It is currently that time of the year when the annual Halloween event;
Fortnitemares is going on in video game
Fortnite. During this event, many horror themed skins get added to the game store, and a few weeks back a very cool looking skin got added. I picked it up, not realising it was actually a skin of the protagonist from sci-fi horror m
etroidvania video game -
End of Abyss. With the game recently released with a lean price of just over £20, I grabbed it, not even checking first to see if it was any good or not.
In the game you play as Cal - a female technician who has travelled to a remote and vast underground facility alongside her captain and three heavily armoured soldiers. Contact had been lost with the base, so they had gone there to find out what had happened to cause this. With the place on a complete lockdown, Cal's job is to disable the various security systems so that the small team can make it to the heart of the complex deep in the lower levels. It quickly becomes apparent that something catastrophic has occurred. The base's population of workers all either dead, or mutated into grotesque zombie-like creatures.
A sci-fi horror metroidvania sounded like music to my ears, I saw it as the perfect game to play this spooky month. It was apparently made by the same team that did Little Nightmares and it shows, the murky location has a pulled back isometric perspective that gives it a slight dollhouse type feel, the various places full of incidental details that tell a story without notes or dialogue. For example; the hospital wing has a morgue overflowing with corpses, offices have bodies slumped over desks, and there are signs of disaster everywhere. Collapsed walkways, flooded areas, fires, and rampaging security bots, and much of the underground complex firmly sealed shut. The isometric view reminded me of the Xbox 360 Alien Breed Evolution games. It has the same pulled back perspective to make your character appear small on screen, same twin stick shooting gameplay, and similarly detailed, though here, this game is much less linear. Of course, the game also looks a lot better graphicly here, while it maintains a moody blue tint to it throughout, the game world is split into various different feeling locations that provide variation while also seeming unified in the style. Sound design is one of most satisfying aspects here, bringing the world to life. Living quarters, labs, waterworks, industrial areas, ventilation shafts and more. Each place in classic metroidvania style reveals shortcuts to unlock, and areas that can't be explored until the correct item or weapon is discovered. Meaning that backtracking is very much recommended.. The flamethrower lets you burn away fleshy growths, the grappling hook can traverse ruined walkways and pull down raised ladders, explosives can be used to destroy weakened walls etc. The flow of the game has you opening up the various areas, locating key cards and powering-up the required systems to allow you deeper access to the base. The map screen I found to be essential. It does a good job of keeping itself updated, not only showing which doors are currently locked, but also telling you what is required to open them up. The areas are massive, and these include plenty of huge and entirely optional areas. I would say at least a quarter of the game is made up of optional spaces should you want to do more than just mainline the story. Likening it to another game, this also reminded me of Dead Space, especially with the look of the enemies as well as the transit system that acts as a fast travel between areas.
Combat is a constant, using the analogue stick to aim and shoulder button to fire. The default weapon you have is a sci-fi pistol with infinitely recharging ammo. Later upgrades allow you to perform charged shots with it for extra oomph. As you progress, various other weapons are unlocked, including a shotgun, rifle and machine gun. These guns all require ammo however, which has to be created using currency dotted around the map and dropped by enemies. To be honest, these secondary guns never felt great to use, I tended to just stick to the pistol for much of my 15 hour playthrough. Currency can also be used instead to upgrade your weapons, making them stronger and giving them additional abilities. The annoying thing with this currency is that should you die, any ammo you used remains used. This led to situations where I needed a particular ammo type to use on bosses but no currency to create it, leading to me having to grind out more by repeatedly defeating enemies and then respawning them (by using a save station) until I had enough to build up my stocks of bullets.
A key part of the combat is Cal's ability to dodge. It doesn't sound like much, but dodging gives you a few frames of invincibility, making it an essential move to master early on.
The main enemy type you will face are the zombie-like creatures, which have a slight The Last of Us look to them with their mushroom-like growths. There was a good variety of enemy types, with a whole host of different zombie types (such as hulking ones, and ones that spit acid), alongside other enemies such as giant ticks, leeches, Half-Life style head crabs, and giant wasps. There are also the droids that fire laser beams and grenades at you. There was a large amount of boss fights, usually in large arenas that has you facing off a giant mutated mass of flesh of various types. No boss looks exactly the same, but they feel very similar to battle, apart from one giant robot boss, these are all giant mutant creatures. Fighting these could be frustrating at times due to how weak your guns felt, their huge energy bars meaning they took on the feel of bullet sponges. As a reminder, there is a reload button for your guns, something I embarrassingly only realised when I was midway through the final boss fight of End of Abyss!
The worst part of the game for me was the wafer thin story. Cal herself is a silent protagonist, the people she is with do speak but they are very cagey with their information, and never say anything interesting. The intention with the story being barebones is probably to make everything seem mysterious, but I became irritated how nothing much is ever explained. You can find notes dotted around the environments but most of these were hardly interesting. I really hoped that by the games end there would have been a satisfying lore dump, but alas, this was not to be. The end credits rolled with me still not even sure just why we my character had ever travelled to this facility in the first place, my synopsis earlier in this review being what I guessed was going on. The poor story was a real downer for me, sure the environmental storytelling was decent, but I was really yearning for something meatier and more complicated than what was provided.
I really enjoyed my time with End of Abyss, blasting through it in about half a week. It wasn't perfect though, a pathetic story, and later on especially, it became all too easy to get cornered by mobs of enemies and obliterated within moments or to get stuck on bits of the game's scenery (leading to one moment where I was forced to close down my game). I did like playing this, a good graphical style, and I liked the design of the game world, even if it occasionally did feel a little similar, and there was a bit too much backtracking required. With a few weeks since completing the game at the time of review, I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it.
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