Spirits of Xanadu

A fun System Shock-lite. It's a nice change of pace to have a simple imm sim. Grab it on sale and enjoy some lonely deep space vibes while uncovering what happened happened to the Xanadu crew over a few hours

i prefer to play many games once to experience the breadth of what the medium has to offer, but i cleared this game multiple times of my own volition. maybe at the time [eight years before i'm writing this review] this was because i didn't have hundreds of games in my library. however, i believe i just fell in love with the scrappy vibes and wanted to make this game not scary. i hadn't played SS2 at this point, so this was a completely fresh experience. i may not have collected all achievements, but i certainly tried and had a wonderful time doing it. i'll certainly be revisiting this in the future.

yep

Shiny little gem! Particular praise for the best balloon metaphor I've ever heard. The voice acting is nicely wrought, blending the poetic with the cold calculus of insanity. I am not done with this one yet. Me likey.

This is the only wholly original game Nightdive has ever been a publisher of, which already makes it stand out. The fact it clearly takes a lot of inspiration from [b]System Shock[/b] may have been a reason they decided to support it. The simple, mostly untextured graphics are nothing really special, but the lighting can be atmospheric at times. Those gravity lifts are clearly taken from [b]System Shock 2[/b], as is the design of audiolog devices, which, just like in that game, are the main medium through which the player can hope to piece together what happened on the ship, now empty of human life but full of murderous bots and turrets. Be warned that it's all very small-scale: once you open some accesses, you can run from the tail to the control room of the ship in about a minute, and an average playthrough lasts an hour, even if it doesn't hold the player's hand. There are different endings to explore. The game, however, right from the price, doesn't oversell itself and also allows you to play it relaxed and concentrated on the story and puzzles, just a sci-fi mystery with a few twists.

Spirits of Xanadu is a loveletter to im-sims of old, specifically System Shock 2. It's DNA is all over SoX, from the audiologs to the protocol droids down to the dang grav-lifts. This is not a bad game, and if you can catch it on sale (it goes for as little as 0.99 USD!) it's worth a quick run through. I managed to beat the game first time in 2 hours. Realizing you have infinite ammo for every weapon (which never have to reload), infinite health (cowwadooty regen health type sht) and infinite stamina... the game wasn't particularly challenging, at least on normal. I might give it another run on higher difficulties later, but unless they start making you manage ammo and health it'll still be a cakewalk for anyone with a fast trigger finger. The end result is all the tension the game tries to build falls flat, almost comically so. I did enjoy the experience, even if I didn't quite get it, between all the messaging around Abrahamic faiths or the "antagonist". There are some secret tiddies though, so that's nice. There is one aspect of this game that makes me ALMOST not want to recommend it, if it weren't for the ridiculously low sale prices: the performance. The game is very basic, visually. There aren't a whole lot of textures being used, lots of flat shading. Yet, despite the simple textures and basic geometries, somehow the game still manages to run like crap. Half-Life 2 has more textures, more effects more geometry more shaders and yet it still runs buttery smooth, even on terrible hardware. Being that this game is from 2015 that would be an unacceptable level of performance loss considering the visuals. OPTIMIZE YOUR GAMES FOR THE LOVE OF GOD