I wanted to say something like, "This is just, We Have Blame! At Home: The Game," and leave the positive review at that, but I feel like it deserves a little bit more.
Fair warning that this review will have some minor, unmarked spoilers until I get to the end of it, and then there will be some marked spoilers. That said, I'm gonna avoid saying anything too revealing either way since the game is short and I do think you need to experience it for yourself.
The premise is that you're a scavenger living inside an enormous megastructure who may have accidentally stumbled on something that countless people and civilizations have been searching for for ages: a way out. The rest of the game is you fighting and clambering through the structure to said exit.
The moment to moment gameplay is either FPS shooting or platforming. I'll be honest, friends: the shooting is pretty dull. You have three weapons and there's five enemy types (and here I'm being generous by including a Bouncy Betty mine and the final boss in that count of enemy types) so you can do the math. The game changes things up with ambushes, arena fights, a few gauntlets of daring jumps while under distant sniper fire, but it's only so much. So if the actual shooting is kind of boring, why my positive recommend?
Well, the entire game is so tight and well-designed that it makes up for it. The visuals for one are really solid. The dev seems to have an amazing grasp on how to reveal new things to the player. You'll be stuck in a little tunnel or some enclosed platforming section for a bit and start thinking to yourself, "gee, I could go without seeing any more grey boxes for the rest of my life," and then suddenly a door opens to some new vista. Case in point, about midway through the game, you jump up and through a ruined highway interchange from a nameless, fallen civilization. It's all very interesting and atmospheric but just as soon as you're done with it, you pop out onto what appears to be a beach, and beyond are massive bucket excavators, endlessly grinding down a massive canyon. The sound design also gets in on this. There's a thunderstorm in the distance that never quite rolls in, so you always have dramatic wind and distant thunder to underscore how big the structure is. Your and your enemies' weapon reports clatter around and sound appropriately small inside the cavernous expanse. Everything combines to make you feel small and insignificant against the unending megastructure.
More than all this is the story and world it takes place in. You're given small hints and insights into what's going on: an old newspaper article or an archeological report or even the rapidly-fading memories on a dead mercenary's wetware harddrive. Nothing spells out clearly what you're supposed to know or think, but it does give you the ability to more or less put together what's happening around the mysterious exit. And once you do finally get there, well:
[spoiler]As I said, I'm not going to spell it out here. Go experience it yourself. I will say that I was surprised by just how hopeful the ending actually turns out to be. In vague terms, you're a nobody (several characters even call you "wretch") and what you find out probably won't have an impact on the greater world of the megastructure, but the finding out and then moving beyond that is where the real meaning lies. Once the game wrapped, I honestly had to sit with it quietly for a bit and let it all kind of sink in. The point of the game can basically be summed up in two diametrically-opposed quotes:
From a document written by your enemies: "No heavenly fields awaited us beyond the structure... and no God to fill our empty stomachs."
And then from the ending narration: "you nonetheless find the familiar step of your nomadic wandering returning: the promise engraved in every mile traveled that the seeking itself is the answer."
That's...honestly pretty heartening, especially from a game that initially seems to be very dour. Once again, I'm being as vague as I can because I absolutely think you need to experience it for yourself.[/spoiler]
If I had to nitpick anything, it's the save system. It only saves on the beginning of each chapter, which means that if you need to quit riiiiiight before the next one, you lose all that progress. For a game that's so thoughtful like this one, having to redo a chapter and then rush through it seems like a waste. In point of fact, that's why my play time is 11 hours; the actual game takes about 3, but I left it on overnight to avoid having this exact problem. A simple "save and quit" would be nice.
But look, if I'm complaining about the [i]save system[/i] of all things, you know it's good. Do yourself a favor, pick it up, play it blind, and enjoy the ride.
