Recent reviews by Arxae

Many emotes where had

If you want something challenging, this is not it. Pretty linear, short and easy, but very enjoyable. Story was somewhat predictable but still very interesting

Good example that Steam could use a middleground between just Yes/No.

The game is not as bad as some people claim, but I can't say with all honesty that the game is good either. The game is quite a looker. Environments look nice, fur effects are good animations are nice a smooth. The soundtrack is pretty good too. But that's the only flat out good thing about it.

All the rest is lackluster. Every system in the game is simple to the point that the puzzles exist in exactly 2 types. Combat is a 1 button affair, with another used to finish a combo. Spells and guns have autoaim (although it's very inconsistent). The skills you can acquire aren't very numerous. Every weapon This in itself isn't all that bad, but if you look for a game with depth, this is not it.

And then the rest is just bad. Sound design for pretty much anything is just bad. Nothing has impact. You can hit someone with a giant mace, not a sound. You can summon a literal space laser, but it hardly makes a sound. They do the Banjo-Kazooie thing where everyone talks in gibberish animal sounds (which isn't bad), but the narrator talks over it, so you don't hear it. The narrator itself is plain annoying. He talks over literally everything. Every NPC, every action, every "puzzle". It's absolutely crazy how much better the game becomes when you turn him off. The story itself is fine-ish. the main subject is pretty normal game stuff (bad guys do bad things), but it all contains a environmental message. But it's so heavy handed it's not even funny. At every oppertunity they will tell you how bad pollution is. They also have a morality system which is very superficial. It matters very little, the choices are very obvious and when you do have to make them, you can crawl back and make the other choice anyway. Not like it matters all that much. Some random fire-and-forget NPCs might or might not talk to you. There are also various tribes that occupy the world. At the start of the game you have to join one and help them conquer the others. The entire tribe story is basically "war is bad mkay". As with other parts of the game, it consists of 4-5 elements reused over and over again. Each base is one of the following: A puzzle segment, a base assault with themed rooms, a boss fight (that you can talk your way out with a single dialog choice). Then you get the boss of the tribe (which is basically the themed room segment ending with a boss). You then get the choice to either capture the leader, or kill him (which has no impact). You then get the tribe weapon and skills. So the tribe choice has very little impact.

After this block of text, i can still sorta recommend the game. It's easy, but fun to explore and I still had my fun with it. But i still can't give it a solid recommendation. Get it on sale, don't put your expectations high, turn off the narrator and you will probably have some fun with the game.

Subnautica in space, just worse in almost all regards. The game looks really good, but that's about all the positive i can say.

The humor is super forced. They constantly do 4th wall breaks to the point that it actually gets disruptive. They joke how the devs give you busywork to lengthen the game, but because that is exactly what is happening, it's just not funny. The narrator also just doesn't shut up and it just becomes quite annoying.

Gameplay wise it's very mixed. A lot of good, marred by a lot of bad. The game has essentially 3 parts, but they get worse over time. First part is basically Subnautica. You have a central base, and you need to upgrade your equipment to go further and further from your base. Exploration could be enjoyable. But base movement speed and oxygen makes this enormously tedious and basically ruins it. You are so slow, and you have so little oxygen that you basically can make it 15s out, before you have to go back. And by the time you have enough oxygen, the part is basically over so it doesn't even matter. Near the end they introduce basebuilding for a little while before moving on to the next part and making it (yet again) completely irrelevant. Every tool you craft has durability, which isn't that big of a problem if the durability wasn't so low. A base object (containing resources) is broken in 2-4 swings. The tool has 15 durability, so go figure. So you will constantly need to gather resources to recraft those tools. Additionally, this tedious process is hampered by your miniscule oxygen pool.

In the second part, the game becomes a very simple space shooter. Everything you did in part 1 didn't matter because they are never revisited. Base building never happens again, the vehicles aren't used anymore. You can fly around, battle with 2 enemy units (one of which is a turret) and dock to locations to explore. But no more "in suit" exploration, so all those suits you crafted (some of which where useless)? Useless. Exploration is dumbed down to a corridor. You follow the corridor (while the narrator just babbles on and on) until you come to a point where you need to craft something specific you will never use again. You then have to walk all the way back to your ship, craft the thing, then run all the way back to the previous point and move on. Sometimes you get a shortcut back to the start, other times you have to walk back. This is done for every single location from this point onwards. Since you cannot get out of your ship except by docking with the locations. The crafting materials are just sprinkled all over the place in a random fashion.

The third part is straight up walking sim. You just follow the corridor, occasionally shot something (if your gun isn't broken). No features from part 1 return, they take the space shooter away, and there is even less exploration. Walking back and forth remains though. It's less bad then part 2 since they are just wrapping up the story. But it's just annoying that the few ok features they had are removed, but they keep all the bad parts. The final nail for me was that when the credits (finally) rolled, you get the option to skip it. But if you do, they throw a joke at you on how they are gonna waste your time (like you haven't been doing that for the past hours), and restart the credits. I just alt+f4'ed out.

I powered trough it to see where the story goes. It has some interesting-ish leads (none of which pay off) and while it isn't fully bad, it's just not worth it. They have these random moments where they try to be serious, but then either the narrator happens, or they can't help themselves and throw a terrible joke in there (or worse, both). The game could have been good if they made the first part A LOT less tedious and keep it relevant trough at least part 2.

I played the early access release (which was basically the first part of the game), and it looked good. Humor was still...questionable. But it wasted a lot less of your time. It was very clear where they padded out the game. It's a good example that a longer game isn't necessarily better. If you want the Subnautica experience in space, just play Subnautica, remove the water trough the console and use some imagination. It will easily be a much better overall experience then this.

Pretty good, too bad they couldn't continue what they left off.

It's a pretty good mix between DS1 and DS2. If you liked either of the first 2 you will also like this one.

Going to keep it short and sweet. If you like Human Revolution, you will like this one. Yes, it's more of the same, but in the best way possible.

At first i found the story to not really go anywhere. Yes Quico has some troubles with his father, yes we can see how they show it ingame. So the first 1/3 of the game i found myself asking why i was doing these (very pretty) puzzles. But after that, the game got more interesting. The story showed the connection more clearly towards the gameplay. In the end, the story is not THAT special, but it is very well presented.

The gameplay is basically a puzzle platformer. A rather easy one at that. The puzzles requires not much thinking to figure out, so hardcore puzzle addicts won't get their fix with this. But the puzzles where very pretty. I was happy to see a lever so i could see the environments transform. These environment transformation is the biggest half of the puzzles, and also the most impressive to see. The other part is Monster, you have to lure him around to complete puzzles. 2 other small roles are Lulu and Alejandra. Lulu is a little robot you can throw at switches or use to do a doublejump/hover kind of deal. Alejandra is a little girl that taunts you around the gameworld, moving the gameplay/plot forward in some places.

The graphics where pretty good, not much to say here. The game looks pretty, runs smooth and no loading screens other then the initial startup one. Might not be the best looking game ever, but there are hardly any complaints other then the glows around objects being pixelated.

Another downside is the length, it runs for about 3 hours. Which is long enough, but i found that the story at the end went fast forward. The entire plot/metaphore of the game is revealed in the last 5-10 minutes. While it ain't that bad, it might have been better to get to the point of the story sooner in game so that they could handle the reveal a bit more subtle.

All in all, even if it runs short and the plot might not be the next shakespear, the game is still good. I enjoyed the 3 hours it took to finish, the puzzles, simple as they are, are pretty satisfying due to the environment transformations.