A new Survival Horror Franchise arises
I played this game just a few months ago, and was absolutely blown away. I bought it initially thinking "Okay, another survival horror game, I'm in for a mediocre story, with some fun game play elements." How wrong I really was. Upon the booting of the game, I found the menus even intriguing. I checked the controls, and managed my settings since I like Subtitles on games, and then navigated my way over to start the game.
As the game opened, I had a feeling the immersion was going to be more than most games. I started walking through the first part of the game, then the first attack happens and I am without any means to defend myself. This is where I begin to feel a bit of tension, which remained throughout the whole game.
The great thing about this game is not only just the intuitive menu design, which I will touch on in a second, but the overall atmosphere was absolutely perfect, with phenomenal environments and great progression through the Ishymura, leading you to all points of the ship, you get a feel of the walls even being dangerous, especially in the narrow and sometimes short winding corridors. The sounds and visual elements create the atmosphere in this game so well, and keep it so stable, that you never really feel safe and secure very often in the game, especially when you start noticing they come out of the ventilation of the ship, it becomes a game where you're constantly questioning your security.
The UI is amazing, this is a separate point in itself. There's no HUD in the traditional sense of the word, it's more of a series of holograms that adapt to whatever piece you're trying to interact with. The Health meter is a great little idea in its own. The tube on Isaac's back is his health, and on suit upgrades the health upgrades a bit, and there's more sections to it, but monitoring the health is so easy in this case since it's just slightly to the left of the area you focus a lot on, so it's not like you're looking over to the top or bottom of the screen to see your health and air status on your suit. Checking your ammunition is basically restricted to what's in the weapon at the time, shown by a small holographic display on each weapon. Navigating the in game map, inventory and other menus is all done in real time. This adds to the insecure feeling you usually have since while you're focusing on the menu, you can still be attacked, and when these guys want to they're silent. Interactions with items on the ground is basically as you walk close to them a small hologram comes up showing you what the item is, and you can then decide if you want it or not, since inventory space is very limited in the first parts of the game, you may have to be selective, thankfully weapons do not count in this regard so the space is ammo and med-packs.
The enemies themselves are an interesting thing, not like traditional games where they're programmed with a set number of hit points that directly relates to the weapon/ammunition used to determine when they die, instead you're required to actually destroy them. In easier game modes you just have to dismember them to stop them, but in harder game modes you actually need to fully dismember them, so stomping on them is a good option. If you don't dismember them on the harder settings, they come back as elites, which are black and much harder to kill. There are a few different types of enemies, each creating a difficult challenge in their own way, and in anti-gravity zones the tactics change.
The ship itself is dark and falling apart, there are holes, where there's no oxygen (Hence the air capacity meter mentioned above) and no gravity zones. Also there is broken gravity floor tiles, and if you step on em, or convince an enemy to step on em, they get jetted into the roof and destroyed. No idea why any engineer would make a sharp roof on a space ship, but whatever, it looks cool. Audio is a large part of the atmosphere, there's always some kind of noise, be it movement, or growling of some sort, or just parts of the ship moving around, or you kicking something small as you run, either way, it holds a big part of the game and the feeling.
The story progression actually is quite fantastic, in the sense that you don't even fully see what is going on until the very end of the game, then some things start to come into the spectrum and a couple of things start getting second thought. The story is this. You're Isaac Clarke, an engineer, sent in with a team to see why the Ishymura isn't responding to any forms of communication. Your team gets attacked early on and only you, and two others remain to try and find out what's going on and find a way off the ship. Very simple plot but the little twists and turns make it what it is. No spoilers here, so don't worry.
All things considered this has to be one of my favorite games I have picked up this year, and for 25 bucks, it was a totally awesome purchase. Now I have the second one on pre-order. This game has a great job done on it because of the little things that they did with the game. If you ignore those it's a regular Survival Horror game, if you pay attention to the little things that make up the games UI and the strategy behind downing enemies, it's what makes this game one of a kind, and I look forward to future releases of this game.
Overall I give this game full marks for being a fun, and enjoyable experience. Not really any repetition, even though you do go back over specific parts of the ship more than once, it always feels like something new is happening. The audio is fantastic, and the subtle visuals make the game just that much more fun. Pick it up if you like this genre.
