Deliver Us the Moon

I really wanted to like this game, but its flaws are too many.

The story is intriguing and the atmosphere very well calibrated. It's one of those games in which you're always alone, but can read and watch documents left by others. This technique, overused in far too many games, makes it hard to care about the characters and their stories.

It plays mostly as an exploratory walking-sim with some simple puzzles. That would have been fine by me, but the devs wanted it to be "exciting" so they added far too many tasks in which you have to work under a timer, get chased by enemies, and then there's some dreadful 3D platforming as the cherry on top. Just the addition all of these is bad, but they're made extra frustrating by unsuitable controls. You might die a lot and it won't be your fault. I can't believe anybody who playtested the game enjoyed these sequences.

The game does look quite nice and makes use of some beautiful ray traced lighting. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to test if it works well. Turning ray tracing on guarantees constant stuttering in any moderately complex area (DLSS doesn't help), and this has nothing to do with your GPU's prowess: it happened to me with an RTX 4090. Level design is OK, but too sparse and linear. Exploring won't net you any great rewards. It's just about finding where to go next.

Finally, a petty point. For a near-future sci-fi game you would expect more adherence to known physics. But the game is crammed with absurdities. Why does your suit contain only last 2.5 minutes worth of oxygen? Why are you always wearing your helmet, even when there is breathable air? Why does gravity indoors seem stronger than it is outdoors? Why does laser move through the air with visible velocity? There are plot holes, too, but I'm willing to accept that a lot has not been revealed.

This game deserves an in-between rating. But when it comes down to it, the mediocre gameplay and abysmal performance tip it down for me.