The Alien Cube

At first, the game feels decent - nice graphics, good sound effects and immersion. But after a while it becomes tedious and its shortcommings quite apparent. The story is shallow and simplistic, the main character naive to the point of a damsel in distress (and the VA makes it worse - "oh, no - what is going on...?" "oh no - this can't be happening...!"). The main frustrating mechanic is senseless scavenger hunting - get a screwdriver from half across the level, no matter there's a toolbox right besides the door, that's not the right place to look for some tools, you know... Oh, there's a fire that just went out and you're freezing to death - let's ignore the firewood stack that's literally laying there along the wall of the cottage, and hunt for some branches laying around - but hurry, you're freezing to death - but just 3 branches will not last enough, oh noes - on the other hand 6 branches are perfectly fine and will burn for hours - stuff like that. Inconsistent game mechanics - the example with 'freezing to death in the blizzard' - it triggers in the middle of the level, you've been wading trough snow and wind for half the time already - suddenly if you stay in the cold long enough you'll die, so you have to start running from fire to fire, to keep you busy. Focusing on small stuff - like you're at your apartment, you need to get to the car and leave for another place, but oh wait - you're in your pajamas, you need to find the right clothes to change into - and that's just in that one single place in the game. Same with a single time that you simply *have to* take a great jump across a ravine that makes you half dead at the opposite side - conveniently there's a health pack in the cottage just beyond the fence - health packs do not become a reoccurring mechanic at this point, it's just that single time - in all other circumstances you heal with time. Oh, there's one other time when you need bandages because you apparently took a machete to the stomach - no more use for health packs. At specific parts of the game you get chased around by a cultist on steroids with big club with some rusty nails in it, and your only choice is to run long enough for him to just disappear, or hide around the corner while being in hist plain sight - that makes him overlook you... The game becomes really tedious around the middle chapter, had to push myself to finish it, and the ending was underwhelming. The only really good thing about it is the environment design - some really nice ruins, auroras, slithering and pulsating colorful intestine-like tissue on walls and ceilings, flames and torches etc. - and the sound design can be pretty immersive as well - but all that is outweighed in a negative way by all the other factors, and the overall feeling towards the end is "let's just get over it..." It's ok to give it a go when it's 80%-90% off, you have some time to kill, and low expectations - but I would never pay a full price, there are much better titles in the same price range.