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Remoteness – Review

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It’s 2034 and you wake up after a nightmare to find the district evacuated and isolated by the army, after a bizarre electrical meteor shower hit the earth, bringing some alien beings to ground.

Straight away Remoteness throws you a few problems to contend with. You’re an asthmatic, who requires an inhaler and regular occasions otherwise they’re just going to drop dead. I’d personally hope anyone suffering such a severe bout of asthma would have a stockpile of inhalers nearby, but sure enough, you haven’t, and finding them isn’t an easy task either.

It’d probably help if you could just head to the pharmacy to stock up, but unfortunately you seem to have lost a large portion of your memory because there’s no guidance, arrows pointing in the right direction or even a vague map to follow. Instead, you’re given complete freedom to explore or get lost wherever you like.
There’s also the choice of changing the time of day while in your apartment, with the promise of nightfall providing more cover from soldiers, but the added threat from these aliens if you’re in the dark.

It all adds up to quite a confusing experience, with no direction. You will be greeted by a flurry of little blue pop-ups, and a couple of cut-scenes to sway you in the right direction, but these are either lacking information or too vague.

The concept of a free-roaming shooter, reminds me of the early Far Cry and Crysis games, and I can appreciate how much freedom and opportunity the developers are trying to give to the player, but there’s more than a few issues which will start long before you get out of your apartment.

First up is the control scheme, with the vast majority of FPS titles, RT is fire, and you expect LT to be aim, for some reason LB is aim and LT is weapon select – which feels completely unnatural, but that doesn’t start to explain the issue’s you’ll face as soon as you actually move.
Clearly designed for PC, the port to consoles is incredibly poor, the default camera speed is way too fast, and you’ll need to drop that sensitivity down to 30% to make control even remotely playable.
Any faster any aiming and selecting items is near-impossible and any lower, and you’ll be dead long before turning round to see where those bullets are coming from.

Even 30% is far from perfect, and the overall balance is appalling, standing still and spinning to the right, it takes 5 seconds to do a complete 360 degree spin, but turn the other way and your movement speed is halved, taking less than 3 seconds to spin all the way around.

Sadly it’s as bad as you can imagine and any sort of gameplay enjoyment is drastically shot down, when the balance between something as simple as turning at the same speed can’t be achieved.

Tasked with reviewing the title, I continued to endure these issues, and managed to explore the area. On one occasion I managed to get to the nearby park with an electrified meteor in the centre, and somehow managed to kill off the 4-5 guards nearby, unfortunately breaking into a slight jog must have kicked off that fatal asthma and I was dead before I had chance to leave the park.
another time, managing to clear the park again, I took a different exit, and upon seeing two guards, was shot dead before I had chance to fire back.

Time and time again I was finding myself back at square one, having cleared certain areas and then dying and being reset back to the apartment without saving any progress.
It seems finding a group of survivors will give you a checkpoint, but these are few and far between, and it was by share coincidence I discovered this, because once again the game gives you zero advice or guidance.

It all sounds pretty terrible at the moment, but giving a little more time before the asthma kills you off, and fine-tuning aim sensitivity could potentially be fixed in a future update, so let’s move on to the presentation.

Graphically it’s a bit mixed, at times I was impressed with the overall quality, but then others it felt more in line with the graphics from 10 years ago, rather than a modern-day shooter.
It’s quite fair to say it feels like a very early build of a game like Crysis, with a few modern textures thrown on top of it.
Sadly that’s about as positive as we can get, textures are so variable that you can stand still and see some items perfectly clear, and then other objects right next to them look blurred and low quality, and there’s regular pop-in even at medium distances, non-player character animation is poor, there’s not the clarity to see enemies from distance, but it feels like you’re wearing an electric-pink florescent suit because in daylight enemies will see long before you’re within shooting range.

Audio has a few decent spots, but it all still feels very dated, voice lines are repeated, the drone that accompanies you feels like a broken record, there’s very little ambient sound expect the occasional helicopter passing overhead and while some weapon sounds aren’t bad, there’s very little audible variation.

With an expected price of £19.99, remoteness sadly fails to provide anywhere enough quality to justify the price tag, I can fully appreciate the freedom the developers are trying to give to the player, but even free-roam games need a little guidance at times, even if it’s just a map, or advice on which vague area to head towards, sadly the periodic little pop-ups really don’t do much to appease the lost feeling.

I’m rarely overly critical about games, and I’m happy to put the patchy graphics and sound down to its indie roots, but beyond gameplay weaknesses, the sensitivity problems and unbalanced performance make it impossible to recommend.

Remoteness

Review by Lee Palmer

Gameplay
50%
Engagement
35%
Graphics
50%
Sound
40%
Value
35%

Summary

I’m rarely overly critical about games, and I’m happy to put the patchy graphics and sound down to its indie roots, but beyond gameplay weaknesses, the sensitivity problems and unbalanced performance make it impossible to recommend.

42%

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