Review for The Station. Game for PlayStation Network, PC, Steam, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Linux, the video game was released on 20/02/2018
The Station is a first-person, sci-fi themed puzzle game that will debut on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on February 20, which was developed by the homonymous production company: The Station.
Our dear friend Spazio.
From a narrative point of view, The Station remains tied to many of the clichés that distinguish the sci-fi thriller genre, while not denying some interesting choices. The player will take on the role of a reconnaissance specialist sent to a research space station with which they have lost contact, in order to find out what happened to the crew: the space station with three specialists on board, had the task of monitoring and studying an alien species present on a corrupt planet. Between small puzzles and audio recordings, the player will move between the two levels of the station to shed light on the events that have taken place inside.
With a duration of about 3 hours, which can be extended to 4 if you solve the secondary puzzles and look for all the audio recordings, the game does not exploit the interesting narrative premises, seeming almost a prologue of itself rather than an entire adventure. The rather banal pace of events does not even take advantage of the thriller setting to envelop the player with feelings of anxiety and occlusion, resulting "in the long run" flat and monotonous. Only on rare occasions, often within vocal recordings, does the game find intriguing ideas.
Problematic gameplay
Even from the point of view of gameplay, The Station does not improve the qualitative level proposed narratively. The game, which develops entirely in first person, simulates the presence, on the head of the protagonist, of an augmented reality viewer which allows you to listen to the discussions that took place in the various places of the station. Pressing the triangle button (Y on Xbox) will bring up the Augmented Reality Menu which will allow you to see the map, inventory and mission objectives. As for the commands, in addition to the analogs to which the movement and management of the camera are entrusted, the game will allow you to lower yourself with the lower left backbone, to shoot with the right one, to collect objects and interact with the upper right backbone and to examine closely the objects collected with the accident.
Unfortunately, we must note that apart from the button for interacting with objects, running and lowering are useless during the game as there are no moments that require their use. The puzzles that mark the progress of the adventure are not intuitive, they require a careful exploration of the environments and a knowledge of the events narrated.; although they are therefore a pleasant surprise, the scarce quantity of them and the absence of the Spanish language mean that the judgment on this aspect is also not positive.
Graphics and Technique
Even from a technical point of view, the game has its limits. More than once we have happened to drop below 20 frames per second and the interaction with objects in some cases seemed rather problematic. Graphically, the title didn't make us scream at a miracle but speaking not of a triple A, it didn't even hit us in a negative way. On the other hand, the dubbing was excellent, which gave a characterization to each character, allowing the vocal recognition of figures that appear little on the screen.
Judging The Station was very complicated; the duration, the inconclusiveness of certain gameplay choices and a rare paucity in terms of content take away from the title the possibility of expressing what probably good lay in the authors' ideas. The desire to focus on a deep plot, to give space mainly to the narrative, and to provide a unique and particular vision of the sci-fi genre can be glimpsed yes, but at the count of the facts this is not enough.
► The Station is an Adventure-Puzzle game developed and published by The Station for PlayStation Network, PC, Steam, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Linux, the game was released on 20/02/2018
