It's almost impossible to hear about this game without it being compared to Portal. From being "like Portal", to "the best single person puzzle game since Portal" to "like Portal, but even worse" (Steam reviews are weird sometimes). This makes sense to an extent: the names are very similar ("polarity" actually contains all the letters for "portal"), it is first person, there are "puzzles", and there's even cubes. But that's about it. So let's leave that comparison behind us, shall we?

I find the premise of Polarity rather weak: you're a hacker hired to hack into a place and steal data, yet the game play is you running around in a first-person environment trying to get to the end of the level. To me this sounds like that slippery "Lugoscababib Discobiscuits" that I'm always hearing about, but I'll leave such terminology to real srs video game review ppl.

You do technically collect data in the form of green mists that you walk up to and click on but this mechanic seems almost out of place; the levels aren't built around them at all. Instead you'll often just find data fragments thrown about randomly instead of being the reward for completing a side-puzzle. The entire "hacking" aspect of the game was just entirely tacked on and pointless, especially since the "plot" is revealed through several sentences displayed before and after the game and not mentioned anywhere in between. Why even have it at all?

The core game play is, as I said, solving "puzzles" to get to the end of a stage. The reason I use quotes in "puzzles" is that they are not really all that difficult nor do they require any problem solving; most can be solved without breaking the stride of your walk and there were really only 1 or 2 times that I had to try a puzzle twice because I messed up getting a piece of data. The only puzzle that actually required any decent amount of dexterity was literally the last part of the last level.

There are really just 3 main components to the puzzles: (1) little cubes that act as switches to turn things on and off, (2) launch panels with arrows on them that throw you in that direction, and (3) "polarity". "Polarity" is your ability to switch back and forth between two states: red and blue. You pass through things that are the same color as your state, meaning you can be red to pass through red laser walls but must be blue to stand on red light bridges. The idea of "polarity" is what makes this game most unique especially because it extends to the cubes which also have a red or blue status. It's not exactly complex but it makes the gameplay fairly interesting. The platforms with arrows, however, I have an issue with; not only are the literal representation of a frikkin arrow incredibly Fisher Price-y in this virtual world, the ones mounted on the walls that shoot you up just don't act reliably.

One thing I did appreciate was the graphics; they reminded me a bit of both Dead Core and 404Sight. I guess I'm a sucker for that type of "virtual/futuristic reality", but I feel like Polarity did a decent job of making things look nice.

The most glaring gripe I have about this game is that it is one of those games where you will always be holding the run button. There is literally no reason to ever walk; it's painfully slow.

Less of a gripe and more of a "WTF?" is that you can hear your footsteps when you walk. Seems weird for a first person puzzle game. The reasoning behind it seems weird, maybe it's trying to keep it from being boring (the music isn't bad but it isn't terrific), but if you view your character in co-op, you're a weird non-humanoid robot thing....without humanoid feet.

Overall I enjoyed Polarity for what it was but I can't help but feel that it fell slightly short in a few areas. The biggest to most people will probably be the play time which, for me (doing the 1-player campaign collecting all the data) was a mere 47 minutes (not counting the so-called "bonus levels" and co-op). I have no problem with a game being that short and I'd rather it be that then be too drawn out for its concept, but as I remembered games I mentioned that are similar graphically, Dead Core (8 hours for $9.99) and 404Sight (1 hour for free) are just drastically better both in quality, challenge, and price than Polarity (<1 hour for $4.99).

It's still a fun game and I would recommend it, especially if you get the Developer Alliance Bundle that includes 3 other games including Somewhere Out There (which I loved) and can be on sale for as low as 1.49 USD. Or if you want to spend the full 5-er, go ahead, it's your money not mine. But just make sure to go in with limited expectations. It's a triumph, I'll make that note, but maybe just a moderate success.