Origin Unknown

Origin Unknown is a fairly basic collection of assets arranged into a first person shooter/adventure game, one of many hundreds, if not thousands of these glutting Steam. The "developer" got their hands on a few 3D asset store packs and models, arranged them haphazardly in a first person adventure game template, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers. The only thing that prevents this from being classified as an asset flip is the developer isn't trying to cash in on the uncredited use of other people's assets by arranging them with as little effort as possible into a minimum viable product. However, the quality here is indistinguishable from an asset flip, and that's what this is all about... whether this game represents any real value for gamers. It doesn't. The game is very simplistic, small and limited in scope and ambition. This feels more like a tech demo, proof of concept or student homework assignment rather than a fully fledged product designed for PC gamers. As such it doesn't offer any real value as a serious PC game. You just run around some hotel(?), do some lightweight, buggy, badly assembled adventure stuff and shoot some aliens. It's not fun because the poor delivery is too distracting from anything else going on. Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the mid 2000s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with. The developers didn't design the game for modern gaming PCs, as such the display resolution caps out at around 1440p, there's no support for the state-of-the-art 4K or higher resolutions. The game simply won't look right on modern gaming displays due to this failure on the part of the developers. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 4 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you download this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? The game is completely free. This is noble a gesture that shows dedication to both gamers, and the gaming industry. Nothing speaks more to a developers belief in themselves and their product than making their game available for everyone without remuneration. It's a shame in this case that the implementation is below the minimum standards a dedicated PC game should offer to enthusiasts. The quality here is simply too low for me to recommend, even for free.