Elea - Episode 1

Review

In 2073, the children of Earth are struck down by a horrid disease; a neurological mutation which causes uncontrollable rage in each and every child. There is no cure; the only thing they can do is to pacify them, but this leaves them cold and lifeless. Twenty years later mankind’s hope of a cure is dwindling.  The mutation is caused by the Earth’s magnetic field, so the only way to save mankind is to take to the stars.

Recently, an Earth-like planet was found, named Solace.  With new hopes of colonising Solace, volunteers from around the world pool their resources together and build a first-of-its-kind spaceship, the Pilgrimage. Shortly after arriving at Solace, the Pilgrimage goes radio silent, leaving no idea of what has happened to the crew or ship. Thirteen years later, the RSS Recovery, a research ship, has arrived at Solace to investigate why Pilgrimage went silent.

You start the game laying on a bed in what looks like a medical bay (I was shocked when looking down to find that I had boobs - I’d only gone in to have my tonsils taken out!). You play as Dr River Elea Catherine Jones, a scientist on the RSS Recovery, on a mission to find out why the Pilgrimage went silent, and to find your husband, Ethan, who was onboard the Pilgrimage. While being prepared to go mind scaping, you are warned about the possibility of side effects, but proceed anyway, and relive some of your memories, as you miss Ethan and your son, who’s left at home on Earth while you search for his father.

While mind scaping you find yourself back on Earth and pregnant, being woken up as Ethan rings you.  You go around your home completing a couple tasks, then go to check on your son, Francis. The situation starts to get weird here, as the mind scape seems to have some sort of problem or interference.  With you stuck inside the memory, who’ll have to figure out how to get out from here. This is where your adventure in the stars begins.

You interact with Kazumi, the ships AI, and with some of the crew to complete tasks as you progress through the game, finding clues about the crew, the history of why you are at Solace and other information which may help you. There are four floors on the RSS Recovery to investigate: the first floor has the Med Bay, Recreation and Living Quarters, while on the second floor you’ll find Engineering, Server Core and Reactor Core.  On the third floor there’s the Bridge and Conference, with the Observation and Mindscape AR on the fourth floor. You can access each of the floors through an elevator, although you may not be able to access certain rooms until you find or do something first.

In the options, you’ll find General (Language, Image Effects, Head Bob, Force Feedback, Subtitles and Crosshair), Controls (Invert Mouse/Controller, Mouse/Camera Sensitivity, Layout and Help). You can’t remap the keys or bind buttons on a gamepad, but it does show you both setups in layout, so you know what’s what.  There’s Audio (Sound and Music volumes), Display (Resolution, Window Mode, V-Sync, FPS Limit - 30 or unlimited), Brightness, Chromatic and Motion Blur, Graphics (Overall, Textures, Shadows, AA, Post Processing Effects, Foliage, View Distance and Auto- Setting). You can change each of these settings to your liking, from low to ultra, or just hit the auto-setting to let the game decide for you.

My graphics were set to ultra, and the game looked very good; everything was readable, such as the directions on the floors telling you which way the med bay etc is.  I lowered the graphics to high after I was suffering some stutter or input lag while in the elevators when it reached a new floor but noticed that the directions were then blurry and hard to read, so I set the graphics back to ultra. I also had the game lock up a couple times, but luckily it had auto-saved shortly beforehand, so it wasn’t much of a problem.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!