The core element of Lem’s 1964 novel they’ve captured is the planet of Regis III, with its pastel pink dunes and liquid rock formations, an intoxicating, vivid landscape. The plot is tangential to the novel, and part of the mystery is how it fits in with Lem’s tale of advanced military tech facing up against an inexplicable alien force.

But unfortunately (about 7 years out from Firewatch and 6 from SOMA), they really aren’t doing enough here to distinguish this from numerous hollow walking sims, despite the painterly landscapes and luxurious retro-futuristic tech. There’s little negative space to soak in the planet's surface, only constant muttering to yourself or your weirdly annoyed boss off-planet. Overlapping dialogue and abrupt popups disrupt gameplay constantly, and no amount of contextual animations can feel like meaningful interactions.

Puzzles are almost an afterthought and at most you will contend with occasional navigation challenges through samey looking caves. Outer Wilds and Subnautica have demonstrated how alien archeology and space exploration can be distilled into tense & dynamic gameplay, and in comparison this feels a little archaic. I look forward to more attempts at Lem’s work (possibly a psychological horror take on Solaris!?) and recommend experiencing this for the artwork alone (& a climax featuring the largest rocket of all time 0::).

Viewfinder is a yet another extremely disappointing puzzle game among the endless ranks of those that try to recapture the magic of Portal by copying the tenets of its design thoroughly, but don't manage to do it well.

Just like Portal, the game is extremely short (it took me about 3 hours to reach 100% completion) and extremely easy (not a single puzzle in the whole game gave me more than a minute pause, often I've spent more time finding the teleporter to the level in the hub zone than I've spent actually solving the puzzle), but where Portal compensates for that with genuinely well-written humorous monologue by the game's antagonist, Viewfinder has unbearable Marvel-esque exclamations by the protagonist's overseer, audio logs mumbling about nothing in particular and the anemic AI cat going "wasn't this clever" at the end of every other puzzle.

The fundamental concept of changing the level's geometry by turning photos into 3D scenes, as it's usually the case with such puzzle games, is amazing.
However, as it's usually the case with such puzzle games, Viewfinder lacks the puzzle design that would actually take advantage of the concept to the fullest, instead opting to bring a whole bunch of other gimmicks into the mix, that disappear as quickly as they appear, never getting a proper time to breathe either. Most of the mechanics the game introduces get two-three levels dedicated to them (and some are ever used once), all of which feel like theyre trying to teach you the concept instead of trying to test you on it. Even the final gauntlet of the game is a complete joke.

The writing in Viewfinder is frankly terrible. I want to keep this review spoiler-free, so I won't go into specifics, but the plot doesn't even begin to make sense and the ending is so bad it wraps around to being one of the funniest things I've seen the whole year. Not a single deliberate attempt to be funny actually lands.

The level design tries to express the personalities of the characters of the story, but they're all ridiculous hyperbolized stereotypes of a "science person", "artsy person", "tech person" et cetera, and this framing of the levels kind of clashes with them being, well, puzzles to begin with.

I can't say much about how the game looks or sounds. It's functional, though some of the visual filters are really hard on the eyes.

Overall, I'm very disappointed. I really love the fundamental concept of it, and I like the mechanics it introduces before immediately discarding them, but it doesn't even feel like the game tries particularly hard to be a puzzle game, it feels more like an obligation it's trying to get over with. I have to wonder if the game would've been better if the devs committed to making it a sort of an exploration walking sim instead? But then again, the writing is awful as well, so maybe not.

I don't know if there's anyone i can recommend this game to. You would need to really love what you see in the trailer, and to be ready to accept that the game won't do anything significantly beyond the scope of what you see there for the entirety of it's short runtime, and to not mind spending $20 on it.

Maintains the sublime terror of embodying a fragile being at the whims of an uncaring universe (and a sense of scale only achieved elsewhere by Shadow of the Colossus or Subnautica), especially in the central sequence evoking a visceral moment in Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.

I did find later sections incredibly opaque, as my idiot brain couldn’t parse where and when I was, let alone solve the core puzzles. Mechanics are introduced generously, but it is often unclear when and why to use them (especially compared to the stark, illuminating reveals of the main game).

Otherwise this is still the same alluring hostile universe, filled with brief moments of warmth, and one of the only games that feels this way.

"Interesting, Innovative, But Far Too Clunky"

'System Shock: Enhanced Edition' is a re-release of the original title from 1994. While the controls are cleaned up slightly and some visual enhancements were made, the game underneath feels unpolished and is very hard to recommend from a gameplay perspective. However, it is an important game that laid the framework for the Immersive Sim genre.

The gameplay is exceptionally diverse for a game that was released at such an infantile time for the video game industry. There is a variety of systems, and the story is actually told in a fairly entertaining way. There is a large selection of weapons and items to use, and the game is actually fairly scary despite being an older title. However, it is extremely clunky. The general design that is a mix of an FPS and a point-n-click game is very unintuitive, and always felt awkward during my time with it. The menu navigation is by far the worst, with lots of information being trapped behind a UI that is rough to look through. Additionally, the graphics are not very good at all, and the extremely jarring colors and textures hurt my eyes after a bit of playing.

Despite these faults, the game has the groundwork of an immensely influential title. Seeing elements of the Deus Ex and Bioshock games within this title is amazing! However, no matter how influential and important this game is, and how awesome it must have been at its release, it feels terrible to play now. I would Not Recommend checking this game out unless you are extremely patient or are familiar with unorthodox control schemes within computer games. It was super interesting to check out, but I wasn’t keen on finishing it after a few levels.

Final Verdict: 4/10 (Below Average)