King’s Shortened Review: Miasmata…
Here is Miasmata’s OST via Bandcamp. Its a very moody, atmospheric/artsy soundtrack. Give it a listen while you read this review to give you a sense of the game I’ll be talking about today.
History Of How I Found The Game…
I found this game during one of my early adventures through the Greenlight system on Steam. Its pretty rare to see a 3D independently developed game. Its even more rare to see a game where the entire engine is built completely custom from the ground up. So Miasmata certainly caught had my attention and I followed its progress until it was Greenlit. The game had struck the right cord with me as first person survival games are one of my favorite genres. If they’re done right. I should have been wary of this game considering IonFX hasn’t done anything like it before but I was willing to take a risk. Did the risk pay off? Well, read on to find out my thoughts…
What Is This Game?…
Miasmata is a first person survival adventure game developed by two brothers at the company of IonFX. You play a lonely adventure as Robert Hughes. Your a scientist stricken with an unnamed plague who arrives at an island named Eden to discover a cure. There is a scientific research outpost on Eden and your character is hoping to meet up with them. However, you’ll soon find things have gone wrong and there is a deadly creature prowling the island. You have to use your wits to find out what went wrong, discover the cure and explore across the quiet island. The game has is focused on survival and exploration. You survive by taking pills when needed and drinking water. In order to explore, you’ll need to use a cartography system to triangulate your position. The game features a creature with a “deep” artificial intelligence which is using sight, hearing and smell to track you. So what did the game get right? Well, the concept.
What the Game Got Right…
The idea of the game is sound. Your surviving the difficulties of a lonely island with strange statues everywhere. The atmosphere of the game is pretty well done.Your not invincible at anytime. There is no in-game HUD but instead you carry a journal and a map with you. The journal carries all of your notes, information you research and current status. I thought it was one of the coolest features in the game as I really like to see no HUDs in games like these. The triangulation system was a neat idea, in theory, to keep you on your toes. Not knowing if your were going the right way helped keep the tension up.
This is one of the coolest features in the game.
The game’s day & night cycle is interesting though I felt that night time was way too dark. Maybe it wasn’t any time close to the full-moon, but darkness shouldn’t be that blindingly dark, should it? Still, the cloud system in the game was pretty impressive and helped the game feel like it was in the real world somewhere. I don’t often see a cloud system in games so that was kind of surprising to see here. There are a variety of smaller wildlife that fly or walk about.
What the Game Got Wrong…
Well, quite a lot. The animations are lacking and they get in the way often. Every time you open your map or journal you have to go through a fairly lengthy animation. Which can get tiresome since you have to open both of these things quite often in your trip. When you play a cutscene in the game, there is no FX accompanying it. While the triangulation system was a good idea in theory, the execution was a bit lacking. Far too often, I would find myself completely lost and unable to figure out where I was. Having to rely strictly on “known” locations to triangulate your position was a tad frustrating as there aren’t that many structures in the game that can be considered “known”. Also, traveling near cliffs or hills was hazardous as you felt like you were on ice all the time. Which led to me sliding around and falling down a hill more times than I should have. This “feature” of the game was more lethal than the creature chasing you. Finally, you could only store one-of-each medicine in your journal and could only carry three plants, one of each, at a time. This restriction on what you could store just didn’t sit well with me in this game.
The people and blood don’t look very realistic…
For an exploration game, there isn’t a whole lot to actually find and collect other than plants. Lots and lots of well-rendered plants. So if your wanting to collect anything other than plants…well…this isn’t the game for you. I get that you want us to explore this fairly large island and see the sights but when the sights to see don’t look that good, its kind of difficult to want to play the game. The fidelity of the graphics in this game are lacking. The texture quality doesn’t look good close up. Things seem blurry at times, there wasn’t anything to truly “wow” me and things could seem out of place at times. (I’d like to point out that I’m running this game on high with a EVGA GTX 660 card). Usually when you get these kind of games, there’s something there to feast the eyes on but it wasn’t here. However, graphics aren’t the end-all, be all. You don’t have to have excellent graphics to be a good game. So what caused me to quit the game? Well……..
I had been heading towards a new part of the island to find the ingredients for the next part of the cure. I was walking along, seeing birds fly about when I started hearing my character’s heart beat. So I found some grass to hide in and crouched down. I had gotten the mental stimulant which basically tells you when the creature has spotted you and it will turn your head in the direction of where the creature is. So I waited for the creature to pass me by. After it did, I moved further into the island towards another outpost. Along the way there, I found a pond and I heard my heartbeat going faster. The creature had found me. So I move down the ledge, hid behind a thin tree and crouch to find out where it was. It was up on the short ledge, looking for me. It then comes down the ledge, searching for me, going right past me. It should have spotted me or at the very least smelled me since the devs claim it can. It goes down to the water and circles about. It should have seen me at this point but it still hadn’t so I kind of moved towards it. It finally does spot me then so I back off. The creature locks its gaze on me and prowls after me. So I stood and fought. The creature swipes a paw at me and…..nothing happens. I’m moving around a little bit but I should be easily hit by this creature from where I was. It swipes for a couple more times and I…well…at this point I’m kind of flabbergasted that nothing is happening. So I run away. The creature follows but nothing happens. If someone was observing me farther away, they probably could have mistaken the creature for my pet. I run to a wall to stand and fight again. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t completely broken so I gave it a chance to swipe at me while I waved my ridiculous non-lethal knife at it. Again, nothing happens. For all intents and purposes, we looked like we were fist-bumping each other with sharp objects. So I decide to run away and hide from it. It gets stuck on the wall. Even though it knows where I am, it just sits there. Growling at me. Yeah…really fierce.
The fierce creature of Miasmata….actually its kind of cute if I’m being honest.
It was at this point that my immersion in the game completely shattered for me. I can’t remember the last time a game like this had done that to me. But, when your game mechanics rely on a dangerous creature to hunt and kill me and it fails to do so… Well, the game is broken. I later researched on the Internet to find out more about the game. What I found is that the creature is not nearly as advanced as the game claims. In order to lose the creature, all you have to do is lose line-of-sight with it. It will eventually give up and wander off. This could be as simple as putting a tree between you and the creature. What was even more disappointing is that the creature had a spawn system in random areas of the island that were mostly focused on important “plot plants”. (Not pot plants) So if you get close to those plants, the game will spawn the creature to attack you. The creature does not “stalk you for miles, lurking behind grasses and vegetative cover” as the developers claim. That was incredibly disappointing to me. It stopped the game dead-cold. Sure, I could have kept on going and maybe it was a one-time bug. But I didn’t want to play a game where I could “game” the creature without much difficulty. After all, there isn’t much fun in playing a game where you can just exploit it.
Yeah, the creature never noticed me in the middle of all these thin trees…
Final Thoughts…
This is a game that had such promise but ultimately falls short. Its becoming clear to me that if I don’t demo these games or check for reviews, I’ll wind up disappointed in the end. This has happened three times in a row now and its a disturbing trend. Miasmata shows potential but the execution left me very disappointed. These guys clearly took a risk in building this game but I sit here and wonder why? Why custom build your engine when viable alternatives exist with higher fidelity graphics? The vegetation and certain parts of the game look fairly good, but the rest of the game doesn’t. It helps less that the game is a resource hog and might not work on your machine. Which brings the game down when a lot of it relies on you wanting to explore and see more of the island. After having the creature be that completely bugged up during my encounters and the graphics were lacking…I didn’t have much interest to complete the game by this point. I really have to question their decisions on this game. If they decide to improve this engine with higher-fidelity graphics, create a deeper experience and fix this game’s shortcomings, then I would be willing to give them another go in the future. Whether we’ll see any sort of sequel to Miasmata is hard to say. I hope they continue to make games because there are so few games like Miasmata and I think they have a chance to make something really good. And I would like to see them try again.
Buying & Important Links
Miasmata GOG.com Link
Miasmata Steam Link
Thanks for reading. Please note that this is a Shortened Review of Miasmata. It means that I did not complete the game and am only reviewing it with the knowledge I gained from the limited amount of playtime I spent in the game. Which was four hours in the case of Miasmata. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, please leave a comment and I hope to see you, next time…
-KingIsaacLinksr
A Paladin Without A Crusade... If you're curious about what I do here, well, I write about things on my mind. I must about things in life. My main subjects that I'll talk about are gaming, technology, social stuff and my life. However, just to spice things up, I'll talk about some random subject when the mood strikes me. Been blogging for a couple years now and I still have much to say, learn and experience.
Yeah, I was on the verge of buying Impire because I desperately wanted a new Dungeon Keeper. But I kept my cool and waited for reviews. And lo and behold, the game sucked arse.
It seems like this was another case of a promising game just not making it all the way there.
The only review that had been done on this game (from a source I trust) was from RPS and they gave it a glowing, if a buggy game, review. Its slightly annoying to me that they barely pick at its problems.