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Astronaut rather than just mechanically control him. If most of that information had been shown early on, I would’ve found it a little easier to root for Mr. That’s simply not enough information to get me invested. Instead, one story nugget is dropped at the beginning, another appears two hours later, and the last happens 30 minutes before the end. This would’ve worked if the personal bits had happened more frequently. “OK, now we’ll slowly tease out a story about the astronaut’s wife to give him some character development and make you feel sorry for him.” Lifeless Planet said. I admit that this was interesting up to a point, but half the game is spent chasing this mystery woman, who is, naturally, dressed in a glorified sports bra and shorts. “OK, well how about if we put a single human on the planet who shows up once in a while to dangle a carrot in front of you?” “Well, how about we introduce an alien side-plot?” The problem is that this narrative wasn’t interesting to me. Every 20 minutes or so I’d pick up a new document telling me something about how Russia found a way to this planet and wanted to colonize it as a way of sticking it to everyone back on Earth. Most of the narrative is gleaned through (surprise!) text and audio logs in the environment. It actually has too many threads, and they’re disseminated in badly paced, annoying ways. I can’t fault Lifeless Planet for not having a story because, by god, it tries. A title with one-note gameplay needs two things to keep me invested: an intriguing story and high stakes. If being on a barren planet for an entire game sounds boring, that’s because it is. Most of the playtime is spent running around a vast, empty landscape and using a small jetpack (basically a double-jump) to get around. Lifeless Planet is primarily a third-person platformer. Nothing appears as the original scans showed, so players take control of him to run and hop around with the goal of figuring out what happened. Astronaut crash lands, he steps out of his pod into an orange, deserted landscape.
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The planet, based on satellite scans, shows intelligent life and vegetation – perfect for future habitation. Lifeless Planet has players hopping into the space suit of a nameless astronaut who’s making a 15-year journey to an unnamed planet.
#LIFELESS PLANET PREMIER EDITION RATING PS4#
Sparky and Dan already hit the PC and Xbox One releases, and I’m now diving into the new PS4 iteration. After debuting on PC in 2014, it hit Xbox One in 2015 and now it’s on PS. Because we fine folks at GameCritics are on top of things, we’ve reviewed every version of it. Stage 2 Studios’ Lifeless Planet is a prime example. WTF Of course the only NPC is a woman wearing a skin-tight cut-off tank and shorts.Īs is the trend with Kickstarted PC games, if they’re successfully funded, they seem to eventually find their way to consoles sooner or later. LOW Falling to my death due to imprecise platforming. HIGH The music is too good for this game.
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