‘Corpse of Discovery’ Review (PC)
When playing Corpse of Discovery I can’t help but think about No Man Sky. I’m not comparing the two, but instead if this game did anything it proved to me that exploring alien worlds is something that I really enjoy, even if there is no combat included in the game.
Corpse of Discovery is a game that starts you off in a space craft with little information about what you are there to do. You receive messages from a family you assume to be yours then make your way outside. There you are led through the world by a helpful robot as you do the tasks the game leads you on, and you get told what a good job you are doing. Once you’ve done the tasks required, you wake up in a Groundhog Day like situation but on a different planet with different dangers and slightly different tasks.
What makes Corpse of Discovery interesting is that it is obviously based on movies such as Interstellar and Moon. You are far away from home, and while your own personal mission is to get the job done and find a way to be saved from your predicament, the “company” line is that nobody is coming to help you so just get your job done, and help the people back on your planet.
While the worlds you explore may be very pretty, the truth underneath all the glossy images is that the game is a platform game with added use of a jetpack to allow you to get to higher locations. The fact is though I found I was okay with that, because I wanted to see where the game took me and the discovery aspect of the game works well. While you are handheld through the tasks, there are chances to make detours from the expected path to discover items around the world. Of course you do tend to get admonished for this but you do it anyway, because that are more interesting things out there waiting to be discovered.
While the exploring beautiful alien worlds may not be interesting for some, there is a mystery in the game that does keep you invested, and will push you to complete the game. As you reach further into the game it becomes less about being on a mission and more abstract, with the last level being a truly strange experience that I won’t spoil. While it may be worth playing till the end, I will admit that I’m not sure the conclusion is as satisfactory as it could have been.
With a powerful enough graphics card the game does create some stunning worlds, though I did notice a few performance issues while playing. I found myself going to the options to turn the graphics settings down slightly (I was running with everything set high) and this did improve things. As always you do have to make a decision between FPS and impressive graphics, but it definitely is a visually impressive game.
Corpse of Discovery is well worth a play through, but I’m not sure I’ll be returning to it too soon. It isn’t a game you’ll soon forget however, and that is something to praise as the ending does stick in your memory. One thing it will definitely make you think about is how good No Man Sky will be when we finally get the chance to play it. For a relatively small independent game like Corpse of Discovery to make you think that, it has to be an impressive achievement in itself.
***½ 3.5/5
Corpse of Discovery is available on PC now.
