There’s something calming a few clichéd sci-fi horror, isn’t there? Deserted area stations, eerie corridors, and the countless potentialities of hazard make up a style that has efficiently infiltrated nearly each format of leisure. Fort Solis is simply the most recent, bringing with it a subdued sci-fi story, voice appearing royalty within the type of Roger Clark (Purple Lifeless Redemption 2) and Troy Baker (The Final of Us), and a gameplay expertise that’s in components enthralling and others excruciatingly tedious.
As we first walked the halls of the titular Fort Solis we couldn’t assist however be reminded of sci-fi film classics resembling Sunshine, Moon, and even Occasion Horizon. Responding to a mysterious misery sign, engineer Jack Leary (Clark) makes his solution to the Martian station to research. With its gradual pacing and a focus to element, we have been already on edge. Not due to something we have been seeing, however the potential for what we have been lacking.
It’s a component of the sport that its opening chapters seize so effectively, made all the higher by the backwards and forwards banter between Jack and his in-ear coworker Jessica, performed to perfection by Julia Brown. As their dialog progresses from garbage zombie TV exhibits to slight pangs of concern, there’s a good swelling of pressure that solely serves to amplify your curiosity.
To satiate stated curiosity, exploration is on the coronary heart of the Fort Solis expertise. You’ll be studying emails, noseying by way of private belongings, watching video logs and customarily taking within the environmental particulars of the station within the hope of discovering what occurred to its crew. Whereas nowhere close to the density or high quality, it does have echoes of video games like Gone Residence, the place you’ll fill in quite a lot of the context of its story by taking in all these non-obligatory particulars. The probably downside for some is that exploring the station is about all there may be to the sport.
Whereas definitely glammed up, Fort Solis is a strolling simulator expertise, which means that there are not any fight, puzzle, or stealth mechanics to the sport. You’ll stroll very slowly by way of the station — and no there isn’t even a “barely quicker stroll” button. Regardless of this, the expertise will take now not than 4 hours to finish.
This partly is to the sport’s profit, because it permits us to get pleasure from a streamlined narrative expertise, with out being slowed down by crafting, weapon upgrading, or needlessly complicated mechanics. Nonetheless, as Fort Solis steadily expands, the sport slows to a snail’s tempo with ventures to new areas taking a number of minutes at a time. The sport tries its greatest to fill these moments with one thing, however as a rule you are left with a tedious slog as Jack ambles his solution to his subsequent location like he’s acquired on a regular basis on the planet. It may be jarring too, as the sport will sometimes provide you with a spurt of motion the place you’ll pace by way of a whole space through a cutscene. But regardless of the dramatic nature of that second, Jack goes proper again to his leisurely strolling tempo.
At occasions, you’ll additionally expertise QTEs or button prompts to seemingly give the participant one thing to do throughout moments of traversal or aforementioned spurts of motion. Nonetheless, due to their slick white design it’s really easy to overlook these prompts, and a scarcity of audio cue means you by no means actually know after they’re going to pop up. That then leaves the gameplay expertise a reasonably sparse one, which makes the sport’s lacklustre second half all of the extra monotonous.
There’s a truthful quantity of backtracking in Fort Solis as you open beforehand locked doorways or degree up your safety clearance. But since traversal is one thing just for essentially the most affected person, we regularly questioned whether or not we actually needed to know what was behind these doorways. Within the latter components of the sport you even have the choice to journey between buildings through the dusty floor or the claustrophobic tunnels. It’s a pleasant characteristic on paper, letting you select your personal degree of horror, nevertheless it rapidly devolves into “which manner is faster?”.
Traversal turns into all of the extra uninteresting as soon as the narrative pulls again the veil. To us at the very least, it was fairly apparent what was happening about an hour or so in, and the sport steadily does what you form of anticipate — simply three hours later. All types of pressure or nervousness that we felt in these opening chapters have been passed by the ultimate hour, and the credit (and put up credit score scene) rapidly induced a shrug of the shoulders.
It’s a disgrace as a result of the central performances from Baker, Clark and Brown are all superb, truly. Troy Baker particularly delivers an excellent and nuanced efficiency, which must be recommended because you witness most of it by way of video logs. The chemistry between Clark’s Jack and Brown’s Jessica additionally fuelled these opening chapters, so it was disappointing anytime they misplaced comms for narrative causes.
The sport can be a looker. Working on Unreal Engine 5, it’ll undoubtedly catch your eye at occasions with a fantastic stability between its animation, lighting, and visible element. There may be an possibility between a efficiency and high quality mode, however we largely caught with efficiency. Efficiency struggles to keep up its larger framerate, however it’s higher than the extreme dips that high quality mode makes, partnered up with a bizarre blotchy impact to its visuals on sure surfaces.
And lastly, we have been supremely disenchanted by the shortage of DualSense implementation in Fort Solis. The sport is so sporadic with its use of the characteristic, the place sure actions that don’t warrant it get a thick rumble, and different apparent moments are left with a disappointing vacancy. To us, DualSense being correctly applied right into a strolling sim expertise like this might have definitely amplified that pressure, and even helped out with the refined button prompts.
Conclusion
Fort Solis begins out promising, with an eerie and mysterious narrative that simply appears to get every thing proper. From environmental particulars to pacing, this opening act genuinely had us considering we had a Firewatch or Everyone’s Gone To Rapture on our arms. Nonetheless, as the sport begins to broaden, the pacing tanks, the story fumbles its manner throughout the end line, and the gameplay expertise makes us wish to throw our DualSense off the wall. There are a selection of how through which we needs to be impressed by the sport — it’s made by a ten individual staff in any case — however ultimately Fort Solis is an expertise as dusty because the pink planet itself.