Bernd
08/30/2024 (Fri) 16:40
No.52378
del
In the past weeks I tried a bunch of games. Tried either "small" ones or old.
Problem with the "small" ones that they are on the shitty Unity engine with unoptimized graphical assets and they eat more CPU than Witcher 3 on max resolution. True W3 is soon a decade old game, can't expect a fresh game in 2020+ AD to respect hardware resources.
Deadnaut
Seems like a tactical combat/exploration/horror game. Only played a very little with this.
It seems this only has these three screens and all the controls done through them. It's like a command cockpit of a spaceship where you, the player manages a small team of operatives (whom can be combat, exploration, tech oriented), accepts missions and navigate through them. This constricted view reminds me of Dam Busters, a very old bomber simulator and submarine games where they only present the instruments on the control panels and have to play through the game from there.
The atmosphere is very spot on. The looks, the sounds, the noises. The way how you control your team, where you only see abstract dots on the map, and you have a different panel to track the life signals of the crew, and how the transmission gets disrupted time to times, all adds up and you really feel that you are distanced from the your "deadnauts", that you are just some other bloke in a box trying desperately to keep them alive and go through the mission. Another parallel comes to mind: Aliens. They have the command post in the vehicle (with Gorman and Ripley) and the marines go out to recon the settler base, to figure out what happened and fight the xenomorphs. This is very much like that.
Despite all this I did play only a little. Tried character creation but it is restricted - I think have to get to a certain point in the story. They aren't generous with the points, and I believe you pretty much have to pick a flaw. One of them I noticed is that the deadnaut won't necessarily follow all orders further giving some distance from the team. Beyond this I tried the first mission, commanded the team through some rooms and corridors, examined dead aliens and scientists and whatnot. And that's about it.
The screen is too tiny for me, perhaps should play on full screen but I don't really ever do that. I just don't invest that much attention into the games, something else is always going on demanding me to check or do. Also the map being so small I couldn't command the team as quick I wished to.
From what I've seen, this is a really good concept, as far as video games go, feels very original (but I see certain sources of inspiration as I noted). Perhaps this game a big thumbs up and worth a revisit.