Surviving in a Fallen Utopia World
Visuals: 9/10 Visuals were really great, very detailed. Could almost say that visuals were eye candy.
Soundtrack/voice over: 8/10 The ambience music was very good. Voices of the creatures were really well done. Only voice over I wasn’t so fond of was the Pamela echoes.
Control/movement: 8/10 Controls were easy to learn. Moving around was easy as long as avoiding narrow places.
Difficulty: 8/10 Game gave good challenge with enemies and trying to survive.
Replayability: 3/10 Only things that made this replayable are collecting all the data and modifying your genome to become “superhuman”. This might change with full release.
Average score: 7.2/10
When I first heard about P.A.M.E.L.A. I was very intrigued. It looked like a very promising game and I added it instantly to my wish list on Steam, even though I’m not good with horror games. I can watch others playing them, but playing them myself… Just no! So, I never got to buy the game because I thought I’d get very scared while playing it and it would come to haunt me in my dreams. But then came the day when the game was offered to me free in exchange of this review. I just couldn’t say no! It was still on my wish list and I was still intrigued. And I’m really glad I got the chance.
I really like the setting of the game. Utopian city in the future, something has gone terribly wrong, your task is to survive and construct a safe haven while uncovering the truth.
I have always loved games that have an open world, where you just can wander around and loot stuff, this game has that. There are several areas you can explore and all the main areas are connected to Oasis, a central courtyard. Of course there are some areas you can’t get from Oasis but from another building. And exploring one building, when being me, can take time, lots of time. And as buildings are connected you can accidentally enter new areas without knowing it and... oh the exploration! Love it!
But even though I love the open world exploring I also love to have some kind of knowledge of where I should go tonext. That is something that’s missing in this game, at least at this point. The AARM, the equipment that’s implemented on your arm, includes all status information, data you’ve uncovered, inventory, etc. It does hint that there will be quests/tasks that you need to complete. Currently it’s just exploring, looting and trying to find pieces of data.
And of course this being survival and horror game, this game also needs those enemies! There are multiple different kind of enemies, some are much more harder to defeat than others. Most of them are very human like and sometimes it’s difficult even to know if the NPC you see in the game is friend or foe. And no, the human like zombie enemies aren’t slow. They can run and they can be very fast runners.
What if the enemies get you killed? Well, you will respawn. You will lose all the items you had and all the containers you’ve emptied to get those items will be empty. If you’re lucky and find your corpse, you’ll get all the lost items back. And indeed, you need to be lucky. Of course, if you have perfect memory of where you were when you died and remember how you got there, getting your stuff back will be easier. But for example, in my case it took a while to find one of my corpses, it was only because I got lost in the darkness.
When respawning and if you have enough points to level up before you died, you get to modify your genome. It’s interesting to see what kind of superhuman you can become when you’ve fully modified your genome.
And I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing, but if you start new game, all the way from the beginning, the genomes you modified will stay modified in the new game as well. Same thing with all the data you’ve found during the earlier playthrough(s). Of course with the data, especially with Pamela echoes that tell the story from AI personas view and you find those echoes around the map, it can be just good. If you didn’t find them all during your first playthrough, you can try to fine the rest by playing the game again.
There’s also some things I really don’t like in the game.
Fighting system. Most of the fighting is done in melee and I’m not melee kind of girl, unless I have daggers or a greatsword in use. You can get ranged weaponry as well, but when those evil creatures attack you there really is no time, or space, to use those ranged weapons as the creatures can come so close. You may need to also use shield to protect yourself and you can’t fight while using the shield.
Hacking. I’m not a hacker. I have never liked hacking in games. And in this game hacking made me very salty at times. There’s two types of hacking included, logic and reflex. Both come with difficulty level from easy to insane. Level affects the difficulty, but also the time to hack and how many times you can try before security is alerted. Reflex hacking doesn’t make me so salty as logic does. It’s just so frustrating to try to find the right combination of symbols to create one when you have limited amount of time and there might be 3 symbols you need to create. And when you think that you’ve got the right combination time runs out and security is alerted to come get you… So it might get bit frustrating.
But even with those negative things, I really like playing this game and I’m really interested to see what the final version of this game will be like. It’s currently early access on Steam, the full game is expected to release Fall 2018. I can highly recommend this game for those loving survival games.
P.A.M.E.L.A. was provided to me on behalf of GirlStreamers Inc with a code for the purpose of this review. Pictures and media if not otherwise stated are from my playthrough.