MOLE

wtf?

Absolute Cinema

Great game, easily worth it at full price. I find quite a few horror games (for instance, Alien Isolation) to be unplayable after a while, just because the constant tension wigs me out. There are some chase sequences in MOLE, but they are never too difficult and manage to be tense and exciting without overstaying their welcome, and the long periods of downtime between where you're solving puzzles or exploring the ship make the level of tension completely manageable (unless you have a serious heart condition). The puzzles, too, are tactile enough that the answers are never too hard to come by, while still making you feel cool for figuring them out. They're also just really unique and neat. I especially enjoyed the process for loading and firing the torpedoes. Some "retro" graphics just look ugly, but these feel stylized in a way that fits the physical theme of the drill ship. The ship is great; it feels very claustrophobic and lived in, and the design feels real in a way many spaces in videogames don't these days. The story is upsetting and thought provoking in the way all good psychological horror stories are. Bottom line, if it looks interesting to you, get it. The environments are great, the tactile world is great, the puzzles are fun, the chase sequences are exciting, and the game never once became so difficult or obtuse as to be frustrating. The sole, niggling little issue I had was that changing the "confirm" binding from Space Bar to Enter soft locked me on one puzzle, but that was easily fixed by changing the binding back. And you don't really need fast twitch reflexes here anyways so it didn't bother me much.