The Invincible Hands-On Preview: For The Love of Sci-Fi

ign.com:

The greatest compliment I can give the developers of The Invincible is that this feels like walking into the worlds imagined by mid-century sci-fi authors. Based on the novel The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem, I spent an hour with a development build of Starward Industries' upcoming sci-fi adventure and fell into a vibrant wonderland rife with adventure, danger, and discovery.

I took control of Yasna, a crewmember from the ship Invincible trying to find out what happened to some prior explorers on a remote, desolate planet. I wandered through the branches of a mountain pass, finding dead, lost crewmates in narrow ravines and twisting passages. Her slow, plodding space-suited bootsteps and labored breathing as she climbed rocks and dealt with an increasingly bad headache added a sense of depth and feeling to the world around her.

She frequently talks with her navigator, Novik, a crewmember on the orbiting Invincible that lets her know about what's going on and helps make decisions about their course. The steady conversation between the two provides backdrop to the desolate canyon environments, and branching dialogue choices offer up some customization in how Yasna reacts to the events around her. There's also a clear conflict between their personalities, adding a bit of dramatic fuel to the chatter.

The gameplay is otherwise the kind of fare you expect from a first-person adventure game. I picked paths, interacted with objects, and generally watched pretty animations happen. Some segments have you use tools, like a homing tracker that finds space suit radios, a scanner that x-rays walls, or a handheld telescope. All of those were available at all times and worked in nicely intuitive ways.

I was especially satisfied when I