Describing a game as “like System Shock” always perturbs me a little. People start to expect a game that equals System Shock, and that’s hardly fair. Also, despite being there day one for Thief: The Dark Project and Deus Ex, I didn’t play System Shock at the time, so I’d feel like I was betraying you if I described a game that way. So I won’t. I won’t say that Athanasia is like System Shock for all those reasons. But damn, it’s a fine thing to play, even in its Early Access release.
Plot: Dinosaurs have taken over a futuristic facility. It’s not in space, and I wish it were, and honestly given that you spend the whole game exploring the vast, metallic complex, you can absolutely pretend it is, but the truth is it’s located in South America. You are Carmen Flores, and you’re here to figure out what happened to all the researchers, and why the place is crawling with dinos. To do that, you’re going to need to do an awful lot of exploration, a small amount of extremely cautious combat, and a whole load of typing numbers like 0451 into computer terminals. It’s all that good stuff, with variant paths, innovative ways to set traps and conserve ammo, and all the furious emails about people forgetting to change their passcodes you could ever wish for.
The retro aesthetics belie a lot of modern complexity. Athanasia has proper physics, meaning you can stack boxes to create paths, or topple swivel chairs over walkways for personal amusement, in a truly enormous game that only very rarely features split-second load times. While you will eventually be lugging about a shotgun, pistol, crossbow, and various sci-fi gadgets, you’ll always be doing your very best not to use them given just how scarce ammo and energy proves to be. You’re much better off setting some haphazard traps, usually involving panicked shooting at gas canisters you put next to bear traps in the hope that the velociraptors don’t swarm you the moment you open the door. Or you could spend ages tracking down the ingredients needed to create a toxin and pump it into the room where an unfathomable number of the buggers have gathered. Or seek the keycards necessary to try to sneak around them unnoticed like a big cowardy-custard.
Something I really enjoy about this is how madly sprawling each section of the game proves to be, in a way that at first feels overwhelming until you start piecing it all together and building your mental map. (And you’ll need a mental one, as the paper maps you can print out from machines don’t show your location and are utterly useless.) Each of the three big areas I’ve played through started out feeling like far too much, and then eventually becoming deeply familiar, multi-floored locations through which I know all the shortcuts and secret passages. And wow, that third one, set a good seven hours into the game, is colossal, built around a vast central collapsing hollow lined with precarious pipes and wonky walkways. Finding the keycards, unlocking the lifts, and carefully clearing out the predators becomes a soothingly methodical process, packed with surprise attacks and novel twists.
Your inventory is cruelly small, requiring careful Tetris arrangements in order to maintain a full suite of tools and weapons, as well as having room for meds, spare ammo, and that huge container of gasoline you’re convinced is about to come in very useful. There are moments where you’ll have to make difficult sacrifices, choosing between having every variety of medicine you might need, or a tool that’ll let you force particular doors open. Thankfully Athanasia is very conscious of this, and will make sure to hide vital tools in newer locations in case you made an odd choice, and never demands wanton backtracking.
© Momentum Games / KotakuThis is an Early Access release, and currently contains only the first half of the game. As such it’s a bit wibbly in places. Overall it’s extremely solid, and for the most part feels like a finished product, but over the last week of playing every day, updates have arrived that have fixed one thing and broken another. Right now, on reloading a save game, sound is lost until you reboot, but the developers say that’ll be fixed pretty soon. There are some other frustrations I’d like to see addressed, like just how slow it is to change the item you’re currently holding, which is especially annoying when you’ve got dinos barreling toward you and you just want to fire a crossbow bolt you previously coated in a fungal growth that puts them to sleep. (The slow reload speeds, however, are perfect, and really add to the tension.) And while I recognize that the slow walking speed and very limited running stamina are a crucial part of the game’s design, I’d love for there to be some stats I could improve, perhaps sacrificing healing abilities for a longer sprint. Currently there are no skill trees or stats at all, which in fairness is a lot more like real life, but it’d be nice to feel like I can shape the way I play a little bit more.
However, I definitely do feel like I’m shaping my game with the variety that’s available. For the less violent beasts, I’m all about tranqing them, then stabbing them with a knife like a deranged psychopath before they can turn around to bite me. At the same time, while I’m prone to playing any im-sim in the most non-lethal way possible, given that the enemies here are dinosaur-likes, it doesn’t bother me a bit to blow them to bits with delicately arranged explosive materials. It’s fun to approach this sort of game in a less stealthy way, even though stealth is absolutely on offer too.
© Momentum Games / KotakuI really appreciate the slow pacing, the experimental approaches to tasks, and while I have sworn a good few times at its stationary save machines, I’m glad they’ve forced me to be so much more careful than I ever would be if I were save-scumming my way through the game. I’m going to be very disappointed when I complete this third section and reach the end of what’s currently on offer. But then it’ll also be splendid to see the major updates that add the final three sections over the next six months or so. I’d say Athanasia is that rare example of an unfinished Early Access game that’s worth getting in on before it’s finished. What’s already here is lengthy (the game says seven hours so far, but that doesn’t include reloading after deaths), and deeply entertaining, and at less than $15 it’s a properly good deal. And dammit, you can’t stop me: It’s Dino Crisis inside System Shock. There, I said it.
