Narcosis is a first-person horror/walking simulator that I have a real love/hate sort of relationship with. The storyteller in me really wants to love this game to the moon and back, but the gamer in me knows this is a chopped down version of what the game really should be.
Narcosis takes place down beneath the sea (insert SeaLab 2021 theme here) in a lab that is wrecked when a massive earthquakes hits. You are out on a survey mission and it’s your job to get to the rescue pod and get yourself, and any survivors you might find to the surface.
Where the game shines is with how it tells its story. During the adventure you’ll be hearing what seems to be your own thoughts on the situation at hand. It feels as if you are recounting the events, almost as if you’ve already made it and doing an interview. What’s strange is that you seem to be mute and don’t communicate with the world around you.
Your coms are broken in the initial destruction as your suit took some damage so this makes sense and it also serves to show how alone you really are on the bottom of the ocean. There aren’t any monsters here, only the loneliness of the deep punctuated by various ocean life and your own seeming hallucinations the longer you are down there.
The game keeps the player on edge not only with your surroundings but with your fight to find oxygen tanks to keep your suit filled. Narcosis also features some combat so you’ll have a lot to keep you busy with danger possible around each turn.
Narcosis isn’t a long adventure and you can finish it in under five hours, but this is intentional. The game has a real sense of urgency as you only have a limited amount of time you can survive as the station continues to crumble. In this regard the game is very linear, although early game segments can get you lost as you are outside the station.
The game doesn’t explain much of anything. There is no protocol for this sort of situation and how to tackle the events happening. This helps lead to the rushed nature of the gameplay and really builds the tension. There were several moments I actually began to freak out because I was low on air and had no idea where to go next.
On your way to the escape pods you’ll also have to tackle a number of puzzles along the way, usually as a result of the destruction the earthquake caused. These help break up the one big failing of Narcosis –the long stretches of nothing. Since you are in this big bulky suit everything you do is a tank-like affair.
One stick controls your movement while the other your head. It takes some getting used to and I never truly became comfortable with it. Your suit is as much of a hindrance as an aid to your overall survival. You can’t look down very well which becomes a huge problem when tasked with some jumping puzzles.
Your in-suit hud shows your oxygen intake and well as your jump-jet meter that lets you putter about in short spurts. The oxygen tank you have depletes pretty fast and can be sapped away even faster depending on what you encounter along the way.
If you see a dead body, encounter an angry ocean creature, or begin to hallucinate your heart-rate will increase and cause you to burn through oxygen. Think of it like a sanity meter that you really have to manage. You can reduce your oxygen intake by looking away from scary things and by looking at your oxygen regulator and slowing your breathing.
Every move you make is a fight against everything around you and this really does help set a very foreboding mood to the whole adventure. The narration makes it seem like you made it out alive, but something about the whole thing just doesn’t feel quite right.
All that said, Narcosis does as much wrong as it does right. Gameplay is clunky and the little of it you do feels more like a fight against the game itself. The combat is always a chore and even though you are deep underwater there are only a few seas creatures that you’ll have to deal with.
Big spider-crabs are instant death, but the other small creatures that bug you can be fought off with your small knife. Then there’s the “jumping” that tends to ruin the experience. You’ll be attempting jumps with your jets in some areas multiple times because you have no idea what’s under you or how far you are traveling.
And then there’s the visuals. Narcosis isn’t all that impressive looking running on the Unity engine. It’s not terrible and most of the time this isn’t a problem since you are underwater and the simple nature of your surrounding, but actual characters look more like mannequins than anything else.
Narcosis does rely on some jump-scares which tend to work well, but whenever you see faces of your dead colleagues jitter about at you, odds are you’ll laugh and not freak out because of how bad they all look. It’s a shame that the character animations and models are so poor that it lets down the experience.
But the worst problem with Narcosis is that should be an amazing game. This one was built for VR, and in that respect almost all the issues I have with the Xbox One adventure simply would not exist. Actually feeling like you’re in the suit would change the entire experience.
The visual issues I have wouldn’t be so bad either as VR tends to lower the resolution and people are used to visuals that aren’t quite on par with next gen games on consoles and PC. Combat and world interaction would also not be a major problem because of you feeling like you’re in this bulky, restrictive suit. The VR “experience” really changes things.
Overall, Narcosis isn’t a great gameplay experience on the Xbox One and really should be played in VR. That said, the game does build a bloody fantastic narrative that almost makes the short experience worth it on console. I actually finished the game and then went back to listen to the complete narration that you unlock.
The ending of the game really flips everything you think on its head and the supplementary material you unlock is pretty great for a game like this. Narcosis is hard to me to rate for so many reasons. As a narrative its fantastic, but as a game there isn’t much there in this format.
Get this one in VR as I can wholeheartedly recommend that, and it may actually be one of the best VR experiences currently available. This version on the Xbox One lacks a lot of the punch the developers were going with, but if you just want a good story then I can still recommend it.
Final Score:
3/5
*A copy was provided for review*
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