The Station for Xbox One [Review]: A Thoughtful Game, but Too Short

Discovering alien life that contradicts everything we believe is a possibility people have wondered about for years and years, and The Station takes that idea and uses it as the primary force for its narrative. The game'southward story foundation and premise are fantabulous, only The Station unfortunately fails to capitalize on these things and the result is an unsatisfying experience that feels unfinished.

Meet on Microsoft Store

Story: Extra-terrestrials on the radar

In the near future, humanity discovers a new planet, and on information technology, another sentient species. However, this species is engaged in a civil war, and in club to remain undetected, humanity sends a cloaked space station to orbit the planet and observe the conflict. However, something goes terribly wrong, and the station's cloaking device fails. Shortly after, communications are lost.

In an effort to empathize what happened, a single recon expert is sent to the station in order to understand what happened. That recon skilful is you, and on the station you volition discover details about the aliens, the crew'southward fate, and more.

The story of The Station is idea-provoking and impactful. Without spoiling, many of the themes in the game have stuck with me days after completing it. In improver, the characters in the story are interesting as well, and even though they were generally expressed through things plant effectually the station, they still felt compelling.

This sounds nifty, but the huge trouble with The Station is that the story ends correct as it starts to get actually adept. Information technology's hard to enjoy good writing and characters when there's no room to practise and so, and as the credits rolled, I couldn't assistance but feel that much of what was making the story proficient got wasted.

Gameplay: First person exploration

Similar many other narrative adventure games, The Station is played through as a walking simulator in which most of the enjoyment revolves around interacting with the environment. Each room offers interesting information nigh something, whether it be the alien species, what happened to the crew, or the type of people that the crew are. Anything from a handwritten letter to a spilled cup of coffee tin can be found, and trying to figure out what happened is a fun time.

In that location are a few puzzles, simply they are few and far betwixt. Nonetheless, they are incredibly clever, and fans of good puzzles will honey the kinds institute in The Station.

Presentation: Looks simply like sci-fi

The Station features a colorful and vibrant type of art direction that makes the environment experience incredibly science fiction. The visuals look clean and crisp, and the detailed sound effects that you tin hear whilst doing things in the game world are much appreciated details that add together to the immersion.

Sadly, for all the good the visuals and audio effects do, the incredibly lackluster vocalization interim from the characters makes it hard to like them, which is disappointing because of how well-written they are. The voice actors audio like they couldn't care less well-nigh the office they're playing, and that has a large negative impact on a story and graphic symbol heavy game like The Station.

The Station for Xbox Ane conclusion

Though the story itself and the characters are relatively well written, the game'southward shortness and poor voice acting accept a lot away from the experience. Good visuals and audio tin simply exercise so much.