Remoteness – Review

xboxoldies.com:

It’s 2034 and you wake up after a nightmare to find the district evacuated and isolated by the army, after a bizarre electrical meteor shower hit the earth, bringing some alien beings to ground.

Straight away Remoteness throws you a few problems to contend with. You’re an asthmatic, who requires an inhaler and regular occasions otherwise they’re just going to drop dead. I’d personally hope anyone suffering such a severe bout of asthma would have a stockpile of inhalers nearby, but sure enough, you haven’t, and finding them isn’t an easy task either.

It’d probably help if you could just head to the pharmacy to stock up, but unfortunately you seem to have lost a large portion of your memory because there’s no guidance, arrows pointing in the right direction or even a vague map to follow. Instead, you’re given complete freedom to explore or get lost wherever you like. There’s also the choice of changing the time of day while in your apartment, with the promise of nightfall providing more cover from soldiers, but the added threat from these aliens if you’re in the dark.

It all adds up to quite a confusing experience, with no direction. You will be greeted by a flurry of little blue pop-ups, and a couple of cut-scenes to sway you in the right direction, but these are either lacking information or too vague.

The concept of a free-roaming shooter, reminds me of the early Far Cry and Crysis games, and I can appreciate how much freedom and opportunity the developers are trying to give to the player, but there’s more than a few issues which will start long before you get out of your apartment.

First up is the control scheme, with the vast majority of FPS titles, RT is fire, and you expect LT to be aim, for some reason LB is