13 people found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 13.8 hrs on record
Posted: Sep 14, 2023 @ 12:26pm
Updated: Sep 14, 2023 @ 5:41pm

Full gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia68GaY22uo

All Endings and Boss Fights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymAs8E5UgBQ

This game is well designed, it has a great and touching story, great visuals, runs pretty well and has a good combination of boss fights and endings. Although it is not perfect but as an overall package I recommend this game to anyone who is interested in horror games with good story telling.

Graphics and Visuals (4/5):

Game visuals are pretty good, areas are pretty well designed and captures the overall game tone. Enemies are very unique and grotesque in a way but they fit pretty good to the story and why they designed this way. The only thing that could’ve been better I think is character animations and lip syncing when they talk, I wish for character actions there were some appropriate animations related to that action in the game.

One other thing that was a little annoying was the darkness of some areas in the game, even with flashlight I could hardly see around myself, trying to change game gamma but didn't help.

Gameplay and Mechanics (3/5):

This game is a combination of walking simulator like most of the other indie horror games and some basic combat elements, although combat is not a right word but there are boss fights that you have to do some actions and use environment to beat them, there is no gun fight. It was an interesting combination in my opinion and add a layer of engagement on top of basic walking sims.

One thing that felt little weird to me was that you get a gun in this game but you almost never use it, I feel that they added because of game theme but felt little awkward when you get a gun but don’t get a chance to use it.

Other thing which personally irritated me a little was the amount of walking in each section, I feel this game could’ve been little shorter and wouldn’t lose much of its atmosphere and storytelling, each section is unique and has interesting design but you walk a lot which sometimes makes it little boring. Like for example there are some areas that you climb a ladder for about 30 seconds, or walk on a path for a long time to get to next point.

Storyline and Immersion (4/5):

I think this is where the game shines, it tries to tell a very important story about war and its influence on people. It’s very powerful and touching when you go through the things that happened to this family by gathering documents, I highly recommend to try to interact with all of them since it’s very important part of the game. You will be immersed in this story pretty well, they captured the war atmosphere and its affects on this family pretty good.

The enemies and bosses as I said have a very unique design which fit perfectly with the story and situation they are trying to depict. You can understand the pain and feelings that they had through this journey.

Sound and Music (3/5):

Overall sound and music of the game is really good. Sound effects are really well designed too. But unfortunately the implementation was not very good, there were many moments that I felt the music and sound effects were out of place and were not playing based on situation, sometimes the music was too loud or didn’t play in some cases, there were some overlaps with conversations too.

Performance and Bugs (4/5):

This game runs pretty well on my machine, 1440p 12900K and 3090. I tried to run with DLSS Quality and lock framerate on 120 and most of the time got 120fps. But after a while I felt the implantation of DLSS was not very good and noticed the ghosting a lot. Disabled it and to my surprise game was still running smoothly at highest quality without DLSS.

I encountered couple of bugs during my gameplay, game crashed for 4-5 times randomly and had to restart the game.

Replayability (2/5):

There is a replayability value to this game, but unfortunately the way that they implemented is really bad. There is only one save slot in this game and you don’t have any control over it. You can only restart the chapter you are in or reload last checkpoint. Game has multiple endings and multiple endings to each boss fight, in order to get them all you have to play from beginning of the game each time and go through everything again.

I am not sure why they designed it this way but I really don’t like this approach, at least they should’ve saved each chapter separately and let users replay each one again if they wanted.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
Developer response:
Nacon  [developer] Posted: Sep 15, 2023 @ 1:56am
Hello Lord Datis,

Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your thoughts on Ad Infinitum. We truly appreciate your elaborate review, and we are elated to see you liked the game.

We appreciate your positive feedback on the graphics, and it brings us joy to know that we managed to convey the intended tone of the game. We also understand that it may have been too dark in some areas, and we will make a note of that.

We sincerely appreciate your feedback concerning the terrain traverse in the game. Your input about the length of certain sections is valuable to us, and we understand that they may have felt too long at times.

We are glad to learn that you were positively impressed with the atmosphere and that you found the setting and story unique.

We genuinely appreciate your feedback on the replayability aspect, especially regarding the save feature. We will ensure that your feedback is shared with the rest of the team for further consideration.

Once again, we are grateful for your detailed review, and should there be anything else you want to add, you are more than welcome to do so.

Best regards,
Ad Infinitum Support Team