Game:

Tacoma (2017)

Category:

Review

Duration: 14:39

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Drifting somewhere between the Earth and the Moon, the lunar transfer station Tacoma lies empty and abandoned. An incident has forced the crew to evacuate and you, Amy Ferrier, have been sent to investigate and recover its omnipresent AI, Odin. But even though the six people who ran the station are long gone, their presence is felt all around you. And not just because of the empty coffee cups, photos of loved ones, and other traces they left behind, which make the station feel like a sci-fi Mary Celeste.Venturis, the corporation that owns Tacoma, has 3D recordings of every second of the crew’s year aboard the station, which you’ve been granted access to. And it’s through these ghostly memories, relived through an augmented reality viewer, that you’ll learn about the people who lived and worked there before the accident. It’s a mystery that grabs hold of you the instant your magnetic boots clamp to the station and never lets go.When you first float into Tacoma’s zero gravity hub, an area you’ll revisit often, a procession of bulkhead doors open one by one to reveal a long, rotating corridor stretching into the distance. It’s an evocative introduction to the station, and an early example of the game’s exquisite world-building. I suddenly feel a powerful urge to explore, but also a flutter of unease and trepidation. A mood that developer Fullbright, whose debut game was the equally mysterious Gone Home, has proven to be particularly adept at creating.The eerie calm is broken only by a cleaning robot occasionally buzzing past my head, still dutifully performing its chores in the crew’s absence. Around me there are colour-coded doors leading to different areas of the station, branching off from the hub like spokes on a wheel. But until I fulfil a certain objective, most are inaccessible to me. The game methodically guides you from one location to the next to tell its largely linear story, which can be stifling at times. I would have liked just a little more freedom to explore.The first wing of the station I can access is Personnel. Now pinned to the floor by artificial gravity, I walk into a communal dining area and an AR recording flickers to life. A timeline appears on the HUD allowing me to scrub through the memory, pausing, rewinding, or fast forwarding at my leisure. The crew, represented as digital silhouettes, are preparing for a party, and I’m immediately struck by how believable the dialogue is. It has a natural, conversational flow, never feeling contrived or overly expository.The crew, despite appearing to Amy only as faceless, transparent figures, have nicely rounded personalities. This is thanks to the game’s impressively expressive animation and superb voice acting, which combine to create characters who buzz with life. At first the recordings don’t seem to be anything more than elaborate audio logs, passively relaying a story to you in a way games have been doing for years now. But the clever thing about Tacoma is how they cover a large
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Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/tacoma-review/

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