Lifeless Planet: Premiere Edition

The concept of this adventure title is striking and seems as though it would keep one's attention, but it winds up falling a bit flat over the course of the game. People often wonder what it might be like to be the last living man (or woman) on Earth. The loneliness. The isolation. Now imagine being the last living thing on another planet. Stranded and with no way home. The harshness of the environment not only playing on your body, but on your mind as well. That's the core theme of Lifeless Planet. The game is eerie in its presentation, leaving you to wander through the wasteland seeing only the ruins of something that was here before you. It's an interesting idea with a lot of promise, as you struggle not only to discover what's happened to the planet but whether or not you're simply losing your mind.

While there's a lot of potential in the premise of the game, in execution things fall apart a bit. For starters, the game is pretty linear in its direction. You're constantly pushed in specific directions to continue the story. While the barren environment isn't necessarily screaming to be explored in an open-world sort of way, it still feels as if you're sort of herded where the game wants you to go. This wouldn't be too bad if so much of the game weren't taken up by walking from Point A to Point B. You easily spend more time just walking in a straight line than you do anything else in the game. And due to the nature of the environment, there's not much to distract you from the monotony. It feels like that long walk to a gas station when your car's stuck on the side of the road, only without the payoff of accomplishing anything. By the time you get to where the game wants you to go, most interest in solving the mystery is gone.