Fort Solis

It's a shame that a lot of people will miss out on Fort Solis due to the aggressively mediocre reviews. The irony is that I'm not necessarily disagreeing with them, but sometines a perfectly decent, serviceable, mediocre game is just what I need. Fort Solis is first of all, breathtakingly beautiful. Holy hell, it's among the best-looking games I've ever played, and it's an indie title. Very impressive. The art design and attention to details are off the charts. The titular base feels realistic and lived in. The art direction is magnificent. And the voice acting is spectacular. This is Troy Baker's best performance since Joel Miller in The Last of Us.

The game takes place on Mars, and it feels like a mixture of a lot of things I'm a fan of; a little bit of Moons of Madness, Tacoma, Callisto Protocol, Alien: Isolation. But it's not an action- or a flatout survival horror game. It's a slow-walking, slow burn thriller/psychological horror story. Mostly an atmospheric science fiction-mystery. Jack, the protagonist, is an engineer working on Mars who gets a distress call from an old base, Fort Solis. It's up to the player to find out what happened. His partner, Jennifer, is on the com-link. It's nothing new. The story is pretty basic, so are the twists and turns. It's just the presentation and atmosphere that makes Fort Solis, well, Fort Solid.......

However, I totally get why most people will be turned off by it. I love walking sims, but this one doesn't have a run button, the main character runs in a couple of scripted sections, but the player can't. It's feels heavy and slow, and not always to create tension. There's a point where the protagonist screams, "Fuck staying calm!" - and then proceeds to walk VERY SLOWLY. There are also a couple of groan-worthy horror-tropy moments, where characters walk into a sticky situations, almost like they have a death wish. And the QTE's (which I'm normally a fan of) seem useless and the prompts are just ridiculously short. I know that the Q is short for Quick, but it's downright silly and often not telegraphed elegantly. And the reading is tiring because the screen and map are far off from the player.

There are so many nitpicks, small technical issues and specific design choices by the creators that seem weird. They could easily have been fixed and made Fort Solis into something special. For now, it's just a good walking sim - something that's getting more and more rare. I think it's worth a try if you, like me, are into horror on seemingly deserted space stations. But wait for a sale.