My review

[TheBeak]

For some reason, Steam jams up when I try to post my reviews of games lately. Not sure why, but I want to post them somewhere since I took the time to write it (two games so far wouldn't let me do this...White NIght and Alpha Polaris). Here you go, regardless!

Alpha Polaris has been on my radar for quite sometime but I wanted to catch it on discount because it seemed like a game that I would put down after playing through it once. This sentiment holds true, although Turmoil crafted a pretty solid adventure game with horror, sci-fi and dramatic undertones.

Upon starting the game I was immediately reminded of John Carpenter's The Thing and the more I played the further the seminal 80s horror classic crept to the forefront of my brain. You play as Norwegian scientist Rune; one of several characters that inhabits the isolated Arctic base. Rune got into his career choice through a love of animals and he's on hand to capture, tag and treat polar bears while using his skills to navigate the base and woo his Eskimo crush Nova. Other characters include geologist Al (very reminscent of Brimley's character in The Thing), the foolhardy blowhard Tully and corporate overseer Alistair.

The game starts with a normal day on the job for Rune with him tranquilizing and treating a sick polar bear but quickly things descend into a tale of infection, possession and madness. I don't want to spoil too much for those that haven't played it, yet Alpha Polaris using an excellent combination of fantasy and Eskimo folk legends to craft a well-paced tales that builds nicely across your 4 days on the base. In terms of theme the game is definitely adult with coarse language, splatters of gore/violence, nudity and all of the things horror fans will get an adrenaline shot from. I found myself immersed in the story enough to see the game through without letting any other games interrupt my currently limited play-time (work sucks!).

As far as gameplay is concerned this is classic point n' click all of the way. There's no combat. You will explore your surroundings with each day bringing new situations to figure out in the classic puzzle-solving sense of the genre. There's fetch quests, item combining, obstacles where order is important, fill in the blanks (parser puzzles...where the information you gain from notes, characters, the story comes into play) and a little bit of everything. Thanks to the unique Arctic setting, several of the puzzles feel fresh even if it's the kind we're all used to by now. I didn't have to check a walkthrough too much to complete my objectives or gather the achievements, but I find the Parser Puzzles to be unclear. You will normally need to enter a keyword into the blanks as a suggestion to solve the puzzles. While some of the answers were fairly clear and straightforward, a small handful left me scratching my head going, "What the hell?" Overall though, Alpha Polaris does a good job of laying things out for you with just enough information and clues to get the job done. If you're stuck at anytime you can click on Rune himself for a clue or press the space bar to show all hotspots on the screen. I didn't have to resort to these options in many cases at all but it's nice that these are available if you hit an impasse restricting progress.

Graphically, the game excels in some areas and is only "OK" in others. That's not really a problem since the visuals are clear and crisp enough to eliminate clutter and decrease the kind of crowded, hard on the eyes pixel hunting that I had to endure in say, Scratches. There are only a few different areas and screens with each featuring a nice level of atmospheric detail. The base itself looks the best with ominous mountain ranges in the background and the night scenes are especially haunting thanks to cool shadowing, the presence of detailed Northern Lights and other oddities. While the character models are the weak link, neither animating too well or featuring too much character, dialogue scenes feature close up, hand-drawn, comic book style animations of the characters speaking and they fare much better than the in-game models. Still, the game's looks don't offend the eyes at any point and even manage to shine here and there. Another positive is how each day features a night/day episode and the night episodes are particularly ominous. On the other hand, the sound fares much, much better with mostly well-delivered dialogue, gothic ambience, creepy creature sounds and more. A couple of characters (some have pointed out Tully and I agree) are a little too corny and over-the-top but the more I played, the more their voiceovers and personalities didn't bother me and seemed to fit into the backdrop.

Depending on how much you look around or how much the puzzles stump you, you should probably get 5-7 hrs out of the game...possibly less if you're speeding through it. There's some achievements to unlock and I found myself going back to some well-placed saves to grab a couple of them. At 83% I felt that I got enough out of the game. The story has plenty of twists, turns, intensity and thrills to make a single playthrough worthwhile. Once you've done it all and beat the game there isn't really much reason to go back to it unless you want to experience the story again on a boring day. That could happen wtih me after alot of time happens but I don't see it happening in the near future. That's really all I can say before I break things down into some pros and cons:

Pro:

-Solid storyline packs a solid punch with good dialogue, characters and slick horror overtones
-Old fashioned point n' click adventure with a great setting
-Nicely done sound FX, voice-acting and audio
-Intuitive interface with no clunk
-Satisfying puzzles (with some variety) and gameplay elements
-Nice area graphics and handdrawn character models for dialogue were a nice touch
-

Cons:

-Story ends abruptly (build-up eclipses the pay-off)
-Main game character models are ho-hum with stiff animation
-Parser puzzles are slightly annoying
-Could have used more areas to explore
-Not the shortest adventure game ever made but could have used a couple of extra chapters (days)

Overall rating: 7.2/10

Alpha Polaris should be a treat for horror gamers that want to take a trip down the adventure side of the tracks. It has its flaws but yet manages to be quite engrossing. You'll want to progress just to see how the days unfold and the story ends up. The ending was a letdown unfortunately but the build-up is worth the ride and the fact that this game mixes Eskimo lore with a John Carpenter/isolation horror vibe renders it worth at least a single, dedicated playthrough.