Happy Halloween all of you ghouls and gals (totally nailed it). In honor of the holiday we played a few hours of Albedo: Eyes From Outer Space, the B-movie inspired first person adventure game that is currently in Early Access on Steam.
Albedo: Eyes From Outer Space is a wickedly strange blend of a number of play-styles that you wouldn’t think would work well together. You take the role of simple night-watchman, John T. Longy on duty at a secret, partially abandoned, base in an undisclosed location that serves as a test bed for research in space and time (cue creepy theremin music). As these things often go, a terrible accident throws everything into chaos and you awake from the blast in a basement, alone and fighting for your very life surrounded by all sorts of strange things.
Sounds like the premise of some out-there science fiction film from the late fifties/early sixties (it is totally is inspired by them) that would work well as some oddball first-person shooter, but instead the game takes a highly modified adventure style setting. Instead of running around blasting baddies, you will instead find yourself exploring some impressive 3D environments in a first-person setting. You will essentially move around and interact with objects/enemies in an FPS style that most of us are familiar with, but the game will focus more heavily on adventure/puzzle elements.
What makes Albedo stand out is that it doesn’t rely on any cut-scenes to move the story forward. Once you get past the brief opening scene, the game keeps itself moving using only in-game footage which is great, as you won’t feel pulled out of the game with some unnecessary cut-scene that’s only there to justify some animators four years of college that their parents paid for.
Interaction with objects and items can be a little weird for those not used to adventure games, but once you get the feel for things the game really opens up to you. A single object may be manipulated in a number of ways that can lead to solving a puzzle/problem in a number of fun ways. Items react in ways you would expect them to in the real world, so you won’t see many (if any) puzzles that require some crazy obtuse thinking like in the old King’s Quest games. If you pick up an object, odds are that it works just as it does in real life.
Albedo: Eyes From Outer Space is currently in Steam Early Access, so if you are looking for something spooky to play that will also challenge your mind and is full of lots of funny inside jokes (Day of the Tentacle anyone), you are going to want to check this one out, especially since it’s currently on sale for only $5.99 on Steam. We will have a full review of Albedo: Eyes From Outer Space once it gets a full release.
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