By Hoaseng Thao

WARNING” This article contains spoilers about the game ‘SIGNALIS’.

‘SIGNALIS’ is a survival horror game created by Rose Engine Games, being released on October 27th, 2022, and has since then won many awards for its unique story and overall theme of cosmic horror.

Personally, I love this game to death for not only its gameplay and aesthetic but for its story, which sent me down the rabbit hole of cosmic horror and in a deep state of depression from finishing the game’s story over and over again.

PREMISE

Set in a dystopian future where humanity has ventured far into space and into the unknown a Replika or Humanoid Android named Elster, is awakened from cryostasis from having crash landed on a cold planet. She must find a missing crew member in an underground facility being overrun by corrupted Replikas and the memories of a mysterious girl in white.

VISUALS

Do not let the low polygon style dissuade you into thinking that the game is just one of many PS1 style games in recent years that you play once and refund after finishing it. Personally, I believe this low polygon style really portrays the overall feeling of desolation the further you go in the game.

The visuals of the facility intrigues the sci-fi nerd in me, mostly because of the similarities it has with the game ‘Dead Space’ by Motive Studios as well as the movie ‘Alien’ by Ridley Scott. They also intrigue me with how the visuals make the facility a character in the story, with little details such as propaganda posters being laid out around the facility to seeing the aftermaths of bloody battles and last stands.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay plays just like the classic of the PS1 era, and plays similarly like the early Resident Evil’ games by Capcom, but it adds its own touch to it. Instead of having a complex inventory system, the game forces you to use six inventory slots (you can change this in the settings) which effectively forces the player to decide how you manage your items in your runs.

The shooting in the game feels very smooth, as you have to aim at your target first to get a shot out, and with the brilliant sound designs of each weapon you use, adds to the overall action when playing the game.

Puzzles are found throughout the game and are not that particularly hard to solve, and most of the time in my playthroughs where I had difficulty trying to solve the puzzles, came out of my own faults and not from the game.

The enemies you face in the game are relatively easy to handle once you get a hang of what items you have in your inventory, with guns being used to knock down the enemy while consumable items allow you to heal or take down an enemy without wasting ammo. One key thing to note is that “killing” an enemy won’t stop it from getting back up unless burnt with a flare or flare gun, which forces the player to consider using a flare to insure the enemy is destroyed or to secure chokepoints for backtracking.

Bosses in this game are relatively easy to defeat once you get a hang of each of the bosses movement mechanics, added with that you bring enough ammo to defeat them.

Ammo/items are scattered across the facility, and are very small in number when found, forcing you to have to take in account how many bullets/items you should bring when solving the mysteries of the facility.

STORY

This part of the article will summarize the story of ‘SIGNALIS’ and contains spoilers to the story and ending, skip over this part if you have yet to play ‘SIGNALIS’.

Following a forced wake up sequence, Elster finds herself in the desolate interior of the Penrose spaceship, a spaceship created by the Eusan Nation, and finds a photograph of a white haired female crewmember, sending her onto a journey to find this crewmember. Stepping outside, the Penrose is a total mess as it crash landed on a cold planet before entering a hole that leads into someone’s personal room, and on a table lies the book ‘THE KING IN YELLOW’. After opening the book, Elster receives flashes of memories that are not hers.

Elster then finds herself inside an abandoned facility in which she explores to only find out through one of the survivors, a STAR unit Replika, that the facility has been overrun by corrupted Replika units and the person she’s looking for could be at the bottom of the facility. Elster is also met by an actual human or Gestalt, whose name is Isa, she too is in search of someone, however Elster would venture on alone to find the person she’s looking for.

The more Elster goes down the facility, the more corrupt it becomes as the halls become grittier and messier with each floor she descends revealing the true nature of the facility. The facility the game takes place in is known as S-23 Sierpinski, on the planet Leng, and has been used as a mining facility for the Eusan nation. Through the many readable files scattered across the facility though, it shows that life in the facility was harsh and cruel.

The Eusan Nation was facing a massive shortage of food and materials as it fought a war against the Eusan Empire, leading to many human colonies to starve including S-23 Sierpinski, and it doesn’t help that the Eusan Nation is a repressive totalitarian regime that conducts cruel experiments and punishments on its people.

Following an encounter with a corrupted Mynah Replika, Elster is confronted by a non-corrupted Adler Replika, who warns her that she should’ve never returned before pushing her off an elevator, only to be saved by a mass pile of other Elster units. Elster would continue to scour across the facility, getting flashes of someone else’s memories as she helps Isa along the way (Isa is back).

After a near death experience in the deepest parts of the facility, Elster finally escapes the facility and finally reaches the surface but it is no longer a frozen landscape, but an open red mass that can only resemble that of blood. Confronted by Adler again, he remarked about how his commander, Falke had fallen ill, sending the entire facility into disarray and subtly hinting to a repeated cycle of Elsters journey. Elster crosses the red landscapes, seeing the remains of her previous attempts before reaching the Penrose again, but this time going unconscious as she fails to open the hatch.

Following a forced wake up sequence, Elster finds herself in the interior of the Penrose spaceship again, this time more lively in lighting and color, a clear memory of the past. Onboard the ship is key information as to why Elster is on the ship. She had taken a part on the Penrose program to find a habitable planet for the future of the Eusan Nation, and a part of this program was the missing crew member, Ariane Yeong.

After finishing her chores, she presents herself to Ariane’s quarters where it is revealed that the two are in a romantic relationship established out of isolation and the necessity for human interaction. After this memory sequence, Elster wakes up again, back onto the cold landscape but this time motivated to find Ariane as she reminds her of a promise they both swore to.

Returning back to the Sierpinski, Elster would find herself not on Leng but in a colony on the moon Rotfront. Here, Elster would meet Isa again, but this time Isa apologizes for not finding the person she’s looking for, before eventually becoming corrupted. It is hinted throughout the memory sequences that Isa was looking for her sister, Erika.

Elster would eventually meet the person in charge of Sierpinski, Falke, who remarks to Elster that Ariane will never dance with them again and that both she and Elster are incomplete, before engaging in battle with Elster. As Falke kneels defeated, she would remark to Elster that they are now one.

Elster would return back to the red landscape, this time, a corrupted Adler awaits her and belittles her for continuing the cycle before ultimately meeting his fate after a failed attempt at killing her. Returning back to the Penrose, Elster finally opens the latch and gets back inside, this time revealing what happened on the Penroe’s demise.

The Penrose program was a last ditch effort for the Eusan nation, essentially both Elster and Ariane were doomed to die in space as the Penrose ship began to deteriorate from leaking radiation, which had slowly been poisoning Ariane and had forced her inside a cryo chamber, but before she went into cryo, both she and Elster promised to die side by side so that one would never be alone.

Entering the cryo room, Elster is finally reunited with Ariane, who asks Elster to keep her end of the promise to which Elster hesitates but ultimately concedes to. Placing her hands on the neck of Ariane, Elster would end Ariane’s suffering before eventually succumbing to her wounds.

CONCLUSION

I love this game to death, its story, gameplay, and visuals are by far one of the best I’ve seen so far and is definitely a game everyone must play once in their lifetime. From the horrors that are the corrupted Replikas to the sad but bittersweet story, ‘SIGNALIS’ is a brilliant game that will forever stay in the hearts of many including myself.

You can buy ‘SIGNALIS’ on their official Steam Store Page here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwinlZ6cgZqEAxWqAHkGHRnYDSUQFnoECCIQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstore.steampowered.com%2Fapp%2F1262350%2FSIGNALIS%2F&usg=AOvVaw0uwdgI22Owy-MiAc1sbdta&opi=89978449

By: Daniel Kendle

And now, the saga continues…

CHAPTER TWO: I LOVE (HATE) LOOKING AT SAWDUST!

The Nintendo Switch, the console that ‘Pokémon Violet’ exclusively runs on, is turning 7 years old soon, being first released in the US in early March of 2017. So, that means that it’s a pretty dated piece of hardware, relatively. I love the Switch, but I can’t deny that it’s seen a lot, and it might be time for the next console successor from Nintendo soon.

When ‘Violet’ released in November of 2022, it was over 5 years past the Switch’s launch, and we’d obviously seen some very high-end graphics from the platform’s games in prior games, especially open-world ones. The Switch was never the most powerful console; it had the visual fidelity for games rivaling early 2010’s systems. Then again, for a handheld-stationary console hybrid – something not seen very often – it was perfectly fine, in my opinion.

On that note, ‘Pokemon’s’ ranged in terms of their games’ graphics. The pixel-art era is a revered time for the series, featuring some of the best visuals shown on their respective consoles. Then in the 3D era, we’ve had some… mixed results, to say the least. Nothing terrible, but nothing really looking like “the pinnacle” of their visual possibilities. Just kind of generic scenery all-around.

We’ve had a good few other 3D Pokemon games on the Switch who’ve – again – ranged in quality. Some games look really great! Some games look like dog water! It’s all up in the air, frankly. The only other ‘Pokémon’ game I’ve reviewed looks like the latter, and I can safely say that ‘Pokémon Violet’ is definitely in the middle of the scale.

To begin, we’ve had models for the actual creatures themselves remodeled. Now, instead of looking plastic-y and fake. They have bumps and grooves, more natural proportions, and realistic textures. For instance, a Pokémon made out of metal will have a bright sheen to it, reflecting light like an actual shiny iron object. Furry ‘mons now have a faint fur texture to them, instead of solid colors. It’s like the difference between a stock image drawing of a sunflower and an actual sunflower.
This is overall a net-positive, and I haven’t seen many people complaining about this change.

As for the graphical representation of the world, things become murky. Human characters look alright; the artists went in a [slightly] more-realistic direction in designing them. Models look alright, but the animations for them are very stilted, and are very limited in how they move and express themselves. A lot of the time an important character will have 1 or 2 key poses that they’ll strike every now and then and it looks real stinky. Other than that though they’re fine.

Then we come to the actual environments, and they’re… interesting-looking. Like, they’re all-around better than the only other Pokemon game I’ve reviewed, ‘Pokemon Legends: Arceus,’ but comparing the 2 is like comparing a pile of literal garbage and a pile of sawdust. Either way, you’re kind of screwed.

Textures are very muddy and of low quality; any detailed sign lets you count the pixels it’s made up of. THAT’S how bad it is. This also holds true for more natural textures, with grass and leaves being flat, monochrome images spread across a field. Rock faces aren’t as bad, but you notice the fact that they only use one repeating image for the cliffs, as you’ll get the same image in a grid-like pattern and it breaks immersion.

Buildings look fine, but they suffer from an adjacent problem to the pixelated signs, in which being a few meters away from a texture causes it to look blurry and unrendered, but moving closer causes it to become crisper. This is a mild headache and makes certain areas of the region a pain to get through. Also, I don’t know if this’ll sound strange but if you’re out in the wilderness and walking near a hill, the hill will terraform around you (not on purpose, of course) and it’s physical model will warp and bend at the base, making for an odd optical illusion that gives me an ACTUAL headache.

You might be able to tell that I don’t have a lot of energy in this chapter, mainly because, other than the “highlights” above, there’s honestly not a lot to talk about in terms of ‘Violet’s’ visuals, because while some parts of the game look bad, there are other parts that look pretty good, honestly, like the Pokémon models or the User Interfaces (UI). These look good, but the mix of good and bad make this a middling experience to look at. Like, I’ve seen much worse – even from Pokemon – but then again, I’ve seen better. Compared to the franchise’s other 3D outings, ‘Pokemon Scarlet’ and ‘Pokemon Violet’ land around the middle of the pack. They don’t look good, but hey, they don’t look bad! Just sawdust, that’s all.

Gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t hate the graphics of the game as much as I thought I would. Despite what I’ve said so far about the region’s just-okay region design and middling graphics, I’m feeling pretty good about this review so far! What could possibly bring down its score now?

CHAPTER THREE: THE THING THAT BRINGS ITS SCORE DOWN NOW

If you haven’t heard already, there are some notable glitches in this game. If you’ve searched up some of said glitches online you’ll find some interesting results. I can’t show anything because of the wonderful world of the US copyright system, but I assure you that they’re bad. REALLY bad. Say, here’s a [short] list of notable bugs and issues in ‘Violet.’

• Rendering issues with come textures
• Shadow problems (shadows of large cliffs or buildings will appear and disappear at will)
• Sometimes hair on people will flicker and move around weirdly
• Problems with the aliasing on objects in water, where the object’s borders will appear pixelated and gross
• Sometimes when riding your bike-dragon (more on this later), if you jump with it into a small-enough gap it’ll become frozen in the air and cause you to be teleported back onto solid ground after 10-or-so seconds
• Lag spikes
• The FPS (frames per second) drops to single-digits if you’re in the giant lake area
• Sometimes when setting up a picnic table, it won’t appear. If you try to do anything that interacts with the table, like making a sandwich, you won’t be able to see it.
• During one cutscene your character is supposed to be talking to someone else, but instead they’ll awkwardly continue walking in a strange fashion, almost walking off-screen until teleporting back to where they were supposed to originally be, letting the cutscene commence. It’s hard to describe this bug in words but it’s one of the most bizarre bugs here.
• Pokémon disappearing into walls
• You’re actually able to escape the first area in the game and bypass the opening tutorial. Simply go to the left corner of the first area and chuck one of your Pokémon at another wild ‘mon from a cliff beyond, and if you’re lucky you’ll be teleported into the battle menu, with your character now in the new area. You can then run away and explore the whole map. I haven’t done this myself, so I don’t know if there are any notable changes before the tutorial is completed.
• Music not appearing in some instances

And there’s much more, I could go on!

But for the sake of speeding along in this review I’ll cut it here and say this: remember the metaphor in the beginning? Here, these glitches, these obstructing bugs and problems, this is the weasel. This is the snake in the kitchen, the problem that gives these games such a controversial guise.

And honestly, the people who call out these issues are in the right, in my opinion. I think there’s a line between “the developers being rushed for time and not being able to fully-polish their game” and “the developers programming ‘Sandwich Simulator 2042’ instead of making a working product.” Like, I’d rather have a bland-as-sand game that runs relatively-well over a (somewhat) packed title that makes me reminisce about the days when video games looked about the fidelity of a ketchup packet filled with salt.

Why did ‘Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’ come out like this? The most astute and probably-correct answer is time. The ‘Pokémon’ franchise operates with a new generation of games coming out every 3 years. You’ll get a game with a new region and creature designs to kick off the generation, usually a follow-up package the following year being either a second, similar pair of games that act as an “enhanced package, or DLC.

Then next year they’ll have a separated package, either being a remake of a past game or something else entirely.

Then, the generation ends with the next leading game for the NEXT generation.

This means that, for one company, this is a lot of stuff to do, and especially in the 3D era of games has caused the franchise to have a select few half-baked end products from the lack of time. This has caused a lot of people to say that the series should relax and maybe take some time between games, letting developers put more content – and better content, frankly – into future games, as well as higher-quality graphics that don’t make me want to chug quicksand.

This problem comes with that the games essentially “lead” the series forward: with each new generation of games comes a new batch of creature designs and characters, and so forth new trading card lines, plushies, clothing and apparel, movies, the on-going TV show… the Pokemon franchise is so large and has so many facets of entertainment that taking time to iron out and not rush a new game brings a detriment to the rest of the show.

The television series can’t run new seasons in the new region forever, the trading cards can’t print new sets forever, and merch lines won’t last. It’s an ever-repeating cycle of new content becoming old, and eventually being filtered out by the newer, which is then filtered out by the newest, each having a 3-ish few years to shine.

The Pokémon franchise is the kitchen, and these glitches are the irritable animals. However, instead of being inside one’s minute apartment, the kitchen is a part of a network reality cooking show. Just because you’ve got some pests in the kitchen doesn’t mean you can slow down; you’ve got an audience waiting for you, judges to value your dish within an hour’s fray. Just because you’ve got some glitches in the game doesn’t mean you can slow down; you’ve got an audience waiting for you, players waiting to buy your products within 3-years’ time.

And that is the leading issue with ‘Pokemon Scarlet’ and ‘Pokemon Violet,’ as well as the Pokemon franchise as a whole: time is the enemy, and your audience – and surrounding cooks – will not wait for a better dish.

…But YOU can! That’s right kids, this here article’s, again, a 4-parter, due to several factors such as the inevitable heat death of the universe looming closer and also length. We’ll pick up with the gameplay section in this review of a video game in the third part.