Hello Everyone, This is Aluvian and today we make our escape in Mooncrash.
Mooncrash was released in June during E3 this year as a DLC for Prey, but it's played
as a separate game mode selected from Prey's main menu.
In Mooncrash, You play as a hacker in a capsule orbiting the moon, playing through a simulation
of a disaster at the TranStar moonbase Pytheas.
The moonbase is made of up a starting area, a main hub in a crater, and 3 wings connecting
outward from the hub.
The game plays like a "roguelike", meaning when you die you lose your progress, well
mostly.
Since it's a simulation, when characters die, they are dead until the simulation is
reset, losing all items gained, with the exception of installed neuromods (or skills), and fabricator
plans.
You're also awarded Sim points that you can spend on items you've unlocked for use
in your next run.
Once reset, you start back at the beginning with empty inventories.
So, you'll want take your time to avoid that, but apparently, the simulation is corrupted,
and gets more corrupted as you go.
When the meter fills, the corruption level goes up, resurrects all of the enemies and
makes them stronger, overwhelming you quickly.
Unfortunately, most of the major strengths of Prey, are missing from Mooncrash.
The compelling narrative?
Replaced with very short individual character stories.
The atmosphere?
Well it's sort of there, but nowhere near the extent of Prey, and then rendered mostly
non-existent because you're constantly rushing through the environments, repeatedly.
Being able to play your way, is also missing, because you're stuck playing as 5 distinct,
unlockable characters, each with predetermined skills, so you're forced to play a certain
way depending on the character.
Important skills like repair or hacking, are limited to each a single character.
Some tasks require the abilities of multiple characters to complete, so you're forced
to play certain characters in a specific order, making it a game of memory as you cannot switch
characters on the fly.
They either, have to die or escape in order to select a new one, and then that character
is only reselectable after you've reset.
It tends to all feel very repetitive, as between each reset, all bodies, and lootable containers
remain in the same place, just with different loot inside.
You can only loot the exact same storage container so many times before you're bored with it.
The runs are varied a bit, though, as you progress.
They start adding hazards, like a fire or power outage in a wing to hamper your run,
but most are pretty easily dealt with.
They also added a few new things.
Mimics come in more varieties, some having elemental properties like the phantoms do.
They included a new enemy, the moonshark, which is the toughest enemy to date, as well
as a new Typhon ability learned from it called burrow, allowing you to dig under obstacles.
Another new addition, is weapon skins, which were neat at first, but, you have to set them,
item by item.
So if you set a skin on a wrench, but then during your run, you collected 5 more, better
wrenches, you have to set that skin, on each wrench you pick up, individually, on every
single run.
The skin you select does not save across the item type.
So it's novel at first, but quickly becomes a tedious hassle that you just ignore.
In Bethesda's marketing, they use the phrase "infinitely replayable" several times
to describe the game, and for that reason, I find it extremely odd that they decided
to make your game unplayable after finishing all of the objectives.
You're taken out of the simulation for an end of game sequence, and due to the game
autosaving at that point, you can no longer return to the simulation to play the actual
game, you have to start a whole new one.
That's not particularly fun nor is that what I'd call infinite.
The beginning of the game is when you are your weakest and you die repeatedly because
you are woefully overmatched.
That is the least fun part of the game, why throw your player back in to that?
Furthermore, the launch trailer made the game look way more combat focused than it is, and
when once I actually played the game, I felt misled.
Ultimately, Mooncrash is, in essence, a completely different game from Prey, only sharing a world,
skills and shooting mechanics not to mention the long loading times.
They moved away from the things that made Prey great, and that's disappointing.
Currently, I don't recommend Mooncrash.
While I do appreciate Arkane wanting to try something new, it just didn't work for me.
Later this year though, they're releasing another game mode called Typhon Hunter, which
is free to owners of Mooncrash.
It plays like Prop Hunt, where one player controls Morgan Yu, and the other 5 players
control mimics, hiding from him.
That sounds like it could be a lot of fun, but until then, I'm done with the moon.
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