Rock Paper Shotgun
Observation is described as 2001: A Space Odyssey if you played as HAL, but does that make for a good experience? We press lots of buttons, take a spacewalk and do battle with machines beyond our comprehension. From the unique setting and neat puzzles to the iffy sci-fi cliches, we look at the best and worst features in the final game.
Rock Paper Shotgun has a written Observation review over on the site, so these are the RPS video team’s Observation review – an Observation PC review to be precise. You may spot a few shots with Xbox controller prompts, but that’s only because we were testing both inputs. It’s comfortably played with either. Ever since we read early Observation impressions we’ve been excited for No Code’s latest game – the team behind Stories Untold (and with experience on Alien Isolation) like to tell stories that put weird machine interfaces at the heart of the tale. If you like pressing mystery buttons, Observation is for you.
The main Observation features are the ability to play as a disembodied AI and to explore a more realistic take on a space station. The first thing that jumped out during our Observation test is the lack of a traditional protagonist. SAM exists inside a network of cameras, sometimes escaping to a floating orb to explore more thoroughly. The puzzles are split between navigation, trying to get a camera wherever it needs to go, and then trying to activate the machine at the end of the trip. Even though it’s a relatively small world, you may find yourself hankering for an Observation walkthrough – but keep and calm head and SAM is hiding all the information you need to succeed.
If you’re asking how long is Observation, I’d say it’s a pretty packed six hours – the game’s pacing is very well handled. Even though you’d see Observation ending in just a day’s play, it certainly shows you a lot in that time. That said Observation game ending wasn;t quite to my liking – don;t worry there are no spoilers in the video, I took the meat of the capture from the first hour of play. Whether you’re playing on PC or Observation PS4, I think you’ll have a good time with it – I know some people have hit some bigger hurdles than others (the game doesn’t always explain your objectives as clearly as it could) and it soured it as a result. I see it as a bit of a bumpy ride, but one I fundamentally enjoyed.
If you’re looking for games like Stories Untold, this is definitely for you. If you are looking for something with more teeth – games like Alien Isolation – I’m not sure this will work as well for you. It’s relatively tame, despite the highly stressful situation. Hopefully this Observation game review has covered all the key points – if you have any questions about Observation PC, don’t hesitate to ask them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them. Oh, and do give it the obligatory like and subscribe if you haven’t already. We appreciate it!
#observation #rps #rockpapershotgun
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OMG! That part at 10:32 made me so angry. I won't spoil it, but when I found out what to do, I'm like… You had to do that?
I really liked the game, and I liked the sci-fi/fantasy elements as well, but with the concepts they teased I was prepared to be disappointed by the story. I really enjoy sci-fi mysteries like in Observation, so overall the ending didn't fall as flat as I'd thought it would. Worth playing
I’m thinking of buying this game are the puzzles easy or hard
This game was great but MY GOD was the sphere control motion-sickness inducing.
Really enjoyed the game, but my God did the glitching animation that occured with every little hit drive me INSANE! Also, play Deliver Us The Moon if y'all haven't yet!
i liked the gameplay but i honestly thought the story was really bad. so much shit was introduced but not explained
Spoilers:
I feel like the game would be ended better on entering Saturn, or on something like that. I loved the game, and the slight bits of weird felt right, even the multiverse, right until the Sam Change. I felt it could have been more vauge and more subtle and achieved a better affect. I also got stuck on things sometimes, I felt like the game could have been a little more clear. Other than that, I like this game a lot. It's a unique take that I enjoyed a lot.
BTW I love that analogy. Kitchen Appliance Buttons are always a Mystery!
I hate the ending. I hate "tentacles". I loved the first half of the game when things are not so delusional yet.
Why can't graphics be sharp anymore? Bloom, blur, chromatic aberration and CRT effect make this look so muddy.
I actually loved the ending, just because it was so vague… rarely a game has left me as intrigued to think and discuss about it after I have seen it (unfortunately I didn't play it, I've just finished a complete walk-through-video, but it was still great :D)…
Great fun, except for the final "separation" puzzles, which are ridiculous if you are trying to use WASD keyboard controls. You really need a joystick to end this game! 10 sec countdown with oblique selections required — not WASD-friendly.
I loved every bit of it, even the frustrating moments and the overall slow pace of the game.
Overall, I was very happy with the game. I found the story line immersive, despite the simplistic tasks needed to progress the story line. I would have like to seen more complex puzzles. The details of the station are superb and the UI for the puzzles very well thought out. For the cost I'd give it a solid 7/10 and hope to see more from this dev.
SPOILERS:
It was fun to use my imagination to translate the symbols from the hexagon puzzles. At the end I almost expected there to be an "Adam & Eve" type scenario as some of the documents found on the station pointed to earth nearing crisis, and this event was a "reset". Or was it an Adam & Eve ending after all?
I would have liked to have seen a few different endings based on decisions made around morality and when you're in front of the Hexagon on Saturn you'd be judged and get a suitable ending.
never played a refreshing game like this in years , it has alien isolation vibe too , the only negative thing is that the game sometimes treats u like ur actually an astronaut like how tf am i suppose to know that smh
Almost a verbatim ripp off of Space odissey. Lame.
I did enjoy this game a great deal. The ending was… Well… Unsatisfying to say the least.
The only think I can really be upset about is the replayability. There is no reason to play it again once you have finished, and that can be a disappointment.
the ending seems very interesting though so vague no one really knows what it meant or what was happening the whole time , only assumptions! Hope we get closure with a sequel.
Honestly i got stuck a couple of times in the game's unclear missions too, and some tiny bug in and there, but i really loved it. Terrific atmosphere, fascinating story, and a true interactive ambient where you have to use you're brain to make thinghs work.
i LOVE this game ! space station wandering is great, story neat, core fiction only, but the end a bit …too vague
The Saturn reveal was fantastic so why, why WHY would you spoil it in the first 0.1 second of a review?
Yea, too many times i had to reset my game that i thought i have encountered a game breaking bug, but turns out i just missed a step because the objectives being too unclear. And i agree. This game is UI porn..
The story is great but oh boy is this not fun to play. May just look up the ending so I don't have to deal with this gameplay
I'll watch a walkthrough video by others for future games by this developer, as while I enjoyed the art, the gameplay interaction – the variety of mundane mini-puzzles and memorization hidden behind clever interfaces – I found tedious and an unwelcome interruption to the story. I can see where others might find the puzzle bits more engaging/immersive to the story, but my experience was just suffering through them to move the story along. A similar review for Stories Untold, except the ending for that one felt like more of an annoying PSA. The ending for this one was appropriately vague for the themes covered.
Spoiler
It was all a simulation. Wait… Wrong game.
am I the only one who realized the Probes you can use in Observation looks very similar, if not exactly the same to the alien drones you see in Stories Untold?
Aswell as the tentacles you see coming out of the ground in the snowed-in area in Stories Untold are the tentacles that come from SAM and the alien being
This game is a bit too hard for me tbh
I Loved Stories Untold and observer do a great work with tyr stoy telling elements🙌
I thought the game was mundane. The puzzles were severley lacking and most simply boiled down to Simon Says button presses. Most of your 6 hour playthrough is spent wandering around looking for the next thing to interact with while being visually abused by interference and static. Stories Untold was brilliant. Observation is terrible.
I really enjoyed the game. The atmosphere it created I thought was good. A few things it could have done better obviously, but I overall enjoyed playing this game.
My one complaint is that often I was over complicating things. I assumed there was information I had to gather or something I had to do, rather than Click a button (R on computer) and click somewhere on the screen. I often over complicated the process and lead to me taking a while to complete.
After ADR1FT, Alien: Isolation, Observer & SOMA comes Observation as one of my favourites in the same line.
Well, I found the ending (and really, the entire thing) to be a whole lot of nothing. The final puzzles are the same as the first puzzles – the game gives you the answer and you simply tap it in via an irritating interface. There's an ending sequence which had some technical issues for me (unintended clipping through the environment for a lot of it which left the screen flickering and me seeing outside of the level) and concluded with some done-to-death sci-fi stuff that was even less surprising than I'd expected. The sparse dialogue hints that you went through some kind of arc but there wasn't one present while playing, in the storytelling or the mechanics.
Ultimately it's the kind of thing I would probably have overvalued and oversold to people when I was younger, mistaking vagueness for intelligence and forgiving the numerous annoyances as an uncompromised vision. If the story or gameplay were compelling I could easily forgive the other, but neither really worked for me.
If you're after beautiful retro-future interiors and a scary atmosphere, play Alien Isolation. If you're after a great puzzle game with some rumination on the nature of AI and the soul, play the Talos Principle (or the Turing Test, or The Swapper). If you want to pipe hot existential dread straight into your consciousness, play Soma. If you want 2001, just watch 2001. I can't recommend this above any of those, even for the £7 I paid in the EGS sale. I'd be a bit bummed out if I'd paid £20 for this. The 9/10s I'm seeing dotted around are totally mystifying, the metro review (which I hadn't seen until a moment ago, after writing all of the above!) has a more accurate take on it from my perspective:
It’s upsetting to play a game that has clearly had so much effort expended on it; as you realise that all its obvious potential is slowly being drained away, like oxygen out of a leaky spaceship. The fact that you’re an AI rather than a human has almost no bearing on the story or your interactions, and the denouement is entirely underwhelming. It’s a rare video game that has both good storytelling and a good gameplay, but either on their own can still be perfectly compelling. Observation has neither.
In Short: 2001 is hardly the most obvious movie to use as inspiration for a video game and perhaps predictably the end result suffers from slow-pacing and a lack of meaningful interaction.
Pros: Fantastic visuals and a stunning, and impressively realistic, portrayal of space travel. Great music and atmosphere.
Cons: Extremely dull and simplistic gameplay that goes out of its way to be as slow-paced as possible. Predictable and unsatisfying story that lacks originality and narrative depth.
Score: 3/10
The gameinformer review is especially weird, "I ripped through Observation in one six-hour sitting, propelled forward by the novel blend of challenging puzzles and gripping storytelling.". The game's three hours long even with a good bit of getting lost, the puzzles have zero challenge (the answer is literally printed on the screen next to where you input the answer half the time) and the storytelling is increasingly uninteresting as it progresses. Their suggestion that the replay value is "moderately high", and that "navigating the station is easy thanks to a snappy interface and simple controls" makes it sound like they played something else entirely. Ah well, I'm glad to see that some people are enjoying/buying stuff from a small UK developer at least. I picked up stories untold when it was free too, I'll give it a go.
One of the worst games I ever came across. Game design and gameplay is awful. Today's game developer don't know how to make good games.
This is another automatic pass due to being a Epic exclusive. Might get it on a Steam sale in the future, if I remember it’s existence, so not that likely.
Just refunded the game after running into game-breaking bugs. For one, I was able to use an inside control panel while I was outside and ended up glitching through the wall of a part of the station I was definitely not supposed to be in yet and couldn't get back out. I also don't understand why they didn't add volume settings in their game, not to mention the beginning issues with the language settings or the lack of them to be exact. Could've been good but unfortunately, it just isn't, at least for me.
Here's my take on the ending
SPOILERS BELOW
I think that the raging storm on Saturn represents the great filter, and by successfully reaching it and thus interfacing directly with the hexagon, humanity has successfully evolved and passed the great filter. The evolution of humanity is thus represented as the combination of human and AI. That is the next step in humanity's evolution.
Now who are the hexagons? I don't know, I guess another species that passed the great filter and is trying to push humanity beyond it as well.
I've got what I expected and the interfaces and puzzles were neat, the story flew by and Kubric would be proud.
It was entertaining for me because it've been exactly the thing I was looking for.
SPOILER BELOW
WE are the BORG.
Or at least thats one way to interpret the ending. Having more than one voice in "our" head, being (wo)man and machine at the same time and "infecting" things with our touch to "bring them". I've had the feeling we've unleashed the Borg on Earth by surviving.
I really wish we would've had a choice at some key moments, like deciding not to kill the captain, or play an active role with the sphere to land Emma safely and/or keep her at a safe approach speed and trajectory as shes doin' the unaided spacewalk jump of faith.
I think the game would've benefited from having the ability to collect surviving crew members and "bring them" along to the final part of the story, even if only as observers.