[b]"Dead Space: The 80s Earth Shattered Edition"[/b]
This feels like Dead Space met Cronos in a bar and was like "you know what you should do.." and then it dawn on them, why space.. if you can do it at home. It very much feels the same, in so many aspects, the eerie environments, the slow heavy walking and battle, the enemies that are made out of stuff of nightmares and so on, but in in a nutshell, if you like Dead Space, then you will love this game, but more in detail.
[b]The Story.[/b]
Usualy I say, it alright, or you know it's interesting and so on.. this one tho.. it's mind bending, it's good, but it does make your brain flip around more than usual. Why so.. well - Time Travel, yes this aspect always will mess with your head, as it does in this game. Without going into too much detail, you will start off knowing nothing, you will end the game.. knowing.. just a bit more leaving most of it to interpretation, that in my opinion is a rather good thing, when you have to peace the events together and kind of think of it all. Now the only issue is.. if you think about all of the story once you finish the game, you can see a lot of plotholes, as it would be with time travel involved.
As the story goes you are a "Traveler" working for something called the "Collective" and you have to find another one like you, who has well perished and keep the mission going. The mission, well the base line of the story is that some kind of plage has emerged in 1980s, taking the lives of almost everyone in Poland, not only taking the lives, but also mutating the people in abominations, so you as a traveler have to find the reason for it all, for you have the power to travel back in the past to gather intel, in this case the minds of specific people, like actually digging in their heads and extracting the information from them. As you play you can choose whos consciousness you keep and discard as you only have room for three (they also give you passive perks), but the down side is, that what every choice you make, it will not effect the end, now that is kind of something that could for merged in the story more.
[b]The Gameplay.[/b]
As mentioned before, very Dead Space like. The heavy suit making you walk at slower pace, the angry stomps and punches to the weapon shots, it all feel like good old Isaac, of course in this case your the ND-3576. Now you can't change the suit (only as a cosmetic thing), but you can upgrade it, to make you live longer, have more inventory space and such. When it comes to weapons you have three types to go for, each type has a different variation so in total you have six arms and one special to choose from, each weapon works in a different way and can be upgraded in basic ways, like firepower, reload speed and so on. So you do have a variety of weapons to engage your enemies in way you see fit, becouse you will not be able to take all of your arms with you, just a few for the inventory space is limited. With that we step into the part of survival, as you will have to manage what upgrades and what things to pick up, as you will start off with just a small inventory and in this game, every bullet does count, especially if you start off with the normal difficulity. Besides that you will have extra tools to help you along the way, that are all fire based, this is a important aspect of the game, as you will have to burn dead enemies if you wish to have a better chance of survival. One of the things I could not get use to, was the fact that your character is immune to fire, in this game, a very useful thing. That leads to the enemies, there are not too many in variation, but the most interesting thing is, that they can absorb other dead bodies and acquire their power and mutate something new like, more armor, acid projectiles and so on, so leaving too many bodies around and letting them absorb everything can be deadly, so.. burn the dead. Combat it self feel solid, every encounter is thought out, if you use the environment to your advantage, be in the right spot and use the provided barrels and such, you will most likely not use too much ammo and loose a lot less health.
[b]Environment.[/b]
Visually this game look very good, a bit too damanding on my little war machine, but even on the lower setttings it looks very nice. It's a very bleak and dark world, every area will be like a dungeon with not much light in it, but very so often there are beautiful landmarks and very cinematic views and landscapes, so it's well crafted for you to not only enjoy the survival, but the sight seeing as well. Besides that, the events are in the 80s in Poland, so lot of the things in the enviorment have been dropped in from that time, as I have seen most of the things like that in life, it was nice to see them in the game as well like the tram, when I got into that I was like "yup, just like back in the day", but the aesthetic of it all, the music and sound and all parts of that are on point.
[b]Conclusion[/b]
So with all that combined, the mind twisting story with the survial gamplay makes this game stand next to Dead Space and brings it's own Identity to it. Hope to see more of "Cronos" in the future.. or past.. time travel after all.
