the premise/story of this game is really interesting and fascinating. however the major let down is that it feels designed really awkwardly and amaturely. for example a frequently i would progress to a new point and need to do something that actually is really obvious, but the game is just poorly breaks all direction. for example, any object you hover over you either get an eyeball (examine) or a hand (interact). if nothing, then generally not a point of interest. well one time there was a machine to control pistons, and it just had no prompt at all. so i ran around the entire room for 20 minutes only to find out all i had to do was click on the machine without a prompt. stupid and inconsistent.
things like this are frequent in the game. its a short game at only 4 hours, but it could be a 2 hour game if the points of interest were actually more coherent. another example: theres only a very few select pieces of wood you can actually break in the game, so you end up not bothering to try to break any most of the time. as well as all of the boxes looking identical and not serving any function. Well theres a big power room with a pit and a box and a fence. you're suppose to figure out to break the fence and push the box into the pit to break it and get an item from it. However this is the last thing I would possibly think of as the whole game up to that point is teaching me to ignore boxes and that the enviorment isnt really destructible. So again, I wander around for 40 minutes when all I had to do was interact with something obvious in the room.
Another huge glaring flaw in the games inconsistency and poor design is you can actually progress far past a point you're suppose to and lack certain items to make the area you're in understandable. For example I missed a 'blank note' in a room, progressed far past it, and got into a Dark Room that casts blue light that illuminates everything in the room. Well I got to this point and just stood around thinking "what the fuck do I do?" interacting with everything on the walls and in the room for a good 30 minutes. Until I eventually look it up, and found it that I missed the 'Blank Note' which the light illuminates when you enter the room and shows you the key code. Why was I even able to progress to that point without the blank note? Its just really jarring. There is no fucking way I would of figured out in a proper fasion without looking it up. I would of been walking around for a good hour or two just to find that blank note I missed. The pacing is just shit.
I really enjoy the premise of being on a boat in greenland stranded, then leaving your boat and then running into a random bunker for shelter. The story with the cool world war 2 mining bunker and stuff is great. The lighting is still top notch and the game came out in 2007. However theres another really stupid and disappointing flaw. The enemies, and complete lack of. The entire game has two enemies: Dog, and Spider. Thats it. At First when you see the dog the game tells you to be really afraid and never engage to attack and always run away and stealth etc... Well thats totally wrong. For one you can basically just sprint past the fucker 9 out of 10 times. And another HUGE thing ... you can just kill the dog with a hammer/pickaxe and they dont respawn. Not only that, but its incredibly easy to kill them. The AI is so fucking shit all you have to do is sneak up to the dog, or even let him aggro you, prepare a swing, and hit him. As soon as you hit the dog once you can just stand by and wait for him to stand up and then continue hitting him with zero danger. Then you kill him and thats it. once you figure this out the game has no threat.
So the game is just running around a dark bunker, in circles over and over, looking at walls/small detail objects that you missed the first time. The enemies are a joke so they dont matter, theres no threat. Nothing to be afraid of or spark you. So once you do this the game is over, but at the end theres a really interesting and poignant part about the guy that contacts you on the radio and I wont spoil that so thats about it . This is the best score I can give because although its a short game I felt frustrated and annoyed with the inconsistent and annoying pacing and bullshit 'wheres waldo' object hunt crap.
+I will say that the story, atmosphere and environment kind of sticks with you. makes me want to come back for more in the form of the sequel Black Plague. not that I really enjoy the gameplay or object hunt. But I am curious how the plot unfolds..
6/10
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