I have a soft spot for weird sci-fi, something that mixes very realistic hard science elements with stories about facing something completely beyond human comprehension. So when I stumbled upon Observation, I got highly interested. And now that the game has been made available on more distribution platforms, I couldn’t miss my chance to try it out. It… wasn’t as exciting as I was hoping it would be.
Gameplay-wise, Observation can probably be best described as an adventure game as it is mostly based around the same pillars as a lot of adventure titles – exploring locations, solving problems/puzzles, experiencing a story. And given the game’s main gimmick, it’s even more directly comparable to the point & click classics of old due to how you control the game. You see, as the game description says, you don’t play as an astronaut on a space station, you are the space station – the cameras, the drones, the controls to various systems you have access to. And in concept it’s pretty neat and quite unique. It tries to have that feel of the games where you experience the title as if from a perspective of someone looking at a live feed from cameras, but at the same time doesn’t try to go too heavy in the indirect control concept like something you’d find in eXperience 112 or Lifeline for PS2.
It’s also very smart about the audio and visual side of things. Everything is trying to simulate a very realistic look with some shots genuinely feeling as if you were looking at a recording of a real space station. And most of the puzzles/problems in the game are based around interactions with different systems. This is also complimented by good voice acting, really strong first half of the game in terms of the story and lots and lots of good narrative moments. It does get you invested in the story, which gets progressively more and more strange, yet still manages to feel real enough to emphasize with the characters.
But it eventually does run out of steam. The story never goes bad in any way, but it does end on a somewhat “eh” note. Which is also made worse by the fact that while you have a bonus objective of collecting all background information on the events and characters, that information doesn’t ever reveal anything actually worthwhile. So, you’re left with the ending that’s just “yeah, okay” and when you gather all of the additional info, you’re not given some new context to enhance the story, it’s just there. Which made me remember The Turing Test – another title which had a rather “okay” ending, yet the more information you gathered throughout the game, the more context you’ve gotten by the end, putting the ending choice into a perspective that stays with you after the game ends.
The overall “meh”-ness of the ending further complicates the feeling towards the game, because apart from the mood and the story, it’s not a particularly fun game to play. Most of the “puzzles” here are rather primitive and unfun mini-games, including an annoying repeating Simon says mini-game that gets old the first time yet repeats several times later. During multiple occasions it’s also hard to understand what exactly the game expects from you, often because the interaction prompt might not appear where or when you expect it to. The controls are not particularly great with the gamepad for which the game was clearly designed, on keyboard and mouse it’s even worse. And there are countless tiny little bugs which can make the game even more confusing than it already is, including a possibility to trigger certain story events after you’ve completed them once (they thankfully stay completed, yet the comments play twice anyway). And it’s desire to make slow moments where the camera holds for a very long time sometimes make it look as if the game broke – they don’t really nail the technique here.
Overall, while playing Observation has been enjoyable in its own way, it’s not a particularly fantastic title. In some ways, I’ve actually found ADR1FT, which is not a very good game, more memorable and fun than this. If it seems intriguing, definitely give it a look, at least at a discount, as it doesn’t overstay the welcome. But don’t expect it to wow you. Which is actually the same sentiment that I said about the previous title by this developer Stories Untold years ago…