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| Dull, Dreary... What a day for a fight... | Everyone just loved to warm up around the laser fire... |
Apart from the game's inherent instabilities, there are other problems too. Game Designer's Lesson Number One: You do not create atmosphere by including screeds of text and a character who is noble, yet confused and trying to find his inner self. You create atmosphere with good story line, good game play, and good environments. Etrom: The Astral Essence manages to fail on most counts.
It's tempting to review this game for what it might have been, but I just can't. This is just one of these games where the potential oozes, but the execution is so poor that it is just a waste of time. If this thing worked, it might be great. The fact is, it doesn't.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, point and click is an overused control system that needs to be configured correctly and fine tuned to perfection in order to work well. Etrom relies on a point and click system which is frustratingly bad in places. When I say frustratingly bad, I mean that you find yourself looking deep into the essence of a concrete ledge, whilst your character gets shot repetitively and you click away like a rat in a clinical trial trying to get a pellet, sometimes to no avail.
Perhaps that was part of the point, maybe Etrom comes with a little piece of code that tracks how long you put up with ridiculous glitches until you uninstall the thing in disgust. I do hope it serves some other purpose, because as a game it is pretty lacking.
It also comes with an incredibly annoying sequence which plays every time you load the game up. Guess what guys? We don't need to see this conflicted nansy pansy soldier's story every time we start the game. Clearly someone was very proud of that sequence, which is fine, but play it over and over to yourself, alone, in your bedroom, in the moonlight with a glass of wine if you want, just don't inflict it upon the rest of us. It's not our kink.
When it comes to story, the story line is over stated, thrown in your face again and again, and yet somehow still incredibly vague. It's a little like watching a sci fi therapy session from inside the patient's mind. There's something about good and evil, and an astral essencey thing which gave this guy an axe, and your journey is to find out the truth.
Once you've tried to get through the very first level, had a couple of crashes, and been gunned down by beings that look suspiciously like storm troopers, you might decide that you don't give a damn what the truth is.
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| The future is gray chic... | YARRRRR ... What else can I say? |
Graphically, this is a bland offering, textures are rough, and the whole thing looks very much last millennium. The sound is not much better I'm afraid, as is often the case with games, if one sucks, the other does too. The poor attention to environment makes it very hard to engage in the game, and makes everything seem rather contrived. Apparently the soldiers in this dystopia have been trained to not only shoot first and ask questions later, they don't even speak first. They simply cut you down.
What can you do to get away from these silent killers? Simply keep running. That's right, they won't follow you, so as long as you run around a corner or something, you're safe.
The controls are not much better, you can run, walk, or sneak. Running will only get you surrounded by a mob of guards, whereas walking will allow you to just keep on cruising as they send lead searing into your body. Sneak allows you to sneak behind them in theory, but boy are those some wily guards, and in the end, all sneak does is slow you down enough for them to slaughter you.
Strangely, although there are enough guards around to sink a ship, they are apparently not in communication with one another, even if they're just around the side of the building, they're totally surprised to see you.
There is one nice touch to the AI, and that is if there are two soldiers both attacking you and you kill one of them, the other runs away. Very realistic, and a glimpse into what could have been if a bit more time had been spent fine tuning and less plumbing the navel of the character's soul.
It's not all soldiers, and the game does progress as you might expect to bigger and badder enemies, and you get bigger and badder weapons of destruction. There are various guns and whatnot, and you can use mechs as well. Sounds great don't it? I wish.
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| Green is also like, so in, but use it sparingly... |
Stuck between a rock and a mech... just my luck... |
In short, this game needs to be taken back home by its ear and given a good spanking. It has potential, but it was not ready to be released by a long shot, and much more attention to stability, camera work, and a myriad of other details needs to be given. Bad Game. Go to your room.
Top Game Moment:
TOP GAME MOMENT
Didn’t really have one to be honest, I suppose not bursting something with frustration was a high point.
