I’m not a rabid fan of the studio’s creativity Playdead, although I don’t dispute the outstanding status of her games. And I became interested in Somerville not because it is a project “from the author of Limbo and Inside”, but because I was fascinated by the setting and plot premises. A husband and wife, together with a small child and a cute dog, live in a house in the wilderness, when suddenly one terrible night they are faced with a global catastrophe – an alien invasion. The head of the family finds himself separated from his family, and the situation forces him to go on a quest: to cross dangerous territories under the control of alien invaders and adapt to a frightening and aggressive environment.
Materials on the game evoked strong associations with the film adaptation "Wars of the Worlds", which, in my opinion, very skillfully conveys the feeling of being hunted down and fear of an unknown enemy, while carefully outlining personal human problems against the backdrop of a large-scale cataclysm. So I was counting on an emotional, tear-jerking adventure, without even thinking about the gameplay prospects. Some of my expectations were met, some were not.
The landscapes are sometimes very beautiful.
The aliens are in the details
Game mechanics will really not surprise sophisticated gamers. Basically, the puzzles are based on interaction with an incomprehensible alien substance scattered around the area after the invasion. When you press one button, the protagonist melts this slurry, and makes it solid on another. The nuance is that interaction still requires a source of energy. So sometimes you have to switch something, move something and find.
Otherwise Somerville offers standard arcade action: sometimes you have to run from your pursuers, sometimes you have to hide from the gaze of aliens. It’s worth noting that, unlike all the same Limbo And Inside, the game takes place in three-dimensional format. Locations are predominantly linear, and in general, developers often keep the player in a plane that is understandable and familiar to him, but sometimes there are still flirtations with the depth of scenes and movement from the camera.
The scenes themselves are drawn very well. There are enough details and decorative elements, there are interesting transitions from one location to another, there are both open spaces and oppressive grottoes. At the same time, you regularly find objects that tell a story, present a picture of the events that took place, be it a music festival abandoned in a hurry or a dying fire surrounded by children’s drawings.
1. The slurry is melting. 2. The slurry hardens. 3. Profit!
However, in terms of artistic design, a number of problems and troubles arise. With animations in Somerville everything is mostly in order, but it jars even more when there are sudden changes in poses (this looks especially ridiculous when interacting with objects) or the main character suddenly freezes, burying himself in a pebble or other small obstacle.
It’s doubly offensive to https://kungaslottetcasino.co.uk/games/ perceive this, bearing in mind that the studio responsible for the game Jumpship organized not only by people from Playdead Dino Patti (Dino Patti), but also Chris Olsen (Chris Olsen), an animation specialist. Where such roughness comes from – one can only guess. Perhaps the very three-dimensionality of the game played a role, leaving an imprint on the behavior of objects. Well, or the team got carried away with creating a model of behavior of the alien mass with which we constantly interact and which was really implemented coolly, but did not pay enough attention to the little things.
Together with the aliens, these cute neon koloboks also arrived, as if they were trying to tell the main character something.
Please understand correctly, I’m not talking about catastrophic problems – the overall level of quality is high, and you certainly won’t grab your head while playing. It’s just that, given the narrative or even cinematic nature of the game, such shortcomings are the first thing you pay attention to, and because of this, the magic of immersion in history begins to break down.
Urgent technical flaws also do not contribute to its strengthening:
Character models constantly pass through each other without experiencing any collisions at all.
The game is poorly optimized: in the initial battle scenes with a lot of moving objects, the frames per second counter felt like it dropped to a single digit. Fortunately, later the game seemed to be rocking, and the thoughts about postponing the passage until the patches came out gradually went away.
IN Somerville There are simply not enough settings: it is impossible to adjust the screen brightness or run the game in a window; users also report that it is better not to go here at all without a gamepad.
There are no tricky puzzles with the physics of fluids, but there could be – it is generally implemented well.
Remember, not a word in human terms
There is no translation into Russian in the game, but I hasten to reassure you – it is not required here. IN Somerville there are no usual dialogues or notes, the entire narrative is built through game scenes and events, which gives you a strange feeling as if you were in a parallel universe with deaf-mute humanity. Which, in my opinion, doesn’t suit the game at all.
If in the same Limbo, for example, there was an atmosphere of another dimension and a mysterious paranormality, the viscousness of which was intensified due to the “deafness” and inhibition, then here the situation is completely different. We initially play as an ordinary person, albeit one who finds himself in extreme conditions. He sometimes sees other survivors, realizes that he is on a captured planet, but still on his own planet with the usual traces of civilization, so you expect behavior that is more down-to-earth and understandable at the everyday level. Both from the main character and from those few with whom he manages to cross paths. But absolutely everyone on the screen is stupidly silent. Because of this, again, immersion and empathy levels suffer. At some point, you stop empathizing with the characters simply because they themselves don’t seem to care, they act very detached.
Music corrects the situation, but only partly. Yes, sometimes the sad piano that reminds you of itself in cut-scenes is good, but a more soulful ambient in the game episodes would not hurt – it could perhaps take on the heavy burden of emotions.
“Hollywood” appearances in the frame did not harm any works of art?
Well, add to this whole picture of the production the fact that the last chapters sharply move the narrative away from the personal problems of an ordinary family and its survival, throwing a bunch of oddities, questions, cosmic psychologism and other proprietary “author’s” nonsense with abstract images, symbolism and all that on the fan. The game even has several endings, but their meaning is unlikely to be accessible to ordinary players in detail. This content is exclusively for big fans of SRSG and theory building, and those who like to receive specific answers to questions (yes, that’s me), unfortunately, remain on the sidelines.
I would call Somerville a failure, but a very specific one. If we consider the components of the game separately, then nowhere will you notice a glaring disaster, but almost everywhere there are offensive roughnesses, imperfections and nuances that the developers could not discern with a blurry eye.
It’s good that holding Thunderful Games bought a studio Jumpship even before the release of her debut game. Most likely due to this Patty And Olsen there will be an opportunity to take into account the experience gained, work on mistakes and in the next project again try to surprise and please everyone.
Pros: sometimes the locations look truly fascinating; good spirit "Wars of the Worlds" H.G. Wells (Herbert Wells).
Cons: a bunch of minor faults and imperfections; lousy technical condition; the game fails to captivate the player through environmental storytelling alone.