Fort Solis (PS5/PC)
By: Dear Villagers
WHILE most action games try to bottle blockbuster cinema, the latest space thriller by the industry vets at Scouse software house Fallen Leaf aims to capture the feeling of a Netflix binge.
Set over one long night on Mars and told across four chapters, each roughly an hour in length, Fort Solis can be polished off in a single sitting or divvied up like episodic telly as players investigate grim goings-on in the titular mining rig.
Playing out like an old Twilight Zone episode nurtured into a four-hour game and inspired by celluloid classics like Solaris and Moon, Fort Solis is built for a certain kind of gamer who geeks out on slow-burn sci-fi.
Slipping into the spacesuit of engineer Jack Leary, players respond to a routine distress call from a Martian outpost. With a storm looming and the crew AWOL, it's up to Jack and his cohort Jessica to unravel Fort Solis' dark mystery.
Popcorn fodder this ain't. Despite looking like another Dead Space wannabe, Fort Solis owes more to chin-stroking walking simulators than the bombast of Dead Space. With no aliens or monsters, gameplay amounts to little more than meandering through dingy corridors in search of clues and information as Jack pieces together the crew's fate by scouring e-mails and audio logs.
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Besides the occasional quick-time prompt, there's not much action to be found here. A dusting of light puzzling uses environmental clues to unlock doors or terminals, while Jack's trusty multi-tool device displays a map of the facility, though it's still easy to get lost.
For an indie effort, it's reassuringly expensive looking, with silky mo-cap and crisp cinematic visuals that play out in one continuous shot. It also boasts pedigree behind the mic, with a cast that includes gaming royalty Troy Baker and Roger Clark – who lent their pipes to the leads in The Last of Us and Red Dead Redemption 2.
Yet, while Fort Solis looks the cinematic part, its actual gameplay seems like an afterthought. Most damning, it's one of the slowest games you'll ever play: Jack be not nimble, and even when the atmosphere cranks up, our hero ambles along at a glacial lick. With so much funerally-paced backtracking, this fort needs more forte.
As another what-happened-to-the-crew horror, Fort Solis is a handsomely mounted, occasionally lumbering potboiler for genre buffs – and though mileage may vary, you can't deny the cinematic ambition of it all.
