HICHEM Posted January 13, 2019 Posted January 13, 2019 The Earth is on the verge of collapse and once again it is our fault. What sounds like a nightmare prophecy is actually the beginning of this game, successfully funded on Kickstarter just over two years ago. Deliver us the Moon: Fortune tells a story that could become reality in our near future, the energy collapse and the exhaustion of the planet's natural resources, with the consequent destruction of life in all its forms. In the game this eventuality is avoided by the discovery of an alternative energy source, the Helium-3, which is found in abundance on the Moon. In a few years, the new World Space Agency manages to colonize the satellite, preparing a revolutionary energy transfer system called Microwave Power Transmission. For 20 years the system works but just when the world seems to have become accustomed to this new condition ... blackout. Communication with the moon base suddenly stops and the energy flow of the MPT stops. The disaster seems ready to pick up where it left off. It will be up to a single surviving astronaut to return to the Moon to understand what happened and restore the use of Helium 3. Ironically this improvised hero is called Fortuna and it will be him starting this desperate mission in 2059, five years after the blackout and a few hours before a devastating sandstorm hits the site of the launch. The very first phases take place on Earth and serve as usual to become familiar with the game commands. Nothing particularly complicated, the control system can be assimilated in a few minutes and the visual is almost always in the third person. Exceptions are the zero-gravity sections and those in particularly small places, in which the shot passes to the first person. At your side in this mission you will have a robotic companion, ASE. With him you will have to explore the bases now abandoned, gather clues about what happened and possibly bring everything back to normal by saving the Earth. What has been written so far could make you think of finding yourself in front of a classic horror adventure, a sort of clone of the beautiful Prey, but it is not. Deliver us the Moon: Fortuna is actually an explorative / investigative adventure with generous doses of environmental puzzles. Thanks to holographic projections and documents you can reconstruct the last days of those present on the lunar base. In the places you will explore you will find fragments of the past, flashbacks of previous missions that you will have to analyze in order to reconstruct what happened. The sense of loneliness that will accompany you has been pretty well done by the development team, which has clearly been inspired by many genre films and also some games of the (recent) past. The obstacles you will encounter on your way to the truth will be largely represented by the base itself, long abandoned and difficult to explore, especially at the beginning. You will not have access to all areas and to be able to unlock some steps you will have to restore the energy in the missing areas. To do this sometimes you will need ASE and do not forget to check your oxygen supply. These lightweight survival elements help keep the player's interest alive, despite the rather bland pace of adventure and the lack of a real sense of imminent danger. The lunar environment obviously gives life to numerous zero-gravity sections, which have been fairly well physically, even if there is some lack of precision in the collisions. Moving on the surface of the small satellite requires a minimum of habit but once you become familiar with the slowed and "lengthened" movements, the exploration becomes much easier. No, we're not on Mars. These are the "last" moments of Fortune on planet Earth before his departure for the Moon. Unfortunately, the game suffers from significant frame rate problems due to a far from perfect optimization. The graphic sector is of the highest order and offers highly evocative and discreetly detailed panoramas. The overall view is made even better by an incredibly realistic color temperature, an excellent dynamic lighting system and a handful of good impact post-processing effects. But all this well of God has a cost in terms of fluidity. On a mid / high-end machine like the one we used for the test the frame rate drops are more than frequent and the only solution to make the game enjoyable is to lower the software "pretensions". A title full of lights and shadows in short. Compared to the original project (which included the release of episodes) Deliver us the Moon: Fortune has also been modified and heavily downsized. The dimensions of the adventure have been greatly reduced, the three lunar bases have become a single hub half the same and have eliminated potentially interesting features, such as the use of the jetpack for movements outside. The driving of vehicles is unfortunately limited to some missions where you have to reach radio links to be restored. However, the developers have done a fair job to put together a fairly homogeneous title. What the Dutch team has not managed to avoid is a fairly poor longevity, the daughter of the cuts we have just mentioned. In little more than six hours we arrive at the end, with some good moments but also some decline in rhythm. Unfortunately, the end comes useless and hurried when one would expect a turn or a vertical takeoff. The talent of the guys of KeokeN Interactive in handling the Unreal Engine is undeniable, but perhaps for budget problems and certainly for lack of time, their little epic stops a few steps from excellence, remaining unfortunately confined in the limbo of missed opportunities . However, recommended for those who love the sci-fi genre and for those looking for something different from the "usual" horror among the stars.
Recommended Posts