Playing this 2016 Source game INFRA. It has a neat premise (play a structural analyst documenting infrastructure in disrepair) but it keeps falling flat on its face. The game is at its core a walking simulator through decrepit industrial warehouses, tunnels, hydroelectric plants, etc but for some reason they chose to open with you sitting in a conference room watching an NPC give a PowerPoint. You then have a 20 minute tutorial where you have to figure out how to leave your office building (as each exit you encounter is blocked by non jumpable 3 foot tall boxes).
Anyways the game then releases you to an abandoned dam. I do like the photography mechanic. You need to pay close attention to the environment to detect some of the more subtle issues, it incentives slow play, and its treated organically (there is no artificial HUD checklist of how many issues left to detect in an area, you can miss everything and the game will let you continue to the next map).
Unfortunately, the rest of the game is a bit of a mess.
There is a ridiculous “survival mechanic” - your camera and flashlight run on different battery types that need to be collected. Both run out of battery incredibly fast (flashlight lasts about 30-60 seconds cumulative, camera can take 10 photos before dying). There are just enough batteries that you always have 1-3 spares, but it’s a pointless mechanic that brings tension for no reason.
Every other room grinds the game to halt with a puzzle, nearly all of which amount to “find the code and input into the appropriate terminal the hall” or “pull levers in the right order”. They seemed committed to realism (the puzzles can’t be too obtuse as why would the buildings’ original engineers make things too complicated) but the puzzles themselves are artifice (why would engineers from the 1970s lock door after door behind different lever puzzles?). If they want this to be a puzzle game they should have just gone all in with being a “Myst-alike”.
I think the gravest sin is the game is just boring. There’s an underlying conspiracy story played out in documents scattered across the game, but I don’t play games for the hidden lore, especially walking simulator/puzzle games. The game lives and dies by the decrepit infrastructure environments but they don’t go far enough to impress. The Source environments look good for 2010 or so, but for 2016 (let alone 2021) they are just bland. Again, they probably limited themselves by being committed to realism when a bit more creative and less realistic art direction would have made a bigger impression.
I’ve played about 6 hours and didn’t seem close to any sort of end point. I then looked up the playtime and saw this is a “three act” 25 hour game (I was still in Act 1). Shelved it at that point.