Fort Solis Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Fort Solis is described as closer to a walking simulator than any other traditional genre, though it’s ostensibly a sci-fi psychological thriller, set on a mysteriously deserted mining facility on Mars. You play as Jack Leary, voiced by Roger Clark, who one night on Mars, receives a routine alarm alert from the titular Fort Solis. Upon arriving, the place is mysteriously empty and Jack proceeds to try and locate the missing crew through exploration. While this sounds like an interesting opportunity for some psychological shenanigans, there are few positives to find amongst this abandoned station.

I want to go back to that point about it being a walking simulator for just one moment. The first thing that stuck out to me was the glacial speed you move at as you play. During the first five minutes, I was sitting there thinking, “hmmm, I hope I’m not moving this speed the whole game” and then imagine my horror when I spent the whole four hours of playing the game walking at the same speed. It is truly painful. In some segments it makes sense, like navigating through the storm or maybe down some corridors to build tension, but the absence of a run button absolutely killed the pacing of the game.

There’s no traditional stealth or combat mechanics either, so it is literally just walking around and examining stuff until you find the correct clue that allows you to move on. I spent so much time waiting for stuff to happen that never came and it bored me to tears. It reeked of horror, but there was no horror, not even a whiff. I remember I kept thinking, ‘ok, here we go’ as I was waiting for things to kick off. By the time it eventually did, I’d already mentally checked out.

Going from point to point and picking up clues would have