I first noticed this game when it was revealed at Summer Games Fest and it looked like it was right up my alley. I love Sci-Fi, I like horror/thriller, and I do enjoy good visuals. This game ticks those boxes so I wishlisted it right away and bought it on release. These are my thoughts after two playthroughs.

STORY:
The story here is the main focus of the game. And I found it very intriguing for the most part. You play as Jack Leary (voiced by Roger Clark) who is part of a two-person operation at a base on Mars called Fort Minor when an alarm beacon goes off for a distant base, the titular Fort Solis. You head off by yourself with your coworker on comms, Jessica Appleton (voiced by Julia Brown), to keep you company as you explore the base to find out what's wrong. The story has a good pace to it, it sets up a very creepy atmosphere that left me personally craving each next morsel of the plot. The majority of the story told here is told through audio logs, video logs and emails.

I did enjoy the story quite a bit, and as it's the main attraction for this game that's a good thing. However it must be said that the ending is kind of underwhelming. I was reading every email, watching every video log, listening to every audio file and by the end of the story I was left slightly confused, still needing to put pieces together myself. It just felt lacklustre to me, however all of the build up and the journey to the end was very exciting and I will liken this to a 4 episode mini series as you'd find on Netflix.

GAMEPLAY:
The gameplay here is mostly walking. That's what you'll be doing in this game. It's listed as a walking simulator on Steam and that is the perfect description for it. There are other small things you will need to do, such as find batteries to open doors and solve some simple puzzles. There are also quick time events in this game and geez they are pretty savage. The time you have to press some of them is extremely small. The QTE's don't really impact the story too much, save for some. I won't pretend that the gameplay is amazing here but as a walking simulator I expect no more than what was delivered. I did enjoy myself, taking my time exploring Fort Solis and looking at all the details in the environment. The game is very atmospheric so that helps a lot.

GRAPHICS & AUDIO:
Visually the game is striking. I loved the look of it, it paints a very grim and atmospheric picture for you to sink into. There's really nothing else to do other than sings it's praises in this category, however I will say that at times the characters dialogue and lips were out of sync, at least for me. This wasn't during cut scenes but during gameplay it was quite bad.

The sound is amazing. All of the noises happening inside of the base with the low, intensely booming music backdrop give to the feeling of being trapped, that something is always waiting around the next corner. I really enjoyed the sound of this game. This game also knows when to keep quiet which is something not a lot of games these days seem to do. Sometimes less is more, especially for a game trying to keep up the tension. And not to mention the voice acting. It's really quite good, one of the better written and acted games I've played for quite a while. In particular I want to praise Julia Brown's performance as Jessica. She sounds extremely genuine which was very nice.

PERFORMANCE & BUGS
I played the game on PC with an RTX 2080 Ti, an i9 9900K, 32GB's of RAM on Windows 10 with and SSD. For me the performance was a bit choppy. This game seemed to be able to hold a stable 60 at times but then it would suddenly hitch quite bad, most commonly when going into a new area. I ended up lowering the frame rate cap to 30 and that did make it a lot more bearable for me. I do not mind 30 FPS as long as it's stable so for me it was a lot better. But there is no denying that the game feels slightly unpolished or undertweaked for PC.

As for bugs I didn't really come across any, none that stand out in my memory. The game seemed pretty bug free to me. The one exception to this is two instances where the controller inputs stayed on the screen and I'd have to open my wrist device and close it again to get rid of it. This only happened to me twice in about 10 hours of play.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:
I really think this game is quite good for how much it costs. I live in Australia and new games tend to be $90 to $120 these days, a lot of money no matter how you look at it. I got this game during launch week so it was 10% cheaper than normal but even at full price it's only $40. For me the game is well worth that amount of money. You'd be paying the same for a mini series Bluray set at a retail store.

The game has some issues but none that prevented me from enjoying my experience. I'd be keen to play a game from these developers again, or if they ever release a sequel of some kind. The graphics and audio is amazing, the story is good except for the underwhelming ending and I think if you enjoy some decent stories and have some love for taking your time and letting yourself sink right into a rich world full of mystery, you'll like this game. I definitely recommend it.

I first noticed this game when it was revealed at Summer Games Fest and it looked like it was right up my alley. I love Sci-Fi, I like horror/thriller, and I do enjoy good visuals. This game ticks those boxes so I wishlisted it right away and bought it on release. These are my thoughts after two playthroughs. [b]STORY:[/b] The story here is the main focus of the game. And I found it very intriguing for the most part. You play as Jack Leary (voiced by Roger Clark) who is part of a two-person operation at a base on Mars called Fort Minor when an alarm beacon goes off for a distant base, the titular Fort Solis. You head off by yourself with your coworker on comms, Jessica Appleton (voiced by Julia Brown), to keep you company as you explore the base to find out what's wrong. The story has a good pace to it, it sets up a very creepy atmosphere that left me personally craving each next morsel of the plot. The majority of the story told here is told through audio logs, video logs and emails. I did enjoy the story quite a bit, and as it's the main attraction for this game that's a good thing. However it must be said that the ending is kind of underwhelming. I was reading every email, watching every video log, listening to every audio file and by the end of the story I was left slightly confused, still needing to put pieces together myself. It just felt lacklustre to me, however all of the build up and the journey to the end was very exciting and I will liken this to a 4 episode mini series as you'd find on Netflix. [b]GAMEPLAY:[/b] The gameplay here is mostly walking. That's what you'll be doing in this game. It's listed as a walking simulator on Steam and that is the perfect description for it. There are other small things you will need to do, such as find batteries to open doors and solve some simple puzzles. There are also quick time events in this game and geez they are pretty savage. The time you have to press some of them is extremely small. The QTE's don't really impact the story too much, save for some. I won't pretend that the gameplay is amazing here but as a walking simulator I expect no more than what was delivered. I did enjoy myself, taking my time exploring Fort Solis and looking at all the details in the environment. The game is very atmospheric so that helps a lot. [b]GRAPHICS & AUDIO:[/b] Visually the game is striking. I loved the look of it, it paints a very grim and atmospheric picture for you to sink into. There's really nothing else to do other than sings it's praises in this category, however I will say that at times the characters dialogue and lips were out of sync, at least for me. This wasn't during cut scenes but during gameplay it was quite bad. The sound is amazing. All of the noises happening inside of the base with the low, intensely booming music backdrop give to the feeling of being trapped, that something is always waiting around the next corner. I really enjoyed the sound of this game. This game also knows when to keep quiet which is something not a lot of games these days seem to do. Sometimes less is more, especially for a game trying to keep up the tension. And not to mention the voice acting. It's really quite good, one of the better written and acted games I've played for quite a while. In particular I want to praise Julia Brown's performance as Jessica. She sounds extremely genuine which was very nice. [b]PERFORMANCE & BUGS[/b] I played the game on PC with an RTX 2080 Ti, an i9 9900K, 32GB's of RAM on Windows 10 with and SSD. For me the performance was a bit choppy. This game seemed to be able to hold a stable 60 at times but then it would suddenly hitch quite bad, most commonly when going into a new area. I ended up lowering the frame rate cap to 30 and that did make it a lot more bearable for me. I do not mind 30 FPS as long as it's stable so for me it was a lot better. But there is no denying that the game feels slightly unpolished or undertweaked for PC. As for bugs I didn't really come across any, none that stand out in my memory. The game seemed pretty bug free to me. The one exception to this is two instances where the controller inputs stayed on the screen and I'd have to open my wrist device and close it again to get rid of it. This only happened to me twice in about 10 hours of play. [b]OVERALL THOUGHTS:[/b] I really think this game is quite good for how much it costs. I live in Australia and new games tend to be $90 to $120 these days, a lot of money no matter how you look at it. I got this game during launch week so it was 10% cheaper than normal but even at full price it's only $40. For me the game is well worth that amount of money. You'd be paying the same for a mini series Bluray set at a retail store. The game has some issues but none that prevented me from enjoying my experience. I'd be keen to play a game from these developers again, or if they ever release a sequel of some kind. The graphics and audio is amazing, the story is good except for the underwhelming ending and I think if you enjoy some decent stories and have some love for taking your time and letting yourself sink right into a rich world full of mystery, you'll like this game. I definitely recommend it.