A few days ago I (Geeky Gal NinjaBrite) saw a relatively new game on sale on Xbox One that instantly got my attention. The picture of the game showed an Astronaut standing on a desert planet in an abandoned town. The name of the game was Lifeless Planet, the P in planet formed as the symbol for the Soviet Union … I’ve always loved astronauts and as a kid I wanted to be one when I grew up, I even considered to study at a space university. 🙂 Before I got the game I watched some people streaming it on twitch and it looked amazing. What I saw was an astronaut running around doing…eh just running…the person controlling the astronaut was humming that circus song and I couldn’t stop laughing, it was so absurd, 🙂 I wanted to do exactly the same thing. So I bought the game.
The main character THE ASTRONAUT scientist, who looks exactly as a traditional oldschool astronaut should look like (love it), crashlanded on a planet that is thought to be rich in life forms. But the planet looks nothing like he thought, it seems lifeless (hence the title haha). He sets out on a mission to find the rest of his crew…
I got the impression that this mission to the planet was the first time for humans to go there. So this beginning where he almost directly runs into an abandoned town with a flagpole and the Soviet Union flag puts a lot of questions in your head. What is this? Why was/is the Soviet Union here and how and when did they come here? What happened? I want to know so badly! The story moves on as you investigate the town, some weird things happen but nothing too extraordinary. You find your way to a research facility…
This game, so far, is really good at keeping you interested. Weird stuff happens, like suddenly you see a hospital bed in the middle of nowhere, you get to see visions of the “old days (?)” and other strange things. It’s an adventure, horror in the classic sci-fi “alone in the world” scary way, and a puzzle game. At first I thougt that it would be really hard to know were to go in this seemingly big undiscovered world but it was not a problem, its very linear. Yes there is a lot of just running around and nothing happens, and in these parts there is no music, but I like that. It makes it more real and gives you more time to become and feel like this lonely astronaut all alone on a distant planet TRYING TO KEEP SANE. And it’s absolutely fun to make your own music and sound effects. I said WIIEEEE! every, like EVERY(!), time I used my jetpack and I have hummed a lot of songs. What would you do if you had no company on a deserted planet? 😉 In one place I stopped moving forward to play with some green goo by a waterfall, is it supposed to be frogs(?). I was trying to capture them but they were always in a straight line 2 meters in front of me. >_< Damn! I think I would have done that IRL if I hadn’t seen any life for that long. 😉
I can just say that I like this game, I like that I finally can be an astronaut who get to explore a new planet. I really like puzzle games, love sci-fi, especially sci-fi horror and I’m an educated biomedical scientist so this research thing is definitely FUN! I hope this game keeps up the good work of keeping me intrigued.
GEEKY GALS 