ADR1FT was a game I desperately wanted to like, the presentation is outstanding, the visuals look incredible and run smoothly (GTX 970), and while I have yet to try this game in VR (waiting for a vive myself) I can only imagine how immersive this game must be.

It is a shame then that this game undermines itself at every point, unsure of what game it wants to be; the early panic for survival is instantly mitigated by early oxygen upgrades and infinite oxygen points that make the game lose much of its tense moment to moment experiences, and thus the game becomes about going to point a to b, with very few moments of actual danger, and the occasional audiolog inbetween.

This means that the game is more about characters and story than the survival ideology it initially seems about. The problem is that the characters are 2 dimensional, and the story, is by all means pretty terrible. While not trying to spoil it, the whole experience is a failed attempt at a guilt trip for the player character, constantly sputeering stuff about how this guy had a child, and now he's dead possibly because of you etc. etc.
It's guilt for something your character did before the game, the actual reasoning is pretty dull, and the girl whom you play, alex, is void of character, any real dialogue, any sense of personality, and any ability to relate as the game keeps going "Alex is a bad person" with no real resolution or thought behind it, with an ending that's just saying that again for no reason, because it hasn't been hammered home enough anyway.

Its lack of focus on survival means that it fails as a simplistic but fun space survival romb a la gravity, but it's attempts at quiet moments and interesting story are far surpassed by its contemparary's such as Firewatch.

It's a real shame,
what we have here is tech demo with so much potential,
Bad writing, bland repetitive design, and a 4-5 hour game length that really begins to drag on when the story fails to have any kind of redeeming value breaks something that leaves me with nothing but bitter disappointment.

A lot of love clearly went in this game, sadly it seems it was wasted on a narrative thread that only comes off as pretentious by the end, I'm sorry game, I really wanted to like you, but I can't!

At this point I have beaten the game and I'm just kind of mixed about it. On one hand the game is absolutely beautiful. Moving around the debris field of a crumbling space station while looking down at Earth is simply amazing looking. The animations of Alex reaching out at items, turning them around and just moving around the airlock all look fantastic. The lighting system in the game is amazing as well. Past the visuals however, I found the game to be pretty boring and empty feeling.

The gameplay consists of you traversing an extremely damaged space station in an EVA suit. Since it's zero-G you use thrusters and momentum to move you throughout the station. Your thrusters are powered by the Oxygen system of the suit, which you also need to... Y'know. Breathe. So throughout the ENTIRE game you have to manage your oxygen levels by constantly finding oxygen containers/stations. It can be a bit tedious but these containers/stations basically lay out the way you're supposed to go for the next objective so they server more than just life saving air. But at the same time the Oxygen meter always makes you feel rushed so you can't look at the amazing visuals.

While moving through you'll find computers, audio logs and radio calls that fill in the story of what happened to the station and the interactions between characters. Even with these logs I never felt any profound connection to any of the characters. Which makes the entire game feel lifeless. Alex never talks other than a literal handful of words through the game, even though she's constantly in contact with base command trying to get her back home, even after fixing the relay that is supposed to allow her to talk to them.

For a game having such amazing visuals, I found the soundtrack and sound in general to just be pretty poor. I had a lot of popping in my speakers while playing throughout that I have never had before. At a few points in the game songs will just come out of nowhere. While these are okay for a minute or two, I had one song loop a 10-15 second loop for 30 minutes until I restarted the checkpoint. It really wore me down.

The one thing I was REALLY looking forward to was the quote I saw floating around a lot. "It's like being an astronaut!" It isn't at all though. You move from room to room pushing a button at a terminal that says, "Do you want to repair?" and it repairs itself. I was really looking forward to using some tools or something like that. But you just use a keyboard so it makes me wonder why Alex is even needed if it can all be fixed with a signal.

The game mainly consists of,

1. Find colored disc
2. Follow objective marker to another terminal/computer
3. Gather oxygen and intel as you move
4. Reach computer and put disc in or press button to upgrade suit
5. Repeat

Pros:

• Amazing visuals
  
• The movement of the EVA suit is fun but slightly clunky in spots
  
• Really great animation

Cons:

• Short, I completed it in just over 3 hours and don't really feel the need to play it again.
  
• Didn't care about the characters
  
• Gameplay consists of just going to terminals and pressing a button
  
• Oxygen meter forces you to feel rushed when you want to just look at how amazing the game is
  
• Does NOT feel like being an astronaut

Holy hells, was I expecting this game at this budget to be this well real good. I have it on Epic and running a GTX 750 TI and getting 60 FPS. So I give thumbs up for the game being well optimized and great.

So let me start off saying about the game. It is the most beautiful looking game I've played too long, right next to The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. The story is very intriguing and the game itself is very intense when the entire time you are doing all these tasks to get yourself home, you start to wonder and even get to the point of doubt if you'd ever make it back, listening to your fellow humans and command below doing everything in their power to help, only to realize your up there and they're not. The story is gripping hands down.

Other than that, the game is extremly well done and I'm personally having a great experience with it and I hope everyone else gives this game a try. It is a real good price for the game you get, and I highly recommend it.

I had high hopes for this game and while it does have beautiful graphics that alone doesn't make a game. The story is lackluster, hell the film Gravity had more story and driven characters than this game. The music come on at weird moments and is split between short classical pieces and strange techno beats that made my brain melt and turn off my speakers until I was passed the tense area. I am not saying this is a bad game its basically Firewatch in space. The only major problem I had with it came from an unexplained bug which caused me to be locked out from completing the game after spending the five hours finding everything. I don't know how it ends and I'm not going to play it at least for awhile. Is it worth $20-ish bucks? Sure. Does it have replay value? No.

What should be a terrifying experience quickly turns into dull busy work that never quite manages to instill any real sense of peril in the player. On top of that, the meager storytelling and characterisation fail to pull in either.
Might be worth it if you own a VR headset for the experience of floating in outer space though.