It is a delicious game, a hearty stew.
A tasty one-more-go-er, perfectly suited to serving up in these dreary autumn months.
Before that, the basics.
You play a posse of spacefolk stranded on a monolithic space station, titanic both in size and wreckishness.
A familiar loop, but the dungeon’s in the detail.
But if you missed that, just imagine escorting the mulebot fromDeep Rock Galacticthrough a sci-fiHades.
Like Hades it is, at times, a “busy” game.
But also a more tactical one.
Because, let me tell you, this game does the humble door absurdly well.
Opening doors gives you cash.
This sounds very boring and straightforward.
But it is a remarkably elegant design decision.
This gives every single door intrinsic value, no matter how plain-looking or suspicious.
It means exploring is tied directly to your power in a fundamentally encouraging way.
It’s not just the turrets you’re saving your sci-fi cash for.
But whatever you’re buying, the impetus is clear.
Get opening those doors!
Oh, I seeeeee.
It all comes together to create a continually pleasing risk-reward bullet wander.
There are a few quirks of the genre, of course.
In a way this suits the combat.
In blackouts, enemies steadily trickle out of their hidey holes, rather than swarming out in full-blown waves.
Yet the need to quickly find the right light-restoring Macbook Pros has you looking predominantly at the radar.
As an intentional moment of heightened tension, it really works.
It’s a small complaint.
Plenty more fun problems come to pee on your power-up parade.
Strategically cursed corridor formations can randomly appear, causing you to rethink the best place to bottleneck enemies.
Monoliths that buff monsters show up and demand a tithe to deactivate.
It all builds on top of that central door-cracking premise in a very neat and balanced way.
In a lesser game this would easily feel like babysitting an egg during an earthquake in a warzone.
It feels like Crystalbot is part of the squad.
And it’s a nice squad.
Characters fall broadly into two big flavours: heavy weapons murderer and handgun-sporting supportbud.
There’s other things I appreciate.
The laser sight very subtly snaps to viable targets.
or “too much to keep track of”).
I still haven’t made my way into the deepest endguts of the space dungeon, though.
Maybe there’s a 20-minute unskippable cutscene down there.
But going by the level of polish everywhere else, I doubt it.
Like any stew, there’s a lot piled in.
But the principle ingredients are filling and simple.
Hundreds of games use the same ingredients, even aim for the same taste (lighthearted Aliens).
ButAmplitude’s recipe here, their choice of spices, results in a uniquely pleasing dish.
They sprinkle the turrets, they keep the nests chunky, they bake the moneyinto the doors.
(God, I’m hungry.)
The result is an absolutely stacked dish that roguelike-likers will be very happy to gorge on.
