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Stuck on Titan



<span class="bold">P&middot;O&middot;L&middot;L&middot;E&middot;N</span>, an atmospheric mystery game where you explore an impressively detailed space station, is now available, DRM-free on GOG.com, with a 10% launch discount.


An employee has gone missing and you are sent to investigate the research facility atop Saturn's moon Titan, where they were stationed. You were chosen for your mechanical skills but what awaits there will test not only your professional expertise and keen eye but also your willpower. There are things hidden beneath Titan's surface that might need more than one playthrough to get fully exposed but don't let that stop you from exploring the detailed environment, manipulating the numerous objects scattered about (with or without the help of your VR hardware), and striving to piece together the many mysteries of Station M. Even those that shouldn't be uncovered.



Search every nook and cranny of a mysterious moon base in <span class="bold">P&middot;O&middot;L&middot;L&middot;E&middot;N</span>, DRM-free on GOG.com. The 10% launch discount will last until April 27, 07:59 AM UTC.
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AngryAlien: I wish there was a demo. Just finished the game after ~4.5 hours and I am utterly disappointed.
I'm curious, is it because you bought a walker and were expecting a lot of action?
Because it's short? I assumed as much.
Or for actual mechanical issues like, sound design, graphics, motion? Or didn't you enjoy the story?

So I'm curious if you fall into the category of "had no idea what I was buying" and hated it. Or you enjoy walkers and still hated it?
Post edited April 24, 2016 by bad_fur_day1
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AngryAlien: I wish there was a demo. Just finished the game after ~4.5 hours and I am utterly disappointed.
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bad_fur_day1: I'm curious, is it because you bought a walker and were expecting a lot of action?
Because it's short? I assumed as much.
Or for actual mechanical issues like, sound design, graphics, motion? Or didn't you enjoy the story?

So I'm curious if you fall into the category of "had no idea what I was buying" and hated it. Or you enjoy walkers and still hated it?
Fair question. Yes, the game was a complete impulse buy, I knew nothing about this game and bought it, because I was under the impression this would be a bit like SOMA. I totally fall into the category of "had no idea". Maybe if I had read the words "walking simulator" somewhere I would have been more sceptical, so this is totally my fault.

But in my opinion there are several problems with this game. It already begins with the description, where (again, in my opinion) every single claim made about the game is not or not entirely true. Let me try to elaborate.

Note: this became quite a wall of text, but I felt that I owe everyone an explanation why my reaction to the game was so... harsh and quite emotional. I wrote my comment right after finishing the game and I was very disappointed and totally baffled.

PROFOUND STORYLINE - What lies beneath the surface of Titan? Experience the existential journey of P·O·L·L·E·N that’ll intrigue, surprise, and stay with you long after leaving the base.

Nothing stayed with me. The only thing that will stay with me is the "WTF... THAT'S IT? Really?" moment when the game ends. Yes, they way the story begins IS kind of intriguing, but the story jumps like a tiger and lands like a bedside rug. What we get is the skeleton of a story, we only get hints from a few audio logs and from a few notes, but there is no real explanation for anything and the end is more than unsatisfying. Loose ends everywhere. I am not even sure why the game is called "POLLEN", except from bees being mentioned several times. There might be a connection to the main story, but this is very vague and only speculation.

uncover the mysteries that lie beneath the moon’s crust

Again, pretty much nothing gets uncovered. Don't get me wrong, I don't need a conclusion that explains every little thing, but what POLLEN delivers is far from being a well developed story. To me it feels like the devs had the idea for the story, but were not able to write something really consistent and compelling, so they decided to screw story telling, intersperse some vague hints here and there and leave it to the player to cobble together its own story. And the end was an audacity, a blatant rip-off of "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Return to Station M to discover new layers of the story that may have remained hidden on previous playthroughs.

No. Just no. There is no reason to return to Station M, because there simply is not enough content to justify this. I spend 4.5 hours with the game and most of the time was spend with fiddling around with things. If I would have concentrated strictly on the story, I guess I would haver finished the game in maybe three hours max. I opened every locker, I pushed every button, I've read every note and every book I could find and I highly doubt there can be found more.

By the way, there was one thing that, in my opinion, really is an example of bad or at least very sloppy game design. I can't describe it without a spoiler, so I put it at the end of this post.

FULLY INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENT [...] almost everything on the base is interactive. Even a small, simple item could be the key to solving a puzzle, and unlocking one of the many secrets of Station M.

Again, there are not many secrets you can unlock. But about the "interactivity"... here "interactivity" means that you can open every locker or drawer, that you can switch on some machines; mostly things like forklifts that move a couple of centimeters and that you can press buttons; which mostly do nothing.
And when you pick up a book, a note or one of the many other objects, then "interactivity" means that... you shake them a bit. Yeah. I would have at least expected that I could flip through book or that the protagonist would crumble a note when he uses it or something like this. Hell, I put a beer can into the microwave and nothing happened.

In the end, the whole station feels lifeless, artificial and kind of sterile, it really does not feel, well, real to me.

[...] where you can try everything you can get your hands on to solve intriguing puzzles

Again, "try everyting" actually means most of the time pushing buttons that do nothing, open lockers that contain nothing or picking up small items and... shake them. The puzzles themselfes are way from being "intriguing". There are very few of them anyway and most of them are very generic. In the end most of the puzzles just add up to "find item A, bring it to point B, rinse, repeat". And quite a lot of the stuff you find and that is actually useable only exists as an end in itself. They will not progress the story, they will not help to explain anything, they are not even interesting.

I spend, for instance, quite some time to find 5 particular items that you can use at a certain place. And what they do in the end is... pretty much nothing, although the game successfully creates the impresssion that they are somehow important.

I am under the impression that the game offers very nice graphics (I am convinced it is quite an experience with VR), but very, very little real content. I mean, the alternate reality they have created is actually great, the story begins very interesting and promising, but then the story rapidly deteriorates into oblivion. Which is why I felt so peeved at the end... they draw a sketch of an interesting story, without ever finishing the whole painting. If the story and the world behind it would not have looked so promising and interesting in the beginning, I would have been less hooked and my reaction would have been less emotional. But I wanted to know what was or is going on, I wanted to know what happend to the characters, especially that one woman and the game let me down big time.

It is one thing to let the players fill out some blanks and I have no problem with that. But it is a completely different thing to create the outlines of a story and just leave it this way, while probably believing you have just created a mysterious story that works on a meta level or whatever. Dear devs, you have not.

Add to this the misleading advertising, which really creates the impression this game is something along the lines of SOMA. Add lackluster puzzle design. Add countless missed opportunities to fill this world, this really interesting alternate reality, this station and the characters with life.

I am convinced the devs have put a lot of work into the game. I can see that and for this, I think they really have deserved credit. I would not even have the idea to refund the game, not at least because I should have known better by now and buying this game was my fault alone. But then again, I really was kind of misguided by the description on the store page. And unfortunately I am also convinced that the considerably biggest efforts actually went into the VR thing and very little efforts went into things like story telling.

I really hope I could explain why I am so peeved about this game. I am usually not one that goes on a rant like this about a game, but no matter what I was expecting, the game was a real let down for me. I do not want to insult the devs or something like this, but I am under the impression they either did not really know what they want or they completely lost their way during development.

Is it an adventure? Well, the store page says it is one, the description claims it is one, but it is not. It is a VR demo and it could be the first chapter of something bigger, but as it is now, it is nothing more than a very pretty VR demo and otherwise pretty much a washout.

SPOILER AHEAD ! ! !
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One thing/flaw really stood out to me. How can you miss something like that?

There is a character that is transported to another time/pocket dimension or whatever. (Again, the game neither explains why this happens, where she actually went and what eventually happened to her. Things just happen in POLLEN, just don't ask why.)
We later visit this place and find things she used in this place and that are already at the base when you enter it. Now you have the opportunity to hide some of those things behind doors she is apparently not able to open, thus placing those things effectively out of reach when she arrives there. And yet you can find those things all over the place and apparently being used by that woman. This makes no sense whatsoever, completely destroys immersion and is, at least to me, prove that the devs spend more time polishing the VR part than with creating a sensible story.

[i][/i]
Post edited April 24, 2016 by AngryAlien