izigame.me

Want to know whether you should give Fort Solis a try? It depends if you are willing to taste something a bit different from what you are used to receiving from games.
Setting optimization problems aside, as it is a known problem that I hope will be fixed soon (I have played Fort Solis on my quite ancient rig with Nvidia 1060, set the graphics on medium and while I certainly wasn’t able to enjoy its fullest potential when it comes to graphics, I only experienced a few slow-downs between the levels), let’s talk what that game truly is about - in my opinion.
Fort Solis is a set of experiments questioning the status quo of what a game is. It sacrifices the gameplay for the sake of the story - but also sacrifices the story for the sake of experience. It tries to be as real as possible, which has its consequences, to name the two that were the most obvious to me:
- the slow walking around, because who would run around all the time? Also, the jammed doors and long corridors are supposed to be a drag for the character, so it needs to be so for the player as well;
- the vague story, because Jack and Jess (and therefore the player) are outsiders who try to unravel the plot from pieces of narrative created by characters who are inside the story. The logs, audio, and e-mails were not created to tell the story to us, they really try to imitate the communication that would be going on between people who live in certain conditions - we are only eavesdropping and trying to glue it together;
Add beautifully and believably designed environments - both the dead, empty, and dusty surface of Mars and then wonderfully trashed labs, workshops, and crew areas, that make you believe someone really lives there. Then you watch or read or listen to the logs of characters and you see people that are alive - how they talk, how they stutter, their mimics and small gestures all gleaming with personality. The bare plot itself may not be something new, but what makes it stand out is how it comes to life through those people. It’s their story, not just a story. This part of the game truly amazed me - excellent writing and voice acting.
We live in times when the era of telling stories gives way to a new age - thanks to modern technologies we can experience events in their whole. Fort Solis is an attempt to do this through the medium of a game. I won’t say the effect is perfect because it is not. But I enjoyed the game quite a lot.
To sum up - there is only one way to play it: put the headphones on and immerse in it fully without expectations of what a game should be like. Experience it. You may like it or you may not, but it will be something new in your menagerie of experiences.