Fort Solis test: how boring

Fort Solis announces itself with an argument a priori club for all the fans of video games: it runs under the Unreal Engine 5.2, a 3D engine brought to shine in the years to come. And we can affirm it without any detour: Fort Solis is a narrative title with a successful production, which guarantees both quality graphics (the play of light and shadow) and unparalleled immersion. To these arguments related to the form is added a casting notably composed of Troy Baker, star of the medium.

But aesthetic arguments and a few big names aren’t enough to make a game. Fort Solis is clear proof of this. If we appreciate the first wanderings in a mining base located on Mars, we end up being overtaken by the worst feeling when we play a video game: boredom in what is most painful. Therefore, what at first looked like a plunge into the unknown cut out like a Netflix series ends in real ordeal.

Not being able to run in a video game is an aberration

Apart from the eye-catching visual part, something is striking in Fort Solis: Jack, the hero, obviously never learned to run. A paradox when you know that he must respond to an emergency call, issued by a deserted base hiding dark secrets. For the player and the player, it is above all a sacred handicap. Everything seems so slow in Fort Solis, and it really feels like a clumsy elephant lost on the red planet. Nothing is really precise in the movements, and the animations are of a rigidity which contrasts with the graphic rendering.

This slowness is certainly wanted by the developers. It is used for the purpose which consists in making discover, step by step, according to small interactions, the events which plunged Fort Solis in chaos. But we never feel this notion of urgency and everything seems to be designed to lead us away from the truth. The experience is an incessant appeal to the distractions that prevent the narrative from taking off. The reason is certainly in the resolution of the intrigue, which leaves on its hunger and does not have anything fundamentally surprising. Fortunately, the atmosphere is worked a minimum to captivate.

Apart from reading messages (audio, video, written), we don’t do much exciting in Fort Solis. But, sometimes, certain action sequences invite us to perform QTEs (press a key quickly at the right time) based on Formula 1 driver reflexes and which do not seem to have significant consequences in the event of failure. Brief, Fort Solis spends its time putting us to sleep only to wake us up with a start from one moment to the next, with absolutely nothing to tell us. In terms of gameplay balance and logic, it’s clearly not a success.

Luckily, Fort Solis won’t keep you busy for long. Cut into four episodes, it can be folded in a handful of hours. This ultra-short lifespan is assumed by Dear Villagers. On the Steam page, the publisher states: ” Just like a Netflix series, Fort Solis can be played straight through in an intense session, or can be broken down chapter by chapter like an episodic TV show.. ” The worst ? Even four hours seem endless in Fort Solisso boredom is omnipresent.

The verdict

We liked

• Realization very nice thanks to the Unreal Engine 5
• Immersion at the top
• Some funny interactions

We liked less

• It’s a slow…
• Often painful gameplay
• All that for this

Fort Solis is the very materialization of boredom and arduousness. Behind strong arguments (a cast of heavyweights, the use of the Unreal Engine 5.2 graphics engine), the video game only hides a misery that transforms the experience into an ordeal. After the ecstasy of successful immersion, we realize that we are just wandering the hallways praying that the story will take off one day. It will never happen: despite the palpable tension, the stakes remain low.

As a bonus, the gameplay is undeniably horrible, with heavy movements and the forgetting of a key to run which imposes a snail’s pace. Finally, the short lifespan, split between four episodes to do like Netflix, is less a defect than a quality. We very quickly want Fort Solis to end, despite this impression of having spent a thousand hours in the same game. A Mars, and it does not always start again.

Subscribe for free to Artificials, our AI newsletter, designed by AIs, verified by Numerama!