Traverser Review

You know what, I adore Traverser’s setting. The notion of cutting about a sumptuously rendered dystopia, all the while subverting the authorities and generally doing a nice bit of puzzle solving and questing is one that appeals to me. Where things start to fall by the wayside a fair bit is when it comes to the execution of the whole affair. Hobbled by less than intuitive controls, overly familiar physics based puzzles and some poorly thought out boss encounters, Traverser’s flaws often succeed in engulfing its more obvious qualities.

Speaking of obvious qualities, Traverser is most certainly a looker with its Unreal Engine powered visuals propping up a commendably attractive dystopian vision. While there’s a sort of playfulness and cheerful hue to the game’s locations, the aesthetic is also pretty technically sound too, with some gorgeous lighting and shadow effects being especially well implemented throughout.

Sadly while Traverser is, for the most part, a visually striking affair, this doesn’t always carry through into the imagination of some of its environments. Arguably, the game looks at its best when depicting off-kelter dystopian townscapes and not when it takes us into the dismally typical grimness of sewers and factories.

Arguably, Traverser is a linear yarn. As Valerie, the player goes from area to area, always pushing the plot forward by speaking to NPCs and completing quests for them in order to proceed further still. While the dystopian world depicted in Traverser is certainly both attractive and charming, the fact that you can’t explore more of it whilst only being able to speak to the NPC’s within it that the game deems necessary to your quest, feels like a missed opportunity, albeit one that might be addressed in a possible sequel.

When it comes to the narrative, Traverser channels the dystopian archetype with workman-like vigour. Basically, the sun has gone and given up the ghost and so, to seek out what little warmth remains, mankind has retreated into the core of the planet and created a city there and appropriately named the place Brimstone.

Where the dystopian shtick comes in though, is that we discover that Brimstone has actually been divided into upper and lower cities with the all-powerful organisation Raven Corp disproportionately dishing out breathable air between the two (you can guess which nabs the lion’s share). From here, players take control of vocally mute Valerie Bennett, who discovers that her genius inventor father has been abducted after her Traverser exam which allows her to use the gravity glove; a tool that is intrinsic to solving the game’s physics-based puzzles.

In addition to the powers bestowed upon her by the glove, Valerie can also switch between the upper and lower cities through the use of flip-switches that allow her to instantly travel between one and the other. Thematically, the difference is notable with the upper city being a posh, culturally rich area where everyone has everything in plentiful quantity, while the lower city finds itself existing in a smoggy squalor where its unfortunate denizens have to scrimp and save for whatever they can get their hands on.

The conundrums, such as they are, mostly revolve around using the gravity glove to raise, lower and rotate various objects to reach an otherwise unreachable exit and often, they prove to not be terribly original tasks with a series of pipe joining exercises in a drab sewer, for example, feeling all too familiar.

Elsewhere, boss fights figure into the game but do so in a poorly conceived capacity with most scraps usually entailing you having to throw something at something else in an extremely accurate fashion within a tiny window of opportunity to do so. As you might guess, this becomes old and keyboard head-buttingly frustrating in short order with the whole problem being exacerbated by Traverser’s less-than-intuitive controls, making you feel like you’re more at war with them than the big baddie in question.

A big part of what makes the controls feel so lacking is the fact that when it comes to platforming sections (of which there are many), keyboard input simply just doesn’t cut in the way that a controller pad would. The trouble of course, is that there is presently no controller support whatsoever; something that would seem like a egregious oversight given the abundance of Traverser’s third-person perspective kinetic shenanigans.

One significant aspect of the game that the controls fail to tarnish however, are the stealth elements which appear throughout. In these segments players must guide Valerie past the various guards and surveillance devices in order to proceed on.

Seeing as our heroine is basically incapable of combat (though theoretically the gravity glove could have lent itself to some natty applications in this regard), the stealth sections demand absolute subtlety. Should Valerie be spotted, she can absorb a few hits at range before finally succumbing while just a single strike up close is enough to put her out for the count. Regardless though, being seen is extremely difficult to recover from, especially since leaving the area and returning to it does not reset the alert levels of the enemy as it perhaps would have done in other stealth titles.

One neat little addition to the stealthy proceedings is a barrel that Valerie can stuff herself into in order to avoid detection, functioning in a fashion very much like the cardboard box from the Metal Gear Solid games. Unlike Snake’s iconic carton however, Valerie’s barrel can only be used when it’s found rather than allowing the player to carry it around with them.

Aside from the imperfect controls, another area where Traverser could stand to see a little improvement is in its camera control, or rather the lack of it. The absence of camera control is a troubling omission; especially given how understatedly pretty the visuals are. Really though, its loss is more keenly felt in gameplay terms since because you cannot change the perspective when jumping about, this causes the more difficult platforming elements to become immensely tedious as a result.

While the game doesn’t offer much in the way of longevity, airbourne trace bots can be intercepted that allow Valerie to extract intelligence from them in order to fill in some narrative blanks. As well as these flying robot birds, our plucky protagonist can also find secret documents hidden in a variety of places throughout the game that flesh out the lives of the folks living in the lower and upper cities which, in turn, help to substantiate the game’s dystopian setting that much more.