Status Araborum Oct 26, 2019
This game had an interesting concept, and certainly a 'different' design, so i was keen to give it a shot (that and the fact it came in my latest humble bundle), but while the first 15 minutes piqued my interest, it soon descended into a tedium of walking from point A to point B for reasons no other than 'the …
This game had an interesting concept, and certainly a 'different' design, so i was keen to give it a shot (that and the fact it came in my latest humble bundle), but while the first 15 minutes piqued my interest, it soon descended into a tedium of walking from point A to point B for reasons no other than 'the story line tells you so'. Tedious to the highest of degrees... Most object you interact with have no value, nor they expand the lore. Eventually i started to see them as nothing more than story stretchers and happily skipped them.The future-esque/cyberpunk theme is thin and some puzzles are so frustrating (find the guy using a drone in the nightclub, which is where i gave up ) that they make you want to Ctrl-F4 out of the game in a nanosecond.
As i got to know the story of the two main characters, i got invested. I was keen to see the idea of how tech and humans mix and interact together. But after several sequences, and a few sub par puzzles. i still had no idea how the two are tied or why they even are the protagonists,and then...bombshell! [Spoiler alert] You and him are the same person yet you are separate people! The key point of plot got dropped on you so quickly you start to think...how is the rest of it related? your wife and child leaving...And the glaring weaknesses in the plot just come to the forefront with little opportunity for redemption. it probably ties together later, but the pacing and the sequence are way off.
On another point, the voice acting is average, and the dialogue is weak and not very insightful. The different dialogue options (when they are present) do not matter, adding to the linear nature to an already highly linear game.
Let me be clear here. I did NOT finish the game (as you probably gathered from above comment). I simply did not have the patience so take this review with a grain of salt, but the dips in the plot and its quality just prevented me from going far. i think it has (had?) potential to present an intricate story. Imperfect, but satisfying, yet the excruciatingly slow start followed by a an explosion of 'you are you but there is a clone of you...in the virtual world...' just makes you wonder if the initial script was written in a state of haze and the rest of writing caught up in the morning when the writers' mind cleared up.
With story being poor, the game has little else going for it. It was supposed to be its strong point! However, with that out of the window, i am not sure there is much point giving it a shot. If you managed to reach the end, im keen to see how it end and if it picks up, but i will not hold my breath for it.