The Alters

To me The Alters was very refreshing. It felt truly original amongst the many derivative games being launched these days. The whole concept and the breadth of options and variations through the story they offer is fantastic. Having played through it once I can see that there are 2 main arcs that you can make decisions within. One is which alters you wake and how you subsequently treat them. The other is the story decisions you make that lead to a particular course of events and a certain ending. The story decisions are of course fairly standard and to be expected in a good narrative driven game. Which then leads on to the unique brilliance of The Alters; the versions of yourself you choose to wake to help you on your mission and the way you then interact and look after them offers a level of depth that has me wanting to immediately start again and choose a different crew and a different approach. Also now Knowing how the gameplay flows and the pinch points along the story as well as the surprising pace you actually need to maintain to achieve things, I can already see a more interesting and efficient path to take. It's rare for me to want to replay something (i.e. Starfield didn't pull me back in for another playthrough), but I'm looking forward to starting again. It has to be said that the gameplay design is a huge part of that. It's not an overly long game so it doesn't feel daunting to play through again. There are imposed time limits that do add pressure to playing the game, but that pressure is exactly what keeps everything as intense as the setting demands it should be. It truly felt like a race against time on a mysterious planet ready to destroy you. Without the alters element, it would have still been a great game in itself, combating the challenges of the planet is a lot of fun and a great challenge in itself. But the addition of the alters is what elevates the situation to something even more challenging and a lot more human. The alters are well realised and are demanding in their needs. Some would say this is a negative. But to me, that's the reality of dealing with high pressure situations, rarely is anything straight forward. So it has to be said this game is not a walk in the park (although difficulty settings can help here). It requires a level of emotional and intellectual commitment to get through to the end. When the end comes, its almost a relief, because the pressure is finally off. But at the same time is sufficiently rewarding to have made it all worth while on a human level (you'll see what I mean if you get there). Fantastic game! Well worth playing. That said, I have to list the few negatives that I encountered. Yes, the alters are hard work to manage, some of that is done via your actions, some is via unavoidable story arcs they have that can only be managed through careful selections id dialog trees. So you REALLY have to take time to judge what they are thinking. Because it's very easy to totally mis-interpret what they are trying to tell you about themselves and the be bewildered when your answer gets the complete opposite response. In hindsight I can see the clues were all there. But yes, all this is a bit subjective and easy to get wrong. The other main thing I felt was a bit off, was how fast time proceeds when you're not "at work". At normal pace time seems to pass far too quickly. I felt like I couldn't achieve enough in "real-time", which I know in itself is "representative" but it just didn't feel slow enough. I'd much rather have taken hits in time when using fast-travel and then had more time when acting in real-time. Finally, the game is very aware that you will need to use it's saves. It supports this well. However I feel like it would have benefited from the ability to "branch" your play through from any of your past saves. I.e. now I'm done, I'd love to go back to a key point and start an alternative playthrough with its own set of of saves (discarding the old ones but keeping the path I took).

Great game, flows very well, just a tad short

cool concept and cool missions

El juego esta increíble! no hay mas que pueda decir al respecto.

genial

Sem duvidas um jogão! Historia boa, jogabilidade bacana , gostei demais