No Code takes sci-fi survival horror in a different direction using clever gameplay design and a powerfully uneasy story to drive the experience. It’s not perfect for all gamers, but for those brave enough to stick with it, they will find some special.
You might think you’re HAL, but you’re really more of a Ripley.
The idea behind Observation is interesting, slow, methodical, and mostly on point. No Code’s story starts with a simple, horrifying fact — something has gone terribly wrong with a space station. An astronaut named Dr. Emma Fisher is waking up to a damaged space station and attempts to keep everything together, sometimes literally putting out fires. All of this while working with an OS named S.A.M. to make sure everything stays intact and executed properly. On top of this, Fisher is also trying to figure out what happened to the rest of the crew on the station, which has mysteriously gone missing. There’s certainly more to the story, but I’m not letting that cat out of the bag. It’s a damn good way to start a game. Thankfully, the game doesn’t just tell a good story.
The general structure of the gameplay design is more of a puzzle/mystery that requires your utmost attention, and occasional squinting. You switch between space station modules using sets of cameras with each module. As the OS, you can control the cameras, which allows you to achieve certain tasks required of you from Dr. Fisher. The tasks could range from finding a fire on the space station, opening up doors for the astronaut to move through, discovering schematics, and solving general puzzles to ensure survival…kinda/sorta. There are certainly more gameplay design departures, which make this game unique, but this is the crux of the gameplay design. It’s very contained, tense at times, and downright creepy to play when you get into the later stages of the game.
Starting with the latter sentence there, the game is a bit more complicated than just a series of puzzles. The story is thick and the ambiance of the game is even thicker with uneasy tension created through an unknown force requesting you to bring Emma Fisher to him/her/it (you find this out early in the game, so nothing is spoiled). The game carries this storyline throughout a beautifully woven tapestry of puzzles. This game creates a great balance of story and function, which is not seen too often these days in the industry. Most games depend on flash to pull them through, but having a memorable story present that is horror-driven helps to create a sense of urgency that you have to get to XYZ before it’s too late. The game does its best to emphasize that urgency through good acting, as well as audio/visual presence (alarms going off while you’re trying to find a way to put out a fire in space is amazingly effective to get the blood racing). Again, the combination of story and functionality in the game’s design helps to make this game an easy sell.
Having said that, let me please add that this game reminded me a LOT of the first Alien film. For those young folks out there, the first Alien film didn’t have action in it. It wasn’t Aliens (notice the plural), rather it was a slow-moving horror experience in space that made you incredibly uncomfortable through lighting and sounds. While it’s certainly easy to say that this is more 2001: A Space Odyssey, it’s more accurate to say that Ridley Scott would probably love how this game flows and what it throws at you throughout. The uncertainty, the tension, the developed story that makes you wonder who the antagonist is — this is what a space horror is supposed to be. It’s more than guns blazing and things dying everywhere while spurting acid from their veins. That has its time and place, and this is neither.
Now, shifting briefly back to gameplay design, for those expecting Dead Space reborn, you’re going to be sorely disappointed — in a way. The game, as mentioned above, is slow and methodical at times, and puzzle-driven. It can also be incredibly tedious when searching for solutions to the problems presented. Non-seasoned gamers might find the game, at least initially, a hard sell with its pacing and demands for accuracy. Some gamers might go into this expecting a puzzle-after-puzzle experience, and they wouldn’t be too far off base. The game has a certain order of operation with its design, meaning that you have to do A before moving on to B. That probably will gum up expectations a bit, as well as frustrate players when they’re trying to move on to the next section. The idea that there are consequences to actions in the game might be enough to band-aid that slightly, but flipping back and forth between modules and cameras might really become tedious for some, which might cause them to drop the experience completely. It’s a possibility, though I would highly recommend to any gamers to stick with it. A wise Timothy Olyphant once said in a film I won’t admit to seeing, “The juice has to be worth the squeeze”. Make that lemonade, gamers. MAKE IT.
In terms of presentation, the game does one helluva job with putting you in the uneasy mindset that something has gone horribly wrong, and nothing is well — technology, astronauts, or otherwise. It uses clever lighting techniques, as you’ll see with the first shot of the game, and creepy shading/shadows to visually spark that horror element where you don’t want to look behind you. It also uses sound to jar you awake in some scenes and solution selections. It never wants you to feel comfortable, and Observation seems to carry that sentiment throughout story and design.
Overall, No Code takes sci-fi survival horror in a different direction using clever gameplay design and a powerfully uneasy story to drive the experience. It’s not perfect for all gamers, but for those brave enough to stick with it, they will find some special.
