Dark Matter starts out promising, a 2.5D Metroid like platformer with good looking visuals and a Dead Space kind of story and athmosphere. Unfortunatly not long after you start to make your way towards freedom and escape the horrors on the space ship the cracks start to show.

Though the visuals do look good with some really nice lighting effects there are some ugly bugs that pop up here and there, and i'm not talking about the purple ones that actually look more cute that terifying , i'm talking the kind where you jump and your character suddenly glitches half way up a few stacked up crates, not to mention falling through elevator floors and down to the bottom of the shaft. Animations also seem to be missing here and there and i don't know what is wrong with my character but she seems to have been roughly cut out of a magazine with blunt scissors.

The story is alright, as far as trapped-on-a-alien-infested-spaceship stories go, but there have been numerous times where i found the ship's AI dialogue to be un-computer-like and even annoying. He quickly begins to sound whiny and needy and you just want him to shut up. Maybe i'm missing some big twist about the AI actually being human or something but i don't think so, i just think it's "méh'' writing.

But when it comes to gameplay and controls that is what finally just made me lose my will to play on and put down my controller to move on to something else. I will give credit to the idea of when to use the flashlight and when not to use it, but this feature doesn't feel as fleshed out and interesting as it could have been, and that actually goes for the whole game. The controls couldn't have saved it even if they worked properly. They feel slightly awkward and unpolished and even broken at times, to the point where i have to use my mouse to be able to click on a elevator button because my character isn't able to reach it when i use a controller for some reason. Perhaps the game plays better with mouse and keyboard, the options menu and inventory screen certainly seemed to think so, but i have lost all interest to even care by this point and i have already moved on to enjoy Deadlight, another 2.5D platformer that does most, if not all, things mentioned above right.

But if after watching Alien or playing Dead Space you still feel the need on surviving on a hostile spaceship and the new Alien: Isolation is above your budget then by all means, give Dark Matter a go, just be sure to play it with keyboard + mouse and to get it while it's on sale.



There is one other thing, that i can't really complain about for i haven't finished the game, but i've heard people complain about the game not being finished or just suddenly ending. Now i don't know what the truth about this is but the developer has said that there might be more Dark Matter to come in the future that will continue the story, in other words they are saying it's episodic. That is all fine and dandy but have failed to see that mentioned anywhere on the game's store page. Frankly i think the developer has realized that his product isn't finished and is using the episodic idea as damage control. But hey, that's just what i think, someone who sadly didn't enjoy the game as much as i wanted to and didn't even care enough anymore to finish it. I just hope that the people that did manage to enjoy it get a proper and honest end to this game's story.

Dark Matter starts out promising, a 2.5D Metroid like platformer with good looking visuals and a Dead Space kind of story and athmosphere. Unfortunatly not long after you start to make your way towards freedom and escape the horrors on the space ship the cracks start to show. Though the visuals do look good with some really nice lighting effects there are some ugly bugs that pop up here and there, and i'm not talking about the purple ones that actually look more cute that terifying , i'm talking the kind where you jump and your character suddenly glitches half way up a few stacked up crates, not to mention falling through elevator floors and down to the bottom of the shaft. Animations also seem to be missing here and there and i don't know what is wrong with my character but she seems to have been roughly cut out of a magazine with blunt scissors. The story is alright, as far as trapped-on-a-alien-infested-spaceship stories go, but there have been numerous times where i found the ship's AI dialogue to be un-computer-like and even annoying. He quickly begins to sound whiny and needy and you just want him to shut up. Maybe i'm missing some big twist about the AI actually being human or something but i don't think so, i just think it's "méh'' writing. But when it comes to gameplay and controls that is what finally just made me lose my will to play on and put down my controller to move on to something else. I will give credit to the idea of when to use the flashlight and when not to use it, but this feature doesn't feel as fleshed out and interesting as it could have been, and that actually goes for the whole game. The controls couldn't have saved it even if they worked properly. They feel slightly awkward and unpolished and even broken at times, to the point where i have to use my mouse to be able to click on a elevator button because my character isn't able to reach it when i use a controller for some reason. Perhaps the game plays better with mouse and keyboard, the options menu and inventory screen certainly seemed to think so, but i have lost all interest to even care by this point and i have already moved on to enjoy Deadlight, another 2.5D platformer that does most, if not all, things mentioned above right. But if after watching Alien or playing Dead Space you still feel the need on surviving on a hostile spaceship and the new Alien: Isolation is above your budget then by all means, give Dark Matter a go, just be sure to play it with keyboard + mouse and to get it while it's on sale. There is one other thing, that i can't really complain about for i haven't finished the game, but i've heard people complain about the game not being finished or just suddenly ending. Now i don't know what the truth about this is but the developer has said that there might be more Dark Matter to come in the future that will continue the story, in other words they are saying it's episodic. That is all fine and dandy but have failed to see that mentioned anywhere on the game's store page. Frankly i think the developer has realized that his product isn't finished and is using the episodic idea as damage control. But hey, that's just what i think, someone who sadly didn't enjoy the game as much as i wanted to and didn't even care enough anymore to finish it. I just hope that the people that did manage to enjoy it get a proper and honest end to this game's story.