This game is something that I pick up and put down pretty regularly. It is a simple game with not that many controls and it is mostly focused around puzzles that are rather easy but just time-consuming to pull off. I think I am getting near the end of the game but there was one portion that almost made me put the game down permanently in disgust as it took tedium to a whole new level in that it isn't possible to complete it given the instruction that you have been handed by the game's control tutorial at any point.
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Anyone that has played this game will see images like this and cringe a little bit because while they do mix up the gameplay they are rather pointless in that they are not at all difficult they are simply tedious for the sake of being tedious. They introduce the ability to jump from one section of ice or lose dirt in an earlier section but then when you go and apply this knowledge in the field, it will almost certainly fail a time or two resulting in a VERY LONG loading screen followed by the tedium of getting back to that point, ever so slowly like a slug, to have another try at it. You'll probably get it on your 2nd or 3rd time and will be praying "please don't fall" as you do it since doing so simply results in you having to do the entire thing over again. I can see WHY they would put this in there because otherwise the only thing you are doing is running around Mars or the various buildings on mars waiting for your next holotape of what the hell happened on this planet before you turned up to investigate.
The climbing aspect of the game goes away after a while and is replaced by I think everyone's favorite aspect of almost any game that is throw in, swimming. While I am not going to address the rather pointless aspect of including a water scene on a planet that has no water, I do want to point out that the woman you are playing as, who has a super-high-tech suit on, states "the water is freezing!" when she emerges from it and that comment annoyed me since there is no way it is more freezing than space, which the suit has been designed to be comfortably be used in.
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Anyone that has played this game will recognize this particular wall climb and be like "screw that part of the game!" and they have a very good reason for feeling that way. Climbing, as I mentioned, is extremely time-consuming and tedious, yet it is not difficult. Except for this one part and the reason WHY it is so difficult is because at no point anywhere in the game do they tell you that it is possible to jump off of one wall to meet another wall opposite you. They don't tell you this is POSSIBLE, let alone how to actually fucking do it. I am sure that everyone that has ever gotten here has climbed, over and over again, looking for some sort of spot that they missed to continue onward but what the reality of the situation is that the game NEVER TOLD YOU what buttons you have to press to make this move possible. It is literally never address in any tutorial nor is it in the controls section of the options. How in the hell we were ever meant to figure this out is just horrible game design.
To make the jump, the only way you can do it is to
Press down on the left control stick while still pressing both buttons that keep your ice picks locked in
Then once you jump you have to press the two ice pick buttons to catch yourself on the other side
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Once you figure it out you will see that this process was never difficult it was just a question of the game NEVER telling you that this sort of move is an option. YES, down is the button you press to walk backwards at every other point in the game but they didn't tell you that this would apply to wall climbing at any other point in the game. How did this make it past the beta - testers? This is just poor game design on a whole different level when, now that I was stuck on it, I find that there are hundreds of YouTube posts that are just about this one thing. How on earth are you going to have a control in the game that you don't tell us about and it is only used twice the entire time you are playing?
My rage was satiated after getting past this but honestly, If i hadn't looked it up I would have deleted this game because there is no other way to get across other than to use the control scheme that they never told us was an option. Kudos to whoever the hell it was out there that had the patience of a saint to figure this thing out and spread it to the rest of the world.