see Alessa again and a huge “Mark of Samael” on the floor. She disappears, and we’re left to wonder what we did wrong.
On the way out we notice that Cybil isn’t back from the park, so we decide to go after her. Into another sewer we go, and we do the exact same shit again as before. If it wasn’t clear before, now it’s become obvious that the game’s developers likely ran into budgetary issues by this point. But what’s interesting is that we can see Cybil being dragged away by some shadowy creature, but before we can act, she’s gone. After a rather frustrating second romp through the shitter, we’re finally here.
While the atmosphere is pretty intense, and the sound design does a lot of heavy lifting, this area felt a bit underwhelming to me personally. While, yes, still pretty creepy it didn’t quite reach the height of the school or hospital to me, mostly because those places had actual level design while this is just a very shallow attempt at a maze. The setting would’ve been amazing, but it ends up a bit unimpressive. We run into another boss fight, but this time it’s someone we know… Cybil. A dead expression on her face, slouched posture and blood-red eyes. Seems like she got herself some quality zaza. (Sorry)
She has somehow been infected by the same parasite that can be seen infecting the nurses in the hospital, and now tries to blow your brains out while riding on a carousel, trying to confuse you into running her way. While this is certainly the most creative boss in this game in terms of design, having to deal with emulated PS1 controls while also being extremely low on health without any health pick ups in the general vicinity made this fight EXTREMELY frustrating for me. I know this is mostly my own fault, but I really do not understand why you can’t find even a single damn health pick up in this whole 5+ minutes boss fight. Luckily, you don’t HAVE to kill her. Remember the random plastic bottle from the hospital you filled with Aglaophotis? Turns out you’re meant to use it in this boss fight, and you’re supposed to figure this out completely unprompted. Again, I understand that the idea was that you likely aren’t going to get the true ending on your first run through, but this just feels like the devs being needlessly obtuse just to make this happen by any means necessary. If we DO manage to save her, Harry tells her about the neat little lore detail that Cheryl isn’t actually his biological daughter?? Wait, what? Why is this extremely crucial piece of information so out of the way? I really feel like this should’ve been part of the main plot, as it is absolutely essential to understand what is even happening in this story.
Regardless of the outcome, Harry pushes onward and confronts Alessa, who is seemingly waiting for him in the darkness. He still hasn’t put 2 and 2 together, and if the player hasn’t witnessed the aforementioned conversation, they likely won’t until right at the end. In either case, he demands that she let Cheryl go and Alessa attempts to push us back using a force field, which finally activates the Flaurus, which we have been carrying around for hours now. Alessa is immobilised. But this is where the story takes a turn:
Dahlia suddenly appears and reveals that Alessa is her daughter, and that “this is the end of [her] little game”. She reveals that we’ve been doing what Dahlia wanted us to do all along, and that Alessa has been doing all of this to escape her. She speaks of a ritual that has yet to be completed. Before we can understand anything, both disappear in a flash of light. Harry suddenly wakes up in the hospital yet again, with Lisa standing there, this time with an unnerving twitch in her face. She talks to Harry about how she went into the secret basement, and how she feels like something traumatic happened there, but she can’t remember. Before we can calm her down, she runs away.
When we get control back and save our game, we notice we aren’t actually in the hospital. We’re “Nowhere”. Remember that bit about how Silent Hill’s horror works through the alienation of locations from their purpose, and how that effectively transforms them into a type of “nowhere”? Well, they’ve gone fully literal with that concept. This nowhere-space is an amalgamation of both the school and the hospital, with some hitherto unseen room types. We are trapped, there is no way in or out. We have somehow ended up in some back-pocket of reality, likely sustained by what little remains of Alessa’s power. Doors lead to rooms they couldn’t possibly connect to, space itself becomes entirely untrustworthy. And we don’t even have a map. The map has become somewhat of a crutch throughout the game - no matter what, you could always briefly pause the game and reorient yourself. Well, not anymore. You are on your own now. All of this combined makes for the scariest, and most intense section of the game, especially since I really did not expect the game to go here all of a sudden. This really feels like the amalgamation of the game’s ideas.
The puzzles here are the most cryptic and obtuse yet, with some of them being really cool, while others - like the ever infamous Zodiac puzzle - feel almost impossible to figure out on your own. The game also doubles down on its alchemical / occult themes, and outright name drops the Olympick spirits like Ophiel, Phaleg, Aratros and Hagith. I enjoy the aesthetic of it all and am impressed with the mountains of research that must’ve went into this. Imagine my surprise when I figured out that Aglaophotis was a real thing - well, not real but you know what I mean. But this is where the beauty of Silent Hill full develops, in this intricate interplay between occultism and emotion, between fear of the unknown as well as our internal darkness. The game never fully commits to either the supernatural, nor the psychological. This makes for an unparalleled sense of mystery and dread, since the edge between dream and reality is so thin.
The level takes you through various rooms, having you collect various items related to spirits, death, life and alchemical processes. I’m not gonna go through it in detail, because it feels a bit redundant at this point. Let’s instead focus on Lisa for a bit.
After going through most of it, you descend to the deepest level, where you have to collect various religious symbols. The last one - a star of David - is in a long corridor. Upon turning around, an extremely distressed Lisa is waiting for us. She has finally understood why she is the only one to remain; she has been dead this whole time. She is just like the others, but something keeps her from remembering her purpose. Lisa loses herself completely, and desperately begs Harry to save her, which causes him to push her away. We now get this game’s most iconic scene, with Lisa inexplicably starting to profusely bleed from her head, proving that whatever is happening to her isn’t normal. Harry flees the room in terror and shuts the door behind him. Lisa bangs on the door, crying for Harry, for anyone to save her from this hell. It is an extremely brutal moment, emotionally speaking. Here is this poor woman who wants nothing more than someone to look after her, and here we are pushing her away. It’s such a human moment too. Who wouldn’t act like this in such a situation? Still, it feels genuinely awful and made me hate Harry for a second there. The scene’s OST is a beautiful and heartbreaking emo guitar lick. Where other horror games (or movies) would’ve went with a something that commented on how scary this situation is, Silent Hill focuses on the tragedy of it all - and this basically sums up what this franchise is all about. It’s surprisingly tragic and depressing, with a strong focus on female trauma in particular. After this, we head towards the final room in this place: Alessa’s old childhood bedroom. The walls are decorated with insect display cases and various pictures of the town. In this room we have the final door, the door that separates us from the truth, from the end.
Speaking of which, let’s finally talk about Alessa. At this point, we should have all the information we need to finally piece together what’s going on here:
Silent Hill, Maine is the home of an ancient cult, called “The Order”. This order is for all intents and purposes the main antagonistic force for the entire series, although their role and background isn’t really touched upon here - that’s something the sequels will get more into as time goes on. This order consists of what are essentially Devil worshippers, since they worship the archangel Samael from Jewish mythology, who is often considered to be somewhat similar to the Christian Lucifer/Satan. Samael isn’t necessarily evil, but he is a destructive force that tests humanity’s faith. He is also often seen as the main Angel of Death. Why do they worship this guy? Fuck if I know. The point is, Dahlia is the current head of this order, and has been trying to bring their god into this world. To that end she tried various methods, all of which failed. When she brought her daughter, Alessa, into this world, she discovers that the little girl has considerable magical abilities (it should be noted that the game kinda implies that Alessa was created, rather than traditionally born) and decided that her best bet would be to use her little, 7 year old daughter as a vessel to birth their god by impregnating her via an Incubus demon - which is more fucked up than anything in this game, my god. Though, that doesn’t seem to have been the plan initially. Alessa has magical powers, and while it isn’t explained at all, I think the idea was for Alessa to become proficient in summoning occult powers through her magic. Dahlia keeps grooming Alessa from her very first day for her role, and tries to keep her from living a normal life. Her magical powers alienate her from her peers at school, who brutally bully and ostracise her, to the point where one of her teachers gets suspicious and suspects ongoing abuse by her mother. The case gets thrown out as a certain Dr. Michael Kaufmann suspiciously fails to notice any sign of mistreatment of poor, little Alessa - that is, of course, because Kaufmann is part of the cult, and neck deep in this whole ordeal, since he’s presumably making a killing with the drug trade.
As Alessa grows older, she is increasingly opposed to helping the Order with their schemes and starts to refuse her mother’s attempts at using her in rituals. Dahlia then suddenly realises something, that she “could have done it all by [her]self.” Now, I’m not entirely sure what happens next in the timeline of Silent Hill 1, since this game doesn’t make it super clear, but the PAL and JAP versions of the game feature a news article somewhere in Nowhere that talks about a sudden fire breaking out in the Gillespie house, caused by a “faulty boiler”, which completely charred the body of Alessa. It’s implied here that this was Dahlia’s attempt at hastening the ritual process for the birth of their god, but it failed. The sequels and prequels, Silent Hill: Origins in particular, go into a lot more detail concerning the actual how’s and why’s. In either case, the point remains the same: Alessa doesn’t die, and is instead transferred into the hospital’s secret basement. By using the Key of Aratron we can open the corresponding door a bit earlier, which hides a cutscene involving Dahlia, Kaufmann and two unnamed collaborators standing next to Alessa’s sickbed, the one we found in the secret hospital basement. They talk about how the ritual was only a partial success, since “half the soul is lost” and that regaining the other half with take time.
Without further information from the sequels, piecing together what exactly what they were aiming to achieve here isn’t easy, so I’ll just be going off my own - likely flawed - understanding of the situation: Dahlia realises that Alessa’s powers far surpass her own, and decides to use the 7 year old Alessa as a direct surrogate mother for the Demon god instead. By use of an incubus demon, Alessa is impregnated during the ritual, which involved a lot of fire, likely causing immense pain and suffering for her, which I assume was meant to be the conductor for the incubus to impregnate her. The subtext addressing sexual abuse of children is impossible to ignore, and cements Silent Hill as one of the most horrifying horror stories I’ve ever experienced. In case you’re unfamiliar; an Incubus demon’s purpose is to literally rape women and endow them with nightmares, trauma, pain or other bad things. They are said to be the cause of mental illness and sickness. The presence of the demon seed inside Alessa prevents her from dying, despite her grievous burns and horrible condition, and it had done so for 7 years by the time we arrive.
This horrifying nightmare ritual was partially successful insofar that Alessa had indeed been impregnated by the demon. But she somehow managed to split her in half soul right before the ritual was completed, with one half of her remaining inside the body, and the other being reborn somewhere outside of town - and this is where things are starting to finally click. Didn’t Harry find Cheryl on the side of a highway 7 years ago? The article about the fire 7 years ago even dates it on the exact same day Harry found her. We understand: Cheryl IS Alessa. Our little daughter was never real.
So why did we come to this town in the first place? Like stated before, the ritual prevents Alessa’s body from dying and keeps her in eternal pain and agony - at least the part that’s still inside her. “Cheryl” is doing just fine, but she is still just a part of Alessa, and after years and years of experiencing intense suffering she is just about weak enough that Dahlia can perform a spell which compels young Cheryl to return to her place of origin; which is why she is so insistent on coming to this town.
This is where Lisa comes in. If we return to the room where we last saw her, we’ll instead find her diary on the floor, which sheds light on her role in all of this: Lisa Garland was a young actress-turned-nurse with a drug problem, who was tasked with (or perhaps blackmailed into) caring for Alessa’s half-dead and burned body by Dr. Michael Kaufmann, replacing the bandages on the wounds which would never heal, and would never stop bleeding or releasing pus. It’s clear she was only ever allowed to enter the secret basement while under the influence of drugs, which is why she can’t remember it. She talks about how she asked Kaufmann to relieve her from duty, and how she starts to experience weird hallucinations. It’s not clear what exactly happens to Lisa - at least in the story of SH1 - just that she somehow dies before the events of this game, likely somehow in connection to this ordeal.
We finally reached the core of this whole experience; by the halfway point in the game, it’s getting increasingly unclear whether the horror taking place in this town is more psychological or occult in nature, with all signs increasingly pointing towards the latter. And while, diegetically speaking, the game ultimately IS about hell trying to invade the world of the living, at its heart it is a deeply psychological story about trauma. What differentiates it from other, classical psychological horror media is the shift of focus away from the protagonist / player character, to Alessa (and to a lesser extent Lisa). Instead of analysing the mind of Harry, we’re meant to understand HER fears, HER dreams and HER trauma. Harry really is just a father desperately looking to save his daughter, and going through hell to achieve that. Everything else is coming from the mind of Alessa - including Lisa’s apparition. All the enemies are things that SHE is afraid of. All the horrible places we’ve been through are the roots of HER trauma.
Silent Hill is truly fantastic when it comes to blurring the lines between what is real and what isn’t. The way the game continuously subverts your expectations and pulls away the ground beneath your feet (sometimes literally) is unparalleled in any other Horror franchise ever, including films and books. The careful mix of deeply psychological horror imagery and genuinely cryptic, occult happenings involving being haunted by the ghosts of your past - once again, calling back to the hauntological themes permeating this game both literally as well as in the abstract - makes this game the timeless masterpiece of horror it is.
All of that being said, let’s finally end this:
We confront Dahlia in the cellar of their home, the place where Alessa burned. Next to her are both Cheryl, as well as Alessa’s real, charred half-dead body, upright in a chair, about to be merged. Depending on our actions we took throughout the game, we have 4 possible endings we can get: Good+, Good, Bad+, Bad. These endings also influence the final boss you’ll get, and how exactly the final cutscene will play out.
First, the bad endings:
If you DIDN’T save Kaufmann at all, you’ll be stuck with one of these. Dahlia finally manages to transform Alessa - who has been reunited with her other half at last - into the godmother, also known as the “Incubator”, which takes her form but as an adult. She kills Dahlia on the spot (not sure whether that was part of the plan), and proceeds to attack us. As far as the fight itself goes; it’s not great but that shouldn’t be surprising at this point. Just run around the arena like a madman, and empty clip after clip into her. She can kill you in 1-2 hits, so you better save all your heals for this instance. If we manage to kill her, the otherworld will implode.
In the Bad ending, Alessa briefly transforms back into Cheryl, thanking Harry and saying goodbye before vanishing into thin air. Grief stricken and in utter disbelief at just having killed his own daughter he breaks down and goes down with the ship. After the credits, we see Harry still sitting in his car, dead from the initial impact. “He was dead all along!!!” This is, of course, a deliberately unsatisfying ending to make you go back and play the game again, so I’m not going to criticise it for being cliché.
In the Bad+ (slightly better but still bad) ending, if you managed to save Cybil, she’ll show up in the cellar just before you arrive. Dahlia will then give us a little extra exposition about how the “Mark of Samael” is actually the “Mark of Metatron”, which is supposed to ward specifically against the Order’s god, meaning Alessa was the one who put them up everywhere. Cybil tries to stop her, but gets force-pushed away and loses consciousness. The fight plays out the exact same, and Harry still breaks down and cries. However, this time after the credits, Cybil comes to and tells Harry to get up and run away. It’s ambiguous as to what happens to them.
The Good and Good+ endings require you to complete Kaufmann’s side quest, and hand him the bottle of Aglaophotis. In this version, just before Dahlia can complete Alessa’s transformation into the Incubator, Kaufmann shows up, furious at Dahlia for betraying him (although I have to admit I’m not sure what this is referencing) shoots her and throws the bottle at Alessa in the middle of transforming. This expels the demon living inside her, revealing the true final boss of this game: The Incubus. Just like the Incubator, this fight is pretty bad and it’s even worse due to the fact you can’t even really see him since he’s flying above the ground. Killing the Incubator with a hand full of bullets is bad enough, but literally SATAN himself? I don’t know, I feel like some more contextualisation could’ve worked wonders, but at this point I’m not surprised the fight isn’t great.
In all fairness; it should be mentioned that you CAN win both fights without firing a single shot by entering with no ammunition for any of your guns, and simply surviving a few minutes. While this is appreciated in principle, it changes nothing about the actual outcome, in both cases the boss literally behaves the exact same as though you’d just shot him to death. It’s really more of a fail safe than an alternative solution.
In the Good ending, after the fight, Alessa holds a little baby in her arm and hands it to Harry. She holds out her arm, pointing towards the light, signalling us to go. Kaufmann comes to his senses and tries to leave as well, but in this moment Lisa materialises, literally climbs out of hell to drag him down there with her. A fitting end for such a scumbag. We grab the baby and get the hell out of here. Harry runs towards the light, and off into the fog - in the post-credit scene, we see him outside of town, having escaped his fate, ready to live another day.
In the Good+ ending the same happens, but Cybil joins the party just like in the Bad+ ending. The difference being, after the fight, Cybil comes to her senses and joins our escape from hell. She is seen leaving with Harry, and after the credits, we see her and Harry hold the baby the exact same way we’ve seen Harry and his wife hold Cheryl in the intro.. Harry + Cybil = ship? Hell yeah. This seems to be the canon ending as well, at least judging from what little I do know about the other games.
Ultimately, the fact that here are multiple outcomes is cool but unless you’re not a massive fan of the actual second to second gameplay, I don’t really think that such small changes to the final cutscenes really warrant an immediate replay after getting one of the endings. If there would be more changes along the way, that would be a different story. But in the end, I do like that the ending you get is reflective of how much effort you put into understanding what’s going on.
So, that was Silent Hill. This has been the best horror game I’ve ever played, by a lot. It certainly doesn’t have the best combat, and the puzzles are pretty hit or miss, but it clearly didn’t put its focus there; instead it puts all its energy towards creating an unbelievably thick atmosphere, a never-ending occultist rabbit hole of a story, imagery that stands the test of time on multiple fronts, and a simple albeit deeply tragic story about trauma and loss. There has been no other piece of horror media that had me obsess so much about what it all meant. Nothing has ever filled me with the same kind of visceral dread, the same feeling of genuine unease. I keep thinking about this game in the days and weeks since I’ve played it. I’ve never written anything close to this long on this website, and I don’t think I’ll do it again anytime soon.
If you somehow read this entire thing, wow, thanks a lot and sorry if I was a little repetitive. I’m still reeling from this experience and I’m so fucking hyped to get into the sequels (at least the Japanese ones) as soon as possible.
9 / 10
9 / 10
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[MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING! This is a review AND a commentary, and as such I’ll be talking about close to everything that’s going on in this game. If you have any intention of playing the game yourself, definitely do that before reading this.]
Silent Hill is a true classic. There is a reason it has become practically synonymous with atmospheric, psychological horror. The mere image of a suburban scene enveloped in fog is enough for a sizeable amount of people to go “That’s like Silent Hill!”, and reminiscing about the time when they first experienced stepping into this lost little town.
For me, this was only a few weeks ago (at the time of me writing this) and yet I feel like I’ve known and loved this game my whole life. I know that SH2 is the one that REALLY blew up and gained a massive cult following, but I wanted to start where it all began, and I’m glad I did. It gets regularly overshadowed by its progeny (perhaps for a good reason, I wouldn’t know as I haven’t played them yet) but I genuinely believe that, even without a boatload of sequels and spin offs, this would have become one for the history books regardless.
This has been the scariest game I’ve ever played, without a doubt. While I have experienced worse individual moments of shock,(i.e. worse jump scares) in plenty of other media, no other game or film has ever managed to constantly put me on edge the way Silent Hill did. And, like any fan of this series will be able to tell you, it does this by doing one thing better than any other: atmosphere. It does this without barely any real jump scares throughout the whole duration, which is especially impressive given how easy it would’ve been to just pack the game with them.
Before starting the game I was fairly certain that the extreme pixellation and often rather goofy-looking PS1 aesthetics were enough to probably take away a lot of the horror experience, but I’m happy to say I was very wrong. If anything, the lossy, grainy textures and strange, mechanical animations only accentuate the whole experience quite a bit. Also, the more abstracted enemy designs actually heighten the strange, otherworldly horror that this game goes for. And really, that is one of the strongest compliments I can give this game: Despite it being over 20 years old and a lot coming after it, it’s STILL one of the most genuinely creepy games out there.
But that alone a classic does not make. What really turns Silent Hill into generation defining cultural behemoth is what lies beneath the doom and gloom; a deeply tragic and melancholic core.
Equal parts bleak and serene, this game draws you into its nightmare the same way the eponymous town does with this game’s protagonist, Harry Mason - although, we could just as easily argue the town itself being the actual main character. As if descending into a dream, we suddenly, and without any real explanation, find ourselves in the eponymous city. Any recollection of our previous life is hazy at best, and only possible to be gleamed at all by carefully watching the intro cinematic. At first, I assumed that this was just a supercut of all cutscenes in the game set to some nice 90’s alt rock to set the mood but it actually sets up the story too.
We see Harry driving towards the popular tourist destination Silent Hill, at the behest of his daughter Cheryl, who really wanted to go here for vacation. On their way there, a mysterious teenage girl suddenly appears in the middle of the road, causing Harry to crash his car. When he comes to he finds himself in the middle of a town drenched in a deep, unyielding fog. While he doesn’t seem to be injured, he finds that his daughter has disappeared.
And this is where we start the actual game. No fancy intro, no long, drawn out cutscene; you’re thrust right into the maw of dread. Immediately I noticed that this game works completely without any HUD, from start to finish, which I think definitely heightens the sense of immersion the player feels. This is stark contrast to not only most horror games, but almost any games for the time. Where other titles would clutter the screen with various stats and meters, Silent Hill lets its environment take the front stage without any obstructions.
From the first second, we can already witness one of the defining factors of the intensely thick atmosphere Silent Hill conjures at just about every moment; Akira Yamaoka’s haunting, industrial Yamaha-synth soundscapes droning away, the sounds undulating like a person going in and out of consciousness. Ranging from intensely dark and oppressive cacophony, like something out of a Throbbing Gristle or Coil record, to heart-wrenchingly beautiful and melancholic Alt-rock guitar licks that give the feeling being in a 90’s high school romance movie. It needs to be thoroughly acknowledged just how much Yamaoka clearly understands this series and its tone.
The thick fog that permeates every square inch of the map isn’t just an aesthetic choice - although it is that too, and what an iconic one at that. No, it’s also used to mask the unfortunately low draw distance of the PS1 in a way that allows the game world to feel much larger, while also allowing for seamless traversal, at least within certain zones. The streets are wide, the houses all neatly rowed next to each other. Both are completely empty. Not a single person in sight. In a way Silent Hill’s fog kind reminds me of Demon’s Souls use of the same concept (or rather, the other way around) - the fog represents to us the loss of our sanity, the line between dream and reality. More than just existing here, it almost seems like the town is literally being devoured by the fog; the envoy of the true horror yet to come.
Speaking of which, let’s get back to the story. Harry climbs out of the wreckage of his car and finds his daughter gone. Not a single person in sight. After aimlessly walking through the town for a bit, we can see Cheryl in the distance but she somehow doesn’t seem to notice us. We chase after her a while until we come across an alley - THE alley. We enter and notice that things have.. changed. Without warning darkness falls upon the town. The alley has gotten narrower, the walls replaced with filthy rust, the ground with rickety metal grates. It terminates in a dead end, with a burnt corpse covered in rags adorning the wall. Before we even realise what the hell is happening, we’re getting ganked to death by a bunch of little nightmare monsters.
This whole bit is brilliant. The opening minutes leading up the alley are perhaps one of my favourite moments in the whole game. The way things go from 0 to 100 in less than a minute is legitimately genius. It sets up the core dynamic and mood of the game so damn well. If the eerie, foggy landscape wasn’t enough to make you feel uneasy, this should’ve done the trick. It teaches you that you can never know what to expect. Things might go awry before you know it. The game also shows off its cinematic chops here, utilising the camera to its fullest extent with strange angles and very deliberate movement, which is in very stark contrast to the completely static cameras of most other horror games at the time. Where games like Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark would focus on inventory management and difficulty, or puzzle solving respectively, Silent Hill clearly puts its main focus on being as cinematic as possible.
Once again Harry wakes up but this time finds himself in a diner, alongside Officer Cybil, a cop from the next town over who caught wind of every person in Silent Hill mysteriously disappearing - we can even see her drive past us in the opening cinematic. After telling her that we’re looking for our daughter, and that we’re not leaving without her, she hands us a gun. That took me a bit by surprise. You’d be forgiven in thinking that this game was fairly combat free, given its reputation of being more about atmosphere, but you’d be very wrong. This game has a LOT of combat, much more than you’d think. I’ll be getting into why I find this to be a strange choice a bit later, but for now, our new cop friend tells us to be careful with the gun and to think about who we’re about to shoot with it before she leaves to get some backup.
If only she stayed for a minute longer, she could’ve helped us with the flying bat demon that just crashed through the window and is now trying to eat our face. After disposing of that thing (after dying to it a bunch of times because we embarrassingly didn’t understand how to use the gun at first) we’re off to explore the town, but not before grabbing the single most essential tool in the whole game: the radio.
It will alert you of nearby enemies by emitting a shrill, fire alarm-like siren. This may initially seem rather counterproductive in terms of cultivating dread in the player, since you’re almost always tipped off to nearby enemies. But like I said before, this game conjures dread not by shoving things into your face, but rather by doing the opposite, hiding the scary things outside of your immediate view. In a game that is this focused on survival and effective exploration, being able to hear them beforehand not only feels more fair, but also somehow more tense. There is always a mini-decision going on in the back of your head: “Do I fight or do I flee?”
While exploring the town, we realise that we are utterly trapped here. There is no apparent way in or out, since all streets in this place terminate abruptly into the abyss. An endless, grey, foggy chasm on all sides. This extends to roads inside of the town, meaning certain paths are completely blocked off and you have to find your way around them. What’s worse is that we’re not alone after all… patrolling the streets are various monsters ranging from dogs to bats to something more humanoid, all skinless and/or burnt. This is some nice foreshadowing into the nature of this place, as the theme of burnt bodies continues throughout the game. To navigate this town, we receive a map which Harry (or someone/something else) will continuously fill out with more hints and markers, though they only show up on the map you have to pull up every time.
While the map does help with navigation, the player is largely on their own when it comes to progressing the story. Speaking of which, after a while, the player will find a house with a door with three locks, which after opening will end the “tutorial section”. After going through said door, darkness suddenly falls over the town. The grey fog has gone, and in its place has come the night. Visibility is even lower than before, and the monsters more aggressive.
But we have to find Cheryl. We can’t give up. Through gathering context clues, we realise we have to visit the local Midswich Elementary School, which was previously blocked off. This is the game’s first “real level”. This place feels more like a typical “dungeon”, and is structured a bit more traditionally. In general, this will be the core loop for the rest of the game, a mix between scouring the “open world” for direction, and then having to clear a more claustrophobic, confined dungeon-like space. The levels are typically multi-storied places with lots of locked doors, elevators, traps and shortcuts built in there.
Inside the school, we encounter the secondary core gameplay element: Puzzle solving. I’ll come out and say that this aspect is a little hit or miss, and was sadly one of the few things that tended to pull me out of the experience, rather into it. To me, the best puzzles here were the ones that felt like they had an actual, diegetic connection to the events of the game. The sad truth is that the vast majority of them don’t. They feel more like fairly standard point-and-click type puzzles which require more moon-logic than I would have liked. Most of the time, you’re confronted with fairly simple logic puzzles, which require you to look for certain items inside the level and use them in the right place, i.e. finding a bottle of hydrochloric acid and realising you’re meant to drizzle some of it on a petrified hand grasping a medal, which you need to open the door to another part of the map. You get the idea. It feels surprisingly video gamey for a project that seems to be very careful to NOT do stuff like this otherwise.
Like I said, the better puzzles are the ones that feel like they have an actual connection to the story, like the Clock Tower puzzle, which is at the core of the other, smaller puzzles. Through solving them, and reading clues written into some school books at the start of the level, we attain 2 medals and turn on the power inside the clock tower. We crawl inside it and suddenly find ourselves somewhere.. else.
An empty school is already a bit creepy, due to its nature as a liminal space. The uncanniness of such spaces manifests when viewing a location, which usually has a purpose, outside of that context. To experience it outside of its designated raison d'etre. A schoolhouse is supposed to have teachers and students in it. An empty schoolhouse is alienated from its purpose, and therefore strange. It is not really a place. It's nowhere. It’s pretty wild to me how well the dev team understood and applied these deeply hauntological, postmodern themes about the uncanniness of lost futures and alienation back when these concepts were still fairly novel. One might even argue that Silent Hill and its copycats perhaps played no small part in spreading them. But all of that is just the beginning of this rabbit hole.
After passing through a short tunnel, we find ourselves in the same level again, only this time we’re not greeted by a normal, albeit creepy school, but rather a horrifying, blood and rust drenched nightmare version of it. We remember; this is just like the death alley in the beginning. Red, almost organic seeming coloration taints the walls. The floor has been replaced by a rusty, rickety metal grating, the abyss literally beneath your feet, a great black chasm waiting to devour you and everything here. The otherworld has invaded reality again, and this time you’re caught right in the middle of it. You’re expected to navigate the school again, but this time rooms have been swapped, doors that were previously open are now locked, and vice versa. The amount of enemies has increased, the level which has previously been uncanny and vaguely threatening is now outright terrifying and trying to kill you, to drag you down into the depths.
This is genius on so many levels, and perhaps one of my favourite moments in horror, maybe ever. The dread that unfolds here is of an intensely psychological nature and has layers upon layers to unravel. Silent Hill is incredibly good at putting you at unease throughout the whole game, while still being able to consistently pull the rug from under your feet.
While exploring the second instance of the school, we’ll discover more puzzles, more enemies and more clues. One of them is absolutely essential to actually beating the first real boss the game throws at you. After figuring out you need to start the school’s boiler to beckon this level’s boss fight, we descend down into the cellar. The boss resembles a wyrm but its face is split in the middle, giving it the ability to eat you in a single gulp. Through finding the aforementioned clue in the form of a fairy tale involving a hunter killing a drake by shooting an arrow directly into its mouth, we figure out we can do the same. If you happen to find this clue before engaging that thing, it’s barely even a fight. Either way it’s over in about 10-20 seconds.
This is where I have to get a bit more into the game’s combat.
Generally, it’s not great. I get that it’s a PS1 game, and that the extremely clunky and inconsistent auto-aim is still the best possible way of going out it without making it extremely frustrating. It still feels extremely inconsistent and a bit braindead at times, like you’re just endlessly pumping bullets into enemies. If this was just for the regular mobs, I’d be fine with it, but the bosses generally adhere to the same rule; empty your clip into it until it dies. Doesn’t matter if it’s a skinless dog or literally Satan himself, if you can shoot it, you can kill it. Melee weapons feel even worse and are borderline unusable in boss fights. The lack of any health pick ups during boss fights can also turn each encounter into a terribly frustrating ordeal if you happened to walk into one without an appropriate number of them in your inventory.
In the best cases the bosses are over and done with quickly, like Split Head, but more often than not, they either require you to run around the arena like a madman, trying to reposition so you can get a few shots in, or even worse, require you understand some random ass gimmick like during the Cybil boss fight, where you have to make her completely empty her gun so she can’t shoot you anymore, and then have to run laps around her trying to shoot approximately 700 bullets into her chest. Alternatively, if you manage to complete a certain side quest and carry a weird potion to the end of the game, you can use it on her, which apparently returns Cybil back to normal, expelling the demonic hold somehow and skipping the boss fight altogether. The problem is that this little fun fact - the potion’s anti-demonic properties - isn’t told to you literally until the final boss of the game, which BTW isn’t even a guaranteed outcome. It only happens IF you save Kaufmann, another NPC who can be very easily missed, and IF you also find said potion. I do not understand why they decided to make this whole interaction THIS cryptic, especially since if you do manage to save Cybil, Harry drops the absolute lore bombshell that Cheryl is ——— SPOILER ALTERT ——— actually adopted.
It’s not just the frustrating mechanical aspects - I can accept those as a product of their time - but also the contextualisation of combat. As mentioned before, the game has you engage in a surprising amount of it, and everything here is killable by raw physical violence. Not only does this feel weirdly inappropriate for what is ostensibly an invasion from another realm of existence, but Harry really doesn’t strike me as a battle hardened war veteran either. The actual game doesn’t really talk about Harry’s background, although some external sources like the novelisation (which came out many years after the fact) say that Harry is a writer, focussing on family matters and home security. This makes Harry’s high proficiency with firearms and melee weapons slightly more believable, but not by much. I get that we’re supposed to take this as him being a loving father, diving into the depths of hell to save his daughter but it feels kinda strange considering that Resident Evil’s protagonists - who are, by all accounts, actually trained in combat - generally have a MUCH harder time dealing with monsters than the guy who writes books on how to secure your house and got a gun handed to him by a random police woman.
Back to the story. We’ve braved the school in both versions and are done fighting the wyrm monster. Harry experiences a vision of a girl who looks an awful lot like Cheryl, but it dissipates before we understand what’s going on. We are teleported back into the real world, and we are greeted by the old, familiar fog. But something has happened: Rather than being weird or uncanny, the fog now has an almost relieving quality to it. Nothing changed, it’s just that the foggy town now seems almost serene in comparison to the absolute hell we just went through. I love this duality so much; it gives you some desperately needed reprieve from the intensely stressful otherworld sections without ever taking the foot of the gas entirely. The fog has now become the new “normal”. This is, by far, my favourite moment in the game and encapsulates the feeling that this series is going for so well.
After this whole ordeal, a nice little jog is exactly what we need. We just heard a church bell ringing in the distance, so off we go to investigate. There we will find one of the more important characters in this game, Dahlia Gillespie, who informs us that she knows we’re here for “the girl”. She informs us that the town is being swallowed by darkness and that the “Mark of Samael” is upon us, the pyramid shaped symbol which could be seen in the school’s courtyard. According to Dahlia, it represents the demons’ attempts to invade our world, but more on that later. We get a new item from her, the “Flauros”, an enigmatic, pyramid shaped object that’s supposed to help us defeat the darkness. She also tells us to go to Alchemilla hospital, leaving just as suddenly as she appeared.
At the hospital, we meet another very important NPC, Dr. Michael Kaufmann. After almost killing us with his gun, we briefly discuss the situation at hand before he leaves again, leaving us alone in this hospital. Curiously enough, completing this NPC’s side quest is essential go attain the good ending, which would’ve never crossed my mind before knowing about it.
The hospital itself works basically the same as the school. Go through a bunch of rooms, solve a bunch of puzzles that involve grabbing certain key items. The enemies here are a bit tougher, the place is bigger, and the psychological horror aspects keep getting more intense and unpredictable. For example, take the 1st floor ladies restroom randomly teleporting you a floor higher, without explanation. While here, you should definitely look around for a broken vial of a mysterious, red liquid called “Aglaphotis”, and, more importantly, the extremely easy to miss plastic bottle which you can use to take a sample of said liquid with you - this is important to get the best ending in the game, and I have to admit I was kinda miffed at just how easily missable this whole side quest is. I feel like having something this impactful be hidden behind such a seemingly inconspicuous interaction is obtuse to the point of being unfair. You only ever find out what this strange liquid even does during the ending cutscene. I get that they made it deliberately hard to find to facilitate multiple play-throughs, but this legitimately felt impossible to figure out without a guide - I’m saying this because I found the other important side quest without looking up anything, and just using intuition.
After a while, we come across the hospital’s elevator, which is our main mode of transportation through the 3 floors and basement. But then suddenly, without really calling attention to itself, a “4th floor” button appears on the lift’s panel where there previously was nothing. Connoisseurs of Japanese culture and media will immediately notice the connection to the common phenomenon of omitting a 4th floor from houses due to superstition; it’s very similar to how in the West, esp. America, many buildings simply won’t have a 13th floor, skipping directly from 12 to 14.
Upon taking the lift to the 4th floor, darkness falls yet again, but this time even more seamlessly. We have entered the otherworld again. But we also experience a vision of the same girl from the school, this time we see her entering an old antique shop. Just like the school before it, the game makes you go through (almost) the whole hospital again and rediscover it, making you go through a series of increasingly cryptic puzzles and riddles. Once again, they are pretty hit or miss. Long story short, you unlock the hospital’s basement - but not the regular basement, but rather the basement beneath the basement. In place of the standard, rusty metal walls of the otherworld, we have an oppressively dark, claustrophobic hallway with rickety wooden walls, reminiscent of an abandoned mineshaft more than a hospital. It’s seriously creepy and perhaps the most uncanny environment of the whole game. Down here we find a single hospital bed, with a picture of the girl we keep seeing in our visions, which reveals her name to be “Alessa”. After doing what we can, we head back to the room where we first found Kaufmann, only to find someone else hiding here.
A young, beautiful nurse cowers underneath a desk. Elated at the sight of another person, she embraces us and asks us what’s going on. She introduces herself as Lisa Garland. She also has no idea what’s going on and says she simply woke up here without any idea how she got here. Scared shitless, she obviously doesn’t know anything about Cheryl, or even what the hell is happening here. Next to that, she also isn’t aware of any secret basements in the hospital. Suddenly, our conversation is interrupted by a severe shot of pain and Harry loses consciousness. Upon regaining it, we find ourselves in the same room yet again, but daylight has returned, we’re back in the “””normal””” world. I was a bit surprised to see this section capped off without any boss fight, but considering that combat really isn’t this game’s strong suit, I can’t say I was disappointed.
Lisa is gone, but instead Dahlia enters the room and spouts off more cryptic nonsense about the world being swallowed and how we’re the only one able to save it, yadayada. Bottom line: We have to find the “second church”, and we should head to the town’s old antique shop.
From this point onwards, the game changes quite a bit. For one, we don’t have any more big, complex dungeon-like areas, at least, not until the very end. Instead, when arriving at the shop we find the so called “second church”, a small altar of worship, seemingly in service to some demonic entity. Cybil is there too, and after almost shooting her (omg, foreshadowing???) we discuss the whole situation with her, including Daliah’s strange musings on the town being devoured by darkness, to which Cybil hilariously responds with: “Must be on drugs.” She also tells us that she thinks she saw a little girl walk, or rather, float towards the lake. After revealing a hidden path behind a bookshelf, Harry steps in and finds the “other church” Dahlia told us about, only to suddenly disappear without a trace.
We find ourselves in the hospital again, talking to Lisa in the same room we found her before. Lisa then tells us some things about the town’s history, and about how Dahlia is known around town as a strange woman. Before we can ask more, we lose consciousness again. We then find ourselves in the antique shop again, but Cybil is gone and we have transitioned into the otherworld once more, but this time, the whole town has gone to shit.
From this point onward, the game fully descends into a near infinite abyss of stress and dread. Where the game previously balanced the mood between hell and fogworld, this bare minimum of comfort has been stripped away too, at least for now. While this arguably makes for an extremely powerful horror moment and still sticks with me to this day, gameplay wise it boiled down to running past everything as fast as I could whenever I wasn’t inside a building. Enemies are way too numerous and persistent to be worth fighting at this point. Harry realises that Lisa is probably his best bet at finding a way to the lake, and decides that he needs to find her again, so back to the hospital we go - only, the way there is obviously completely blocked off, so we need to take a detour through the town hall.
Another extremely cool moment comes when Harry enters the mall, where a stack of old TVs will suddenly all simultaneously turn on. On them, you can see Cheryl, apparently in a state of fear, occasionally interrupted by the so-called “Mark of Samael”. Once this is done with, the search continues. During the exploration of this mall, the ground suddenly breaks away beneath us at some point and - without warning - drops us right into a boss fight with a nasty slug monster. Once again, you defeat it by shooting at it until it dies. Thrilling.
That distraction out of the way, back on our way to the hospital. We ask Lisa how to get to the lake, and she informs us of an old sewer that runs beneath the town and connects the town to the resort area. When Harry attempts to leave, Lisa begs him not to abandon her again. Harry offers to take her with him, but she insists that she feels like she cannot leave this place, no matter what.
After this, we leave the hospital only to realise that the world has changed yet again. Where there were previously streets, there remains only a single, linear path, leading from the clinic to a strange rooftop. This is when our old friend the slug monster joins us again, only this time it has fully metamorphosed into a big old moth demon. Like the other fight, just empty your clip into that thing and don’t forget to heal occasionally. Having the player fight that thing again after what feels like 30-50 minutes tops feels like a very strange design choice, especially considering that this thing doesn’t even seem to have much to do with the plot at all. Regardless, killing the beast finally returns us to the “normal” world again, after what feels like a lifetime.
Sadly I have to admit that from this point onward, the plot and a lot of game design decisions kinda lost me the further it went on. Not that any of it was outright terrible, but admittedly I find darting from one place to the next without any reason to fight less engaging than the gameplay loop of the previous half, where you were mostly on your own to figure out what to do next. The plot also seems to lose what little footing it had in this world, which made it even harder for me to follow what was even going on at this point. The sewer section, as you might imagine, is a totally bog standard, linear walkway which feels more like an action-sequence than horror, but that is going to be a theme for the rest of Silent Hill. The psychological survival-horror edge of the game makes way for a more action-y, combat-centred approach and I can’t say I’m a fan. While it’s not on the level of Bloodborne, where you are by far the scariest thing in that universe, being this powerful and having access to this many weapons can make the game feel less tense than it probably intended. The fact that you rarely, if ever get any downtime from running from one place to the next like a madman also adds to this - you just get kinda used to it by the end.
The saving grace here would be the fact that Kaufmann’s side quest comes into full motion, and offers a desperately needed reprieve from the “run like a madman” routine. You can find him - or completely miss him - in the resort area, in Annie’s Bar, where you’ll have to same him from a mumbler. If you missed this, you just locked yourself out of the Good and Good+ endings. Luckily, the location is rather hard to miss, and inside you’ll simply shoot the monster that attacked him. Without so much as a thank you, Kaufmann leaves, but not without dropping a motel key, alongside a safe combination. In said motel, you’ll find the only other surviving sample of Aglaphotis, the red liquid with mysterious properties. The very second you locate it, Kaufmann shows up and snatches it from your hand. While this feels annoying on the surface, this is actually what you WANT to happen. Overall, this is a nice distraction and something to break up the pace, I just wish there was more of it. By this point, you’ve probably also gathered that Dr. Michael Kaufmann was heavily involved in the drug trade of a local substance known as “PTV” which is said to possess strong hallucinogenic properties, and is used by almost everyone in town, but especially a certain collective of people that will become relevant shortly. There are many news articles in town talking about disappearing police men, and other strange happenings in connection to said drug.
After this, back to the regularly scheduled programming; a whole lot of manic running. Suddenly, it gets dark again, but this time no dream, no losing consciousness, no strange feelings; it just happens. This world is now changing rapidly and violently. Inside a boat cabin, we come upon Cybil again, and Dahlia joins the party. She tells us about how dire the situation is, and that we need to hurry. The gang decides that our best bet is for Harry to search the nearby Lighthouse, and Cybil to go to the Amusement Park. While the gameplay loop has suffered a bit since the halfway point, the cinematography and atmosphere absolutely didn’t. The game still impresses with very experimental camera angles and intense sound design, and it’s not gonna stop now. Up on the lighthouse, we see Alessa again and a huge “Mark of Samael” on the floor. She disappears, and we’re left to wonder what we did wrong.
On the way out we notice that Cybil isn’t back from the park, so we decide to go after her. Into another sewer we go, and we do the exact same shit again as before. If it wasn’t clear before, now it’s become obvious that the game’s developers likely ran into budgetary issues by this point. But what’s interesting is that we can see Cybil being dragged away by some shadowy creature, but before we can act, she’s gone. After a rather frustrating second romp through the shitter, we’re finally here.
While the atmosphere is pretty intense, and the sound design does a lot of heavy lifting, this area felt a bit underwhelming to me personally. While, yes, still pretty creepy it didn’t quite reach the height of the school or hospital to me, mostly because those places had actual level design while this is just a very shallow attempt at a maze. The setting would’ve been amazing, but it ends up a bit unimpressive. We run into another boss fight, but this time it’s someone we know… Cybil. A dead expression on her face, slouched posture and blood-red eyes. Seems like she got herself some quality zaza. (Sorry)
She has somehow been infected by the same parasite that can be seen infecting the nurses in the hospital, and now tries to blow your brains out while riding on a carousel, trying to confuse you into running her way. While this is certainly the most creative boss in this game in terms of design, having to deal with emulated PS1 controls while also being extremely low on health without any health pick ups in the general vicinity made this fight EXTREMELY frustrating for me. I know this is mostly my own fault, but I really do not understand why you can’t find even a single damn health pick up in this whole 5+ minutes boss fight. Luckily, you don’t HAVE to kill her. Remember the random plastic bottle from the hospital you filled with Aglaophotis? Turns out you’re meant to use it in this boss fight, and you’re supposed to figure this out completely unprompted. Again, I understand that the idea was that you likely aren’t going to get the true ending on your first run through, but this just feels like the devs being needlessly obtuse just to make this happen by any means necessary. If we DO manage to save her, Harry tells her about the neat little lore detail that Cheryl isn’t actually his biological daughter?? Wait, what? Why is this extremely crucial piece of information so out of the way? I really feel like this should’ve been part of the main plot, as it is absolutely essential to understand what is even happening in this story.
Regardless of the outcome, Harry pushes onward and confronts Alessa, who is seemingly waiting for him in the darkness. He still hasn’t put 2 and 2 together, and if the player hasn’t witnessed the aforementioned conversation, they likely won’t until right at the end. In either case, he demands that she let Cheryl go and Alessa attempts to push us back using a force field, which finally activates the Flaurus, which we have been carrying around for hours now. Alessa is immobilised. But this is where the story takes a turn:
Dahlia suddenly appears and reveals that Alessa is her daughter, and that “this is the end of [her] little game”. She reveals that we’ve been doing what Dahlia wanted us to do all along, and that Alessa has been doing all of this to escape her. She speaks of a ritual that has yet to be completed. Before we can understand anything, both disappear in a flash of light. Harry suddenly wakes up in the hospital yet again, with Lisa standing there, this time with an unnerving twitch in her face. She talks to Harry about how she went into the secret basement, and how she feels like something traumatic happened there, but she can’t remember. Before we can calm her down, she runs away.
When we get control back and save our game, we notice we aren’t actually in the hospital. We’re “Nowhere”. Remember that bit about how Silent Hill’s horror works through the alienation of locations from their purpose, and how that effectively transforms them into a type of “nowhere”? Well, they’ve gone fully literal with that concept. This nowhere-space is an amalgamation of both the school and the hospital, with some hitherto unseen room types. We are trapped, there is no way in or out. We have somehow ended up in some back-pocket of reality, likely sustained by what little remains of Alessa’s power. Doors lead to rooms they couldn’t possibly connect to, space itself becomes entirely untrustworthy. And we don’t even have a map. The map has become somewhat of a crutch throughout the game - no matter what, you could always briefly pause the game and reorient yourself. Well, not anymore. You are on your own now. All of this combined makes for the scariest, and most intense section of the game, especially since I really did not expect the game to go here all of a sudden. This really feels like the amalgamation of the game’s ideas.
The puzzles here are the most cryptic and obtuse yet, with some of them being really cool, while others - like the ever infamous Zodiac puzzle - feel almost impossible to figure out on your own. The game also doubles down on its alchemical / occult themes, and outright name drops the Olympick spirits like Ophiel, Phaleg, Aratros and Hagith. I enjoy the aesthetic of it all and am impressed with the mountains of research that must’ve went into this. Imagine my surprise when I figured out that Aglaophotis was a real thing - well, not real but you know what I mean. But this is where the beauty of Silent Hill full develops, in this intricate interplay between occultism and emotion, between fear of the unknown as well as our internal darkness. The game never fully commits to either the supernatural, nor the psychological. This makes for an unparalleled sense of mystery and dread, since the edge between dream and reality is so thin.
The level takes you through various rooms, having you collect various items related to spirits, death, life and alchemical processes. I’m not gonna go through it in detail, because it feels a bit redundant at this point. Let’s instead focus on Lisa for a bit.
After going through most of it, you descend to the deepest level, where you have to collect various religious symbols. The last one - a star of David - is in a long corridor. Upon turning around, an extremely distressed Lisa is waiting for us. She has finally understood why she is the only one to remain; she has been dead this whole time. She is just like the others, but something keeps her from remembering her purpose. Lisa loses herself completely, and desperately begs Harry to save her, which causes him to push her away. We now get this game’s most iconic scene, with Lisa inexplicably starting to profusely bleed from her head, proving that whatever is happening to her isn’t normal. Harry flees the room in terror and shuts the door behind him. Lisa bangs on the door, crying for Harry, for anyone to save her from this hell. It is an extremely brutal moment, emotionally speaking. Here is this poor woman who wants nothing more than someone to look after her, and here we are pushing her away. It’s such a human moment too. Who wouldn’t act like this in such a situation? Still, it feels genuinely awful and made me hate Harry for a second there. The scene’s OST is a beautiful and heartbreaking emo guitar lick. Where other horror games (or movies) would’ve went with a something that commented on how scary this situation is, Silent Hill focuses on the tragedy of it all - and this basically sums up what this franchise is all about. It’s surprisingly tragic and depressing, with a strong focus on female trauma in particular. After this, we head towards the final room in this place: Alessa’s old childhood bedroom. The walls are decorated with insect display cases and various pictures of the town. In this room we have the final door, the door that separates us from the truth, from the end.
Speaking of which, let’s finally talk about Alessa. At this point, we should have all the information we need to finally piece together what’s going on here:
Silent Hill, Maine is the home of an ancient cult, called “The Order”. This order is for all intents and purposes the main antagonistic force for the entire series, although their role and background isn’t really touched upon here - that’s something the sequels will get more into as time goes on. This order consists of what are essentially Devil worshippers, since they worship the archangel Samael from Jewish mythology, who is often considered to be somewhat similar to the Christian Lucifer/Satan. Samael isn’t necessarily evil, but he is a destructive force that tests humanity’s faith. He is also often seen as the main Angel of Death. Why do they worship this guy? Fuck if I know. The point is, Dahlia is the current head of this order, and has been trying to bring their god into this world. To that end she tried various methods, all of which failed. When she brought her daughter, Alessa, into this world, she discovers that the little girl has considerable magical abilities (it should be noted that the game kinda implies that Alessa was created, rather than traditionally born) and decided that her best bet would be to use her little, 7 year old daughter as a vessel to birth their god by impregnating her via an Incubus demon - which is more fucked up than anything in this game, my god. Though, that doesn’t seem to have been the plan initially. Alessa has magical powers, and while it isn’t explained at all, I think the idea was for Alessa to become proficient in summoning occult powers through her magic. Dahlia keeps grooming Alessa from her very first day for her role, and tries to keep her from living a normal life. Her magical powers alienate her from her peers at school, who brutally bully and ostracise her, to the point where one of her teachers gets suspicious and suspects ongoing abuse by her mother. The case gets thrown out as a certain Dr. Michael Kaufmann suspiciously fails to notice any sign of mistreatment of poor, little Alessa - that is, of course, because Kaufmann is part of the cult, and neck deep in this whole ordeal, since he’s presumably making a killing with the drug trade.
As Alessa grows older, she is increasingly opposed to helping the Order with their schemes and starts to refuse her mother’s attempts at using her in rituals. Dahlia then suddenly realises something, that she “could have done it all by [her]self.” Now, I’m not entirely sure what happens next in the timeline of Silent Hill 1, since this game doesn’t make it super clear, but the PAL and JAP versions of the game feature a news article somewhere in Nowhere that talks about a sudden fire breaking out in the Gillespie house, caused by a “faulty boiler”, which completely charred the body of Alessa. It’s implied here that this was Dahlia’s attempt at hastening the ritual process for the birth of their god, but it failed. The sequels and prequels, Silent Hill: Origins in particular, go into a lot more detail concerning the actual how’s and why’s. In either case, the point remains the same: Alessa doesn’t die, and is instead transferred into the hospital’s secret basement. By using the Key of Aratron we can open the corresponding door a bit earlier, which hides a cutscene involving Dahlia, Kaufmann and two unnamed collaborators standing next to Alessa’s sickbed, the one we found in the secret hospital basement. They talk about how the ritual was only a partial success, since “half the soul is lost” and that regaining the other half with take time.
Without further information from the sequels, piecing together what exactly what they were aiming to achieve here isn’t easy, so I’ll just be going off my own - likely flawed - understanding of the situation: Dahlia realises that Alessa’s powers far surpass her own, and decides to use the 7 year old Alessa as a direct surrogate mother for the Demon god instead. By use of an incubus demon, Alessa is impregnated during the ritual, which involved a lot of fire, likely causing immense pain and suffering for her, which I assume was meant to be the conductor for the incubus to impregnate her. The subtext addressing sexual abuse of children is impossible to ignore, and cements Silent Hill as one of the most horrifying horror stories I’ve ever experienced. In case you’re unfamiliar; an Incubus demon’s purpose is to literally rape women and endow them with nightmares, trauma, pain or other bad things. They are said to be the cause of mental illness and sickness. The presence of the demon seed inside Alessa prevents her from dying, despite her grievous burns and horrible condition, and it had done so for 7 years by the time we arrive.
This horrifying nightmare ritual was partially successful insofar that Alessa had indeed been impregnated by the demon. But she somehow managed to split her in half soul right before the ritual was completed, with one half of her remaining inside the body, and the other being reborn somewhere outside of town - and this is where things are starting to finally click. Didn’t Harry find Cheryl on the side of a highway 7 years ago? The article about the fire 7 years ago even dates it on the exact same day Harry found her. We understand: Cheryl IS Alessa. Our little daughter was never real.
So why did we come to this town in the first place? Like stated before, the ritual prevents Alessa’s body from dying and keeps her in eternal pain and agony - at least the part that’s still inside her. “Cheryl” is doing just fine, but she is still just a part of Alessa, and after years and years of experiencing intense suffering she is just about weak enough that Dahlia can perform a spell which compels young Cheryl to return to her place of origin; which is why she is so insistent on coming to this town.
This is where Lisa comes in. If we return to the room where we last saw her, we’ll instead find her diary on the floor, which sheds light on her role in all of this: Lisa Garland was a young actress-turned-nurse with a drug problem, who was tasked with (or perhaps blackmailed into) caring for Alessa’s half-dead and burned body by Dr. Michael Kaufmann, replacing the bandages on the wounds which would never heal, and would never stop bleeding or releasing pus. It’s clear she was only ever allowed to enter the secret basement while under the influence of drugs, which is why she can’t remember it. She talks about how she asked Kaufmann to relieve her from duty, and how she starts to experience weird hallucinations. It’s not clear what exactly happens to Lisa - at least in the story of SH1 - just that she somehow dies before the events of this game, likely somehow in connection to this ordeal.
We finally reached the core of this whole experience; by the halfway point in the game, it’s getting increasingly unclear whether the horror taking place in this town is more psychological or occult in nature, with all signs increasingly pointing towards the latter. And while, diegetically speaking, the game ultimately IS about hell trying to invade the world of the living, at its heart it is a deeply psychological story about trauma. What differentiates it from other, classical psychological horror media is the shift of focus away from the protagonist / player character, to Alessa (and to a lesser extent Lisa). Instead of analysing the mind of Harry, we’re meant to understand HER fears, HER dreams and HER trauma. Harry really is just a father desperately looking to save his daughter, and going through hell to achieve that. Everything else is coming from the mind of Alessa - including Lisa’s apparition. All the enemies are things that SHE is afraid of. All the horrible places we’ve been through are the roots of HER trauma.
Silent Hill is truly fantastic when it comes to blurring the lines between what is real and what isn’t. The way the game continuously subverts your expectations and pulls away the ground beneath your feet (sometimes literally) is unparalleled in any other Horror franchise ever, including films and books. The careful mix of deeply psychological horror imagery and genuinely cryptic, occult happenings involving being haunted by the ghosts of your past - once again, calling back to the hauntological themes permeating this game both literally as well as in the abstract - makes this game the timeless masterpiece of horror it is.
All of that being said, let’s finally end this:
We confront Dahlia in the cellar of their home, the place where Alessa burned. Next to her are both Cheryl, as well as Alessa’s real, charred half-dead body, upright in a chair, about to be merged. Depending on our actions we took throughout the game, we have 4 possible endings we can get: Good+, Good, Bad+, Bad. These endings also influence the final boss you’ll get, and how exactly the final cutscene will play out.
First, the bad endings:
If you DIDN’T save Kaufmann at all, you’ll be stuck with one of these. Dahlia finally manages to transform Alessa - who has been reunited with her other half at last - into the godmother, also known as the “Incubator”, which takes her form but as an adult. She kills Dahlia on the spot (not sure whether that was part of the plan), and proceeds to attack us. As far as the fight itself goes; it’s not great but that shouldn’t be surprising at this point. Just run around the arena like a madman, and empty clip after clip into her. She can kill you in 1-2 hits, so you better save all your heals for this instance. If we manage to kill her, the otherworld will implode.
In the Bad ending, Alessa briefly transforms back into Cheryl, thanking Harry and saying goodbye before vanishing into thin air. Grief stricken and in utter disbelief at just having killed his own daughter he breaks down and goes down with the ship. After the credits, we see Harry still sitting in his car, dead from the initial impact. “He was dead all along!!!” This is, of course, a deliberately unsatisfying ending to make you go back and play the game again, so I’m not going to criticise it for being cliché.
In the Bad+ (slightly better but still bad) ending, if you managed to save Cybil, she’ll show up in the cellar just before you arrive. Dahlia will then give us a little extra exposition about how the “Mark of Samael” is actually the “Mark of Metatron”, which is supposed to ward specifically against the Order’s god, meaning Alessa was the one who put them up everywhere. Cybil tries to stop her, but gets force-pushed away and loses consciousness. The fight plays out the exact same, and Harry still breaks down and cries. However, this time after the credits, Cybil comes to and tells Harry to get up and run away. It’s ambiguous as to what happens to them.
The Good and Good+ endings require you to complete Kaufmann’s side quest, and hand him the bottle of Aglaophotis. In this version, just before Dahlia can complete Alessa’s transformation into the Incubator, Kaufmann shows up, furious at Dahlia for betraying him (although I have to admit I’m not sure what this is referencing) shoots her and throws the bottle at Alessa in the middle of transforming. This expels the demon living inside her, revealing the true final boss of this game: The Incubus. Just like the Incubator, this fight is pretty bad and it’s even worse due to the fact you can’t even really see him since he’s flying above the ground. Killing the Incubator with a hand full of bullets is bad enough, but literally SATAN himself? I don’t know, I feel like some more contextualisation could’ve worked wonders, but at this point I’m not surprised the fight isn’t great.
In all fairness; it should be mentioned that you CAN win both fights without firing a single shot by entering with no ammunition for any of your guns, and simply surviving a few minutes. While this is appreciated in principle, it changes nothing about the actual outcome, in both cases the boss literally behaves the exact same as though you’d just shot him to death. It’s really more of a fail safe than an alternative solution.
In the Good ending, after the fight, Alessa holds a little baby in her arm and hands it to Harry. She holds out her arm, pointing towards the light, signalling us to go. Kaufmann comes to his senses and tries to leave as well, but in this moment Lisa materialises, literally climbs out of hell to drag him down there with her. A fitting end for such a scumbag. We grab the baby and get the hell out of here. Harry runs towards the light, and off into the fog - in the post-credit scene, we see him outside of town, having escaped his fate, ready to live another day.
In the Good+ ending the same happens, but Cybil joins the party just like in the Bad+ ending. The difference being, after the fight, Cybil comes to her senses and joins our escape from hell. She is seen leaving with Harry, and after the credits, we see her and Harry hold the baby the exact same way we’ve seen Harry and his wife hold Cheryl in the intro.. Harry + Cybil = ship? Hell yeah. This seems to be the canon ending as well, at least judging from what little I do know about the other games.
Ultimately, the fact that here are multiple outcomes is cool but unless you’re not a massive fan of the actual second to second gameplay, I don’t really think that such small changes to the final cutscenes really warrant an immediate replay after getting one of the endings. If there would be more changes along the way, that would be a different story. But in the end, I do like that the ending you get is reflective of how much effort you put into understanding what’s going on.
So, that was Silent Hill. This has been the best horror game I’ve ever played, by a lot. It certainly doesn’t have the best combat, and the puzzles are pretty hit or miss, but it clearly didn’t put its focus there; instead it puts all its energy towards creating an unbelievably thick atmosphere, a never-ending occultist rabbit hole of a story, imagery that stands the test of time on multiple fronts, and a simple albeit deeply tragic story about trauma and loss. There has been no other piece of horror media that had me obsess so much about what it all meant. Nothing has ever filled me with the same kind of visceral dread, the same feeling of genuine unease. I keep thinking about this game in the days and weeks since I’ve played it. I’ve never written anything close to this long on this website, and I don’t think I’ll do it again anytime soon.
If you somehow read this entire thing, wow, thanks a lot and sorry if I was a little repetitive. I’m still reeling from this experience and I’m so fucking hyped to get into the sequels (at least the Japanese ones) as soon as possible.
9 / 10
Awkward Dimensions Redux has been one of the most strenuous gaming experiences I’ve ever had, and not in a rewarding way either. The definitive proof that you should never trust Steam reviews.
1/10
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I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, I found this game flat out horrible. I hated almost every single aspect of it. I can honestly say I do NOT understand the overwhelmingly positive response this game received on platforms like Steam. Even risking coming across as a huge ass, I do have to state that I find it almost impressive how utterly agonising playing this game was and it didn't even take me an hour to beat.
To me, good art feels a bit like a conversation between the artist and the viewer. It's a dynamic back and forth between the two parties, the artist imbuing their works with their thoughts, impressions and feelings, and the viewer responds with their own interpretations and new perspectives.
Awkward Dimensions Redux (henceforth shortened to ADR) instead feels a bit like Steven Harmon chained you to a chair, taped your eyes open and made you watch a photo album from his teenage years under threat of violence. I am not kidding when I say that I have never seen any game or other personal art project that was this self absorbed and blatantly disinterested in letting the player find their own associations within the imagery here.
I know it’s typically considered contentious to treat something that is ostensibly a gamified dream journal this harshly but this game truly has close to nothing worthwhile going on here. There is always this tendency to be particularly forgiving towards semi-autobiographical stuff like this but I really don’t feel like ADR warrants such a thoughtful approach when it gives you quite literally almost nothing to hold onto, both in terms of gameplay and """story""".
I feel like ADR is emblematic of the peak of this “Steam Walking Simulator”-era type game design, where the mere notion that games should probably feature.. you know, actual game design, is passive-aggressively scoffed at by both the dev as well as a horde of college freshmen who just discovered the concept of abstract art. There are, of course, exceptions. “Proteus” for example, is a super short little walking simulator that doesn’t overstay its welcome and even offers some replayability based on its randomised set up, features great music and an interesting art style and grants you an interesting little adventure experience where the fact that you’re here to observe this uniquely created island each time is heightened by the music and visuals reacting directly to your observation of them.
Or take “Dear Esther” as another highly popular example. While there is basically nothing to do outside of walking from start to finish and it takes just about 2 hours to beat, the narrative is extremely deep and rich and made more interesting by the fact that the narrator will only ever speak about 40% of the lines that were actually recorded for that game, letting you uncover a different aspect of the story each time.
So what exactly does ADR bring to the table?
The idea is that we’re exploring the dreams of the dev, Steven Harmon, in his teenage years and experience some snapshots from his mind. Some of these dream landscape are more abstract than others, and some are obviously drawn literally from the devs life. While this could all be potentially interesting, this exploration of dreamscapes very seldom moves past just walking around in a confined space at a snail's pace and occasionally having to listen to Steven rant about something from his life - that is, when this game isn’t throwing some extremely janky mechanics at you and expects you to just deal with them.
Anytime the game threatens to become even remotely interesting, ADR immediately squanders it by either suddenly cutting away to another level without warning or introduces yet another unneeded and frustrating mechanic that further drags down the experience as a whole. Some of the locales this game takes us are visually quite interesting, but they rarely, if ever go beyond something you’d see in just about any other obscure 1st person puzzle game like “Kairo”, “Mind: Path to Thalamus“ and “’N Verlore Verstand”.
I understand that this is a deeply personal project for Steven Harmon (the developer of this game) and I DON'T intend on discouraging either him nor anyone else from transforming childhood memories and your upbringing into interesting art. But instead of taking the very relatable feeling of teenage angst and reinterpreting it in a way where we gain a little insight into the creator's mind or at least are given the freedom to freely interpret the abstract imagery we are presented with, all of the pent-up self hatred and disdain is instead let out on the player in the form of (seemingly) deliberately infuriating and obtuse controls, terrible sound mixing which oddly feels like it's meant to throw you off with how shoddy it is (seriously, the dialogue in this game is nigh unintelligible due to how terrible the balancing is), terrible platforming sections that were clearly not playtested very much, the walking speed of a crippled snail and - most damningly of all - a disappointingly cliché overall message. The only reason I even brought myself to finish it was out of some weird sense of obligation, or maybe even just morbid curiosity. The literal one thing I’ll give this game is that the OST isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not groundbreaking or even all that interesting, but given the rest of the game, it feels like it’s worth a mention at least.
Please dear dev, in the extreme edge case you're reading this: Don't stop making games. I don't mean for this to discourage you - or anyone - from making extremely personal art like this, but PLEASE consider that this utterly pretentious, passive-aggressive style of ""game design"" and story telling is not automatically deep OR interesting simply because it elicits strong emotions.
A picture says more than a thousand words, especially when those words are barely intelligible.
I'm really sorry but this isn't good and I'd never recommend it, even to die-hard fans of this genre of game.
1/10
1/10
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I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, I found this game flat out horrible. I hated almost every single aspect of it. I can honestly say I do NOT understand the overwhelmingly positive response this game received on platforms like Steam. Even risking coming across as a huge ass, I do have to state that I find it almost impressive how utterly agonising playing this game was and it didn't even take me an hour to beat.
To me, good art feels a bit like a conversation between the artist and the viewer. It's a dynamic back and forth between the two parties, the artist imbuing their works with their thoughts, impressions and feelings, and the viewer responds with their own interpretations and new perspectives.
Awkward Dimensions Redux (henceforth shortened to ADR) instead feels a bit like Steven Harmon chained you to a chair, taped your eyes open and made you watch a photo album from his teenage years under threat of violence. I am not kidding when I say that I have never seen any game or other personal art project that was this self absorbed and blatantly disinterested in letting the player find their own associations within the imagery here.
I know it’s typically considered contentious to treat something that is ostensibly a gamified dream journal this harshly but this game truly has close to nothing worthwhile going on here. There is always this tendency to be particularly forgiving towards semi-autobiographical stuff like this but I really don’t feel like ADR warrants such a thoughtful approach when it gives you quite literally almost nothing to hold onto, both in terms of gameplay and """story""".
I feel like ADR is emblematic of the peak of this “Steam Walking Simulator”-era type game design, where the mere notion that games should probably feature.. you know, actual game design, is passive-aggressively scoffed at by both the dev as well as a horde of college freshmen who just discovered the concept of abstract art. There are, of course, exceptions. “Proteus” for example, is a super short little walking simulator that doesn’t overstay its welcome and even offers some replayability based on its randomised set up, features great music and an interesting art style and grants you an interesting little adventure experience where the fact that you’re here to observe this uniquely created island each time is heightened by the music and visuals reacting directly to your observation of them.
Or take “Dear Esther” as another highly popular example. While there is basically nothing to do outside of walking from start to finish and it takes just about 2 hours to beat, the narrative is extremely deep and rich and made more interesting by the fact that the narrator will only ever speak about 40% of the lines that were actually recorded for that game, letting you uncover a different aspect of the story each time.
So what exactly does ADR bring to the table?
The idea is that we’re exploring the dreams of the dev, Steven Harmon, in his teenage years and experience some snapshots from his mind. Some of these dream landscape are more abstract than others, and some are obviously drawn literally from the devs life. While this could all be potentially interesting, this exploration of dreamscapes very seldom moves past just walking around in a confined space at a snail's pace and occasionally having to listen to Steven rant about something from his life - that is, when this game isn’t throwing some extremely janky mechanics at you and expects you to just deal with them.
Anytime the game threatens to become even remotely interesting, ADR immediately squanders it by either suddenly cutting away to another level without warning or introduces yet another unneeded and frustrating mechanic that further drags down the experience as a whole. Some of the locales this game takes us are visually quite interesting, but they rarely, if ever go beyond something you’d see in just about any other obscure 1st person puzzle game like “Kairo”, “Mind: Path to Thalamus“ and “’N Verlore Verstand”.
I understand that this is a deeply personal project for Steven Harmon (the developer of this game) and I DON'T intend on discouraging either him nor anyone else from transforming childhood memories and your upbringing into interesting art. But instead of taking the very relatable feeling of teenage angst and reinterpreting it in a way where we gain a little insight into the creator's mind or at least are given the freedom to freely interpret the abstract imagery we are presented with, all of the pent-up self hatred and disdain is instead let out on the player in the form of (seemingly) deliberately infuriating and obtuse controls, terrible sound mixing which oddly feels like it's meant to throw you off with how shoddy it is (seriously, the dialogue in this game is nigh unintelligible due to how terrible the balancing is), terrible platforming sections that were clearly not playtested very much, the walking speed of a crippled snail and - most damningly of all - a disappointingly cliché overall message. The only reason I even brought myself to finish it was out of some weird sense of obligation, or maybe even just morbid curiosity. The literal one thing I’ll give this game is that the OST isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not groundbreaking or even all that interesting, but given the rest of the game, it feels like it’s worth a mention at least.
Please dear dev, in the extreme edge case you're reading this: Don't stop making games. I don't mean for this to discourage you - or anyone - from making extremely personal art like this, but PLEASE consider that this utterly pretentious, passive-aggressive style of ""game design"" and story telling is not automatically deep OR interesting simply because it elicits strong emotions.
A picture says more than a thousand words, especially when those words are barely intelligible.
I'm really sorry but this isn't good and I'd never recommend it, even to die-hard fans of this genre of game.
1/10