Downward Spiral: Horus Station

This budget space-station odyssey manages to punch above its weight throughout. The graphics are on the scrubbier end in the larger locales, but the scale itself is still very rewarding, with great layered verticality. A decent playground to zero-G about in, especially when it's some perilous robot production line you're scudding around. Playing hide and seek amongst struts versus the various bots and drones is a lot of fun. (Even if they can be a bit daft and mass in weird places). Their sheer numbers encourage finding a protected route through the general expanses, and this only escalates as they and their armaments get bigger. Having these explosive encounters lurking beyond the eerier stretches of decommissioned gear and echoing corridors elevated both of those core elements. Puzzles were simple enough 'tab A for slot B' fare in the main, but I still managed to dumbass a few of them. This was purely because I was so happily flicking tactile switches, or pondering what that outgassing vent was about, and just generally getting lost in the Nostromo-esque vibe ;) Weapons & locomotion tools scale up as you progress nicely. (It's cool to see things like a reload shake for the space-shotgun and such like, and novel little takes on a sniper view). By the time it had turned into simple zero-G death ballets with giant floating mechs I was very much sold ;) Whoever made this game definitely loves VR. Just the little touches like being able to knock debris out of your way with your gun (physics interactions really add to the world) are a testament to that. The 80s style mood and action music is very welcome (although occasionally it stays in high octane mode even after you've killed off all the threats in an area). It does re-use a lot of assets and core 'puzzles' all told. But that helps them create this giant coherent station ultimately, and many of the huge future-industrial zones were still unique. It's a slight shame that they re-furbished the free demo stage to become their end stage, so a certain surprise element was removed there if you've played it. But I still found their game mechanics and motifs of death and rebirth satisfying as they tied the whole telling-by-showing arc in a bow. The biggest shame though is surely the name! It carries a Finnish dowdiness that isn't really represented by the the big Finnish, indie-cinematic, space adventure they take actually you on ;) -- [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmpChMFshEE&feature=youtu.be][h1]A vid of some combat, puzzling and floating[/h1][/url] Here's some muggy footage of early drone combat and basic bobbing about. The later sections featuring [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmpChMFshEE&t=10m00s]sneaking past a droid [10m][/url] and [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmpChMFshEE&t=13m57s]traversing a giant space expanse [14m][/url] probably speak more to the highlights that stack up over time.