21st December 2023, 7:15 PM
My friend recommended this to me over the summer and I decided to try it out. I'm loving it so far. Controls are surprisingly smooth in a way that isn't always the case for third person shooters. Aside from your standard guns (single-shot pistol, burse-fire pistol, shotgun, etc), you have a very nice combat mechanic where you can telekinetically pick up nearby objects and chuck them at enemies.
But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. You play as Jesse Faden, a woman who has decided to enter the fictional three-letter agency called FBC (Federal Bureau of Control), to search for her brother. The two of you were separated as children during a paranormal event involving a slide at a playground.
Yes, it's a bit silly, as is the plot point that once you enter the building, you swiftly become the new director of the FBC. I guess internal promotions aren't practiced there. Details are a bit fuzzy (I began the game a few weeks ago), but to my recollection, Jesse is bestowed her new leadership role by the old director, who exists somewhere as a ghost nearby his corpse.
He marvels at Jesse's ability to wield his service pistol, which I guess indicates her own superpowers, which I believe were granted to her by the aforementioned paranormal event. There's some kind of psychic presence that she continually talks to, which is also directly linked to the same childhood experience.
So now, as director, Jesse's first, well, directive, is to eliminate an evil spiritual presence that has taken hold of the entire building. Which is enormous, by the way. More on that later. This presence is called the Hiss, and multitudes of workers in lab coats are possessed, hovering ten feet in the air, chanting to themselves. Some are innocuous, just chilling out and meditating with their mantra I guess, but others have gone full satanic and glow crimson red and shoot at you with demon weapons.
Jesse herself is basically a female Keanu Reeves, very laconic, wooden, matter-of-fact. She might say a line or two that I guess is supposed to be snarky, but just sounds like an autistic person trying to imitate a normie. Which is all fine, well, and good - I'm not casting shade at neurodivergent peeps. Perhaps it will be important to her character later on.
Okay, enough about the story and characters, which like I said, are a little hokey, but are also kind of fun. The gameplay is fantastic. Environments are destructible, and littered with items that you can pick up with the wave of your hand and hurl at enemies. It's very satisfying to switch between shooting them up, and as your ammo recharges, picking up a nearby bench and hurling it at them. If no item is nearby, Jesse's telekinesis will yank out chunks of concrete from the walls and floors.
You get other powers too, like dodging (basically just throwing your body ten feet in any given direction) and levitating. I can't stress enough how natural it feels to maneuver, which is a breath of fresh air, because some of the earlier-gen games I was revisiting (Perfect Dark and Metroid Prime) were lacking in this regard. (But to be fair, it's hard to pull off smooth acrobatics in the first person.) Even aiming feels easier than what I've been grappling with recently.
The game is challenging, but not too vexing. Which means it's probably too easy for your more hardcore flavor of gamers. But I'm okay with it, it's a damn nice ride.
The game is not linear. In fact, it's kind of a mini-open-world. The FBC's facility is *enormous*, with plenty of side-quests along the way. Side-quests grant you different kinds of points that you can cash in for new abilities - think Horizon Zero Dawn or in the Mouth Shadow of Mordor.
The game fosters an eerie atmosphere, but sometimes it tries too hard to be creepy and it falls flat. For instance, there are instructional videos with puppets that you can find at various points. Think the Candle Cove creepypasta: a low quality kids show with distorted sound effects that borders on nightmarish. It's kind of neat but, uh, why would the bureau be creating puppet shows for their adult employees? Maybe there's some paranormal explanation that I haven't found yet. Perhaps it's in one of the hundred or so documents of lore that are littered about the facility, which is a fun extra, but I got tired of reading them. I was never one for SCPs, but these are be like catnip for SCP lovers... well, the whole game is, really.
I believe this has been out a few years already, so if you haven't played it yet, I recommend it.
But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. You play as Jesse Faden, a woman who has decided to enter the fictional three-letter agency called FBC (Federal Bureau of Control), to search for her brother. The two of you were separated as children during a paranormal event involving a slide at a playground.
Yes, it's a bit silly, as is the plot point that once you enter the building, you swiftly become the new director of the FBC. I guess internal promotions aren't practiced there. Details are a bit fuzzy (I began the game a few weeks ago), but to my recollection, Jesse is bestowed her new leadership role by the old director, who exists somewhere as a ghost nearby his corpse.
He marvels at Jesse's ability to wield his service pistol, which I guess indicates her own superpowers, which I believe were granted to her by the aforementioned paranormal event. There's some kind of psychic presence that she continually talks to, which is also directly linked to the same childhood experience.
So now, as director, Jesse's first, well, directive, is to eliminate an evil spiritual presence that has taken hold of the entire building. Which is enormous, by the way. More on that later. This presence is called the Hiss, and multitudes of workers in lab coats are possessed, hovering ten feet in the air, chanting to themselves. Some are innocuous, just chilling out and meditating with their mantra I guess, but others have gone full satanic and glow crimson red and shoot at you with demon weapons.
Jesse herself is basically a female Keanu Reeves, very laconic, wooden, matter-of-fact. She might say a line or two that I guess is supposed to be snarky, but just sounds like an autistic person trying to imitate a normie. Which is all fine, well, and good - I'm not casting shade at neurodivergent peeps. Perhaps it will be important to her character later on.
Okay, enough about the story and characters, which like I said, are a little hokey, but are also kind of fun. The gameplay is fantastic. Environments are destructible, and littered with items that you can pick up with the wave of your hand and hurl at enemies. It's very satisfying to switch between shooting them up, and as your ammo recharges, picking up a nearby bench and hurling it at them. If no item is nearby, Jesse's telekinesis will yank out chunks of concrete from the walls and floors.
You get other powers too, like dodging (basically just throwing your body ten feet in any given direction) and levitating. I can't stress enough how natural it feels to maneuver, which is a breath of fresh air, because some of the earlier-gen games I was revisiting (Perfect Dark and Metroid Prime) were lacking in this regard. (But to be fair, it's hard to pull off smooth acrobatics in the first person.) Even aiming feels easier than what I've been grappling with recently.
The game is challenging, but not too vexing. Which means it's probably too easy for your more hardcore flavor of gamers. But I'm okay with it, it's a damn nice ride.
The game is not linear. In fact, it's kind of a mini-open-world. The FBC's facility is *enormous*, with plenty of side-quests along the way. Side-quests grant you different kinds of points that you can cash in for new abilities - think Horizon Zero Dawn or in the Mouth Shadow of Mordor.
The game fosters an eerie atmosphere, but sometimes it tries too hard to be creepy and it falls flat. For instance, there are instructional videos with puppets that you can find at various points. Think the Candle Cove creepypasta: a low quality kids show with distorted sound effects that borders on nightmarish. It's kind of neat but, uh, why would the bureau be creating puppet shows for their adult employees? Maybe there's some paranormal explanation that I haven't found yet. Perhaps it's in one of the hundred or so documents of lore that are littered about the facility, which is a fun extra, but I got tired of reading them. I was never one for SCPs, but these are be like catnip for SCP lovers... well, the whole game is, really.
I believe this has been out a few years already, so if you haven't played it yet, I recommend it.