Eclipse: Edge of Light is a fun exploration game that will certainly keep you in awe at times without pulling you away with overcomplicated controls or a messy narrative. It simply asks you to traverse the alien landscape, discover a small narrative along the way, and be there. It doesn’t do more than that, nor does it do less than that, which is acceptable for a VR experience.
Eclipse: Edge of Light was a tough one to review. This was the first game that activated my ‘motion sickness’ within a PSVR environment. The only other VR game to do this to me was on the PC and it was called Detached. That game had an XYZ axis-based movement design for your character floating in space. It made my brain wonky. It made an intern’s legs sore. It was a beautiful nightmare.
Anyway, we’re here to talk about Eclipse, a survival and discovery game of sorts that puts you in the body of a stranded astronaut that is simply trying to get back home. Your character will traverse through an alien landscape while learning of its past through replays and puzzles. You gain clues as you search for a way home and discover different alien creatures and artifacts. While the majority of the game gives you a feeling of isolation, it also carries with it a sense of wonder and discovery. While not as narratively detailed as something like LucasArts’ The Dig, there are some scenarios in the game that give off that LucasArts vibe, where unraveling the mystery of your locale is part of the game’s purpose. Personally, it did give me that alien planet vibe that The Dig did so wonderfully, where the landscape is breathtaking and somewhat endless, yet an uncomfortable mystery at times.
As for the gameplay design, outside of the girthy landscapes that tend to tower over the player at all times (large mountains, structures, statues — a whole lot to see), the game doesn’t throw too many design mechanics into the mix to gum up the VR experience. Rather, developer White Elk seems to want you to take in your surroundings without having to think too hard and too much about what you should be doing and how you should be doing it. It’s how you want a game to be, especially in VR. I have seen some VR stinkers that overcomplicate the control process and ask too much of the player. There was a ninja-based title, though the name slips me, where you had to activate sword movement through several buttons. I don’t want that in my virtual reality experience. I want something clean, to the point, and has the sole intention of emerging the player into a virtual world. That’s why we have VR, right? We want to be taken to places and feel like we’ve left home. Otherwise, it’s just a game.
Enough rambling, let’s get to the mechanics. The beginning of Eclipse introduces you to two types of mechanics that you carry throughout the brief journey — jet propulsion and carrying an orb (that is a jack of all trades). Starting with the latter, when you start the game you’re trapped in a cave, but luckily happen upon a powerful orb (what are the chances?). When used, the orb can move rocks, open doorways, destroy simple items, and even turn into a platform on high cliffs. You can throw it by tossing it with the PS4 controller (simple movement of the hand) and also recall the tossed orb by double-clicking on the R2 button. The game does put the orb on rails sometimes, meaning that you hit your target without really trying, but it doesn’t make it any less fun, especially when you don’t want to spend all game trying to perfectly toss an orb to a spot. You can also use the orb to break artifact lying around. By smashing them, you get dust, which allows you to progress in the game once your orb is filled with it. You place the orb in certain notches, which open doors. Amazingly simple.
Simple items and control movements is a huge positive for Eclipse: Edge of Light. It keeps the player focused on the mission at hand, while also giving them proper points of motivation to keep going. If you can make a player feel good about progress, then you’re going to keep them playing. It doesn’t matter if the game is two-hours or six, success in a game, especially in VR, means the world for a player attaching themselves to the title. Again, simple mechanics equal out to a fun VR experience.
Beyond the orb, you also have a jet propulsion system on your character’s back. This is the part that got me motion sick. You can slowly boost upwards to climb up to platforms or over cliffs, while at the same time politely floating down once that propulsion is temporarily used up. The folks at White Elk were polite enough to slowly put you back on the ground, but that doesn’t take away the ‘blah’ feeling as you quickly float up. I do appreciate their efforts. The propulsion is a great compliment to the orb, and much like Super Mario, where you just need to jump/hit/run to complete a level, the Eclipse: Edge of Light just wants you to go up/down/throw orb. You don’t need much more than that to succeed in the game. Well, you might. Anyway, it’s a good set of mechanics.
Anyway, those two mechanics are your main source of movement and progression in the game. They do a lot when mixed/matched during puzzle-solving, and they keep the VR movement simple. Again, you want your players to enjoy the environment built for them, so don’t overcomplicate the process. White Elk didn’t, and the game is good mainly because of those efforts.
On the presentation side of the tracks, the game isn’t going to win any awards for its visuals. While it does have some stylish aspect to the environments and the creatures, they do look terrifying and unfriendly at times, and there are some ‘oh, that’s cool and pretty’ moments during your trek through your surroundings, most of the game looks like it came from PlayStation 3 architecture. That isn’t an insult, especially since I just snagged MGS4 via eBay and I’m scrambling to get reviews done so that I can fire it up on the PS3, but it’s not great compliment either. This game is running in a PSVR environment on a PlayStation 4 Pro. It needs to look better. The textures in the game are flat without detail, and there isn’t a great ‘Shadow of the Colossus’ vibe to them. After seeing some of the wildlife, maybe they want it to be, but it just doesn’t get there. Does this ruin the game? Heavens no, but the game could have been a much better experience with more details to take in. This is a game that is supposed to put the player into it, so don’t take the player visually out of it.
I will say that the girth of the environments do help to alleviate that lack of texture in the experience. It helps to keep your attention focused away from the visuals and more into the task at hand as well. It certainly doesn’t forgive the blandness of the visuals, but it helps.
At the end of the day, Eclipse: Edge of Light is a fun exploration game that will certainly keep you in awe at times without pulling you away with overcomplicated controls or a messy narrative. It simply asks you to traverse the alien landscape, discover a small narrative along the way, and be there. It doesn’t do more than that, nor does it do less than that, which is acceptable for a VR experience.
