Halfway between Dolmen, Dark Souls, and Dead Space, souls review

While it is true that it may be a good idea to retrace the steps of those who have gone successfully before us, moreover, if we feel we can take a different approach, we should likewise be aware of our limitations and what is what. The standards reached so far do not come to market with a weak product.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to Massive Work Studio, the Brazilian development team that brought together such exceptionally valuable classics as Dark Souls and Dead Space. like spirit extremely general from all points of view, characterized by a mediocre artistic direction and an often inconsistent combat system.

Is there anything that can be salvaged from needlessly complex and ugly interfaces, rhythms broken in favor of grinding, and a level design rebellion that is only getting worse instead of improving? we reveal to you. Dolmen review.

Date

Probably the least interesting aspect of the dolmen, Dateand especially the way the writers have chosen to describe it: no cutscenes or dialogues, just simple textual terminals with the awful feeling of being in front of an independent production of several years.

Too bad because juice complo there’s a reason and sees our character, a commander in the most anonymous armor in the universe (but beware, you can customize the colors…), face monsters raiding the planet Revin Prime directly from one ‘other’. dimension. How? Thanks to a mysterious crystal, the Dolmen, samples of which we must collect.

Structure

in terms of structureThe title of Massive Work Studio resembles a scholastic spirit: duration It is set in three different scenarios, each with traditional “waterproof compartments” limited to Connection Lighthouses, ranging from twelve to fifteen hours depending on how many times you enter the game: devices that allow you to save the game while restoring all enemies except bosses have already been eliminated.

As expected, it is also possible to use the points and resources earned so far on these Lanterns. improve statistics character or build new weapons, but the operation takes place not through a simple contextual menu, but by teleporting to the mothership and tedious access to the devices installed for these functions, including some kind of capsule that mimics the one used. To upgrade Isaac Clarke’s armor, Dead Space is just a lot uglier and plainer.

gameplay

Even with a set of boundaries that seemed pretty obvious from the start, gameplay undoubtedly the best aspect of Dolmen. In the game, we will be able to fight using both sharp weapons (for example, two-handed swords that are never missing from an astronaut’s equipment), alternating fast and heavy blows, arranged with quite long animations. , but cannot be canceled, it does not even affect dodge; both firearms that use armor energy to work.

All available tools have essential agents linked to: fire, ice And acidtherefore, it proves to be more or less effective depending on the class our enemies belong to. It is necessary to pay attention to all three indicators located in the upper left corner of the screen: health, stamina and the energy mentioned above. The latter can be used to partially restore the former, but also acts as “fuel” for the rifle and can only be recovered by consuming bottles or killing certain opponents.

The system from this comment works pretty well, but can tend to get in the way of the camera when targets are locked, more difficulty compared to the obvious woodiness of the moves, too much interlacing (hit enemies from behind a Yes but vice versa) and to one yield of effects very inadequate, indeed often slippery and inconsistent.

The generic nature of the technical and artistic sector inevitably leads to monsters and bossUnfortunately, it’s pretty anonymous. The latter, however, does not seem to be able to take the challenge to a higher level, as expected; they even come down with surprising ease after memorizing two or three patterns and strengthening the character a bit.

Technical realization

There are many ways to “mask” the technical shortcomings of a low-budget game, but apparently the Dolmen developers don’t know a single one. There’s little to go around: everything you see on screen appears in Dolmen very general and uninspired, it seems that the writers took the standard assets and added them to the game, perhaps after tweaking various mechanics, in hopes of changing them. Unfortunately it didn’t.

Above PS5 There are now two traditional graphics modes available, one at 4K and 30fps, and the other at low resolution and 60fps, to be clearly preferred as nothing is spared for more reactive and precise gameplay. The interface is very old and ugly, the animations leave much to be desired, the scripts are immediately horribly anonymous. And sound it doesn’t do any better, in fact it’s completely adequate for everything else.