Enter the dark secrets of Fort Solis and unravel what happened to your crew in the narrative thriller.
Welcome to Mars, ladies and gentlemen, as you embark on a mysterious sci-fi adventure called Fort Solis. Having received an unusual emergency call from a remote mining base, Engineer Jack Leary goes to investigate an isolated mining facility and unravels the mystery of what happened to the crew. He’s accompanied by fellow and Junior engineer Jessica Appleton and medical officer Wyatt Taylor on the mission.
Players will be mainly in control of Jack, and they must guide him through his investigation of Fort Solis. As the night progresses, so does the uncovering of the dark secrets, and the situation goes far beyond his control. It goes from bad to worse when a relentless storm arrives, resulting in limiting Jack’s escape, meaning a long night awaits. This brings the obvious question – can he be able to survive the events until the morning?
Fort Solis’s gameplay is focused on interactions and playing an abundance of mini-games and puzzles to progress through the story. Plus, you’re guaranteed to experience some QuickTime events during the story, and they sometimes appear when you least expect them to.
You’re given a set of missions to complete, especially in different rooms, and in Fort Solis, if you feel stuck and don’t know where to go, you have an integrated map that is located in your multi-tool, which is a trusted device that is placed on your left forearm.
This device has four contents: Map, Messages, Video, and Audio. The map allows you to pan, switch between maps, and zoom to help you find your way through Fort Solis. Additionally, the map is where you can also view the current missions for you to complete.
The messages are sent by the crew, and it’s interesting to watch and listen to the videos and the audio tapes that consist of the likes of research done by the crew and clues of what is happening in Fort Solis. And you need some sort of mini memory capture card to gather more information on these.
But back to the topic of mini-games – there’s one I like the most, where there is a large button icon that’s placed right next to the large switch you toggle in the Drill Bay Hangar. And there’s a marker that semi-circulates the icon and a zone that covers half of the icon at maximum.
You’re required to land the marker in the brighter area of the button icon. Followed by doing the process again, only this time, the zone decreases in size to make it more challenging for you. You’ll have to do this a few times. However, if you fail to land the marker in the zone, you’ll be delegated to the previous step and do that part again. Fortunately, this mini-game, in particular, shouldn’t cause you many problems, if at all.
The majority of the mini-games and puzzles are pretty simplistic, and this is fine. They’re also fun to do, and I have an eagerness to know where they lead. The last thing you need is complex mini-games and puzzles when you just want to get them over and done with.
However, if any of you brain worms are starving for challenges, the good news is there are a couple or so tough mini-games for you to complete, such as the Rubik’s cube that’s located in the operations manager, Claire Smith’s office in the officers and conference room, that you can solve.
The bad news is that these are pretty much the only real challenges Fort Solis has to offer in general. Having somewhat enjoyed Fort Solis, I reckon its delivery could’ve been better, and there are a few red flags that simply couldn’t be ignored.
And we have to start with the story – let’s talk about the positives first. The story was intriguing, and there were some parts of the story where I felt quite anxious because of not knowing what to expect. There are some terrifying moments, and I wanted to know what happens next. The dialogue is brilliant, plus I got a few cackles from listening to the occasional banter between Jack and Jessica. Moreover, as mentioned, most of the mini-games and puzzles were simple yet still pleasant.
And speaking of Jack and Jessica, the voice acting was top tier – especially from the main cast members, Roger Clark (Jack), Julia Brown (Jessica), and Troy Baker (Wyatt). They understood the assignment, and you could ultimately connect with their feelings throughout the emotional rollercoaster. If you aren’t familiar with Roger Clark and Troy Baker, you can thank them for delivering phenomenal voice acting performances from Roger for the award-winning Red Dead Redemption 2 as Arthur and Troy as Joel in also the award-winning The Last of Us franchise.
The visuals of Fort Solis are gorgeous, majestic, and one of the best I’ve seen in modern gaming, thanks to the use of Unreal Engine 5. Despite the dark, gloomy, and horrifying environment and atmosphere, you can’t help but stare in amazement. The sheer brilliance of the stunning photorealistic visuals, models, characters, maps, and so on. This is one of Fort Solis’s brightest sparks, and they’ve furnished praiseworthy designs in every aspect. Plus, there’s the photo mode feature for capturing picture moments.
Now, to the negatives – I understand if this is supposed to be a narrative thriller, but it was a little too narrative. It was heavy, and it felt much more like playing a cinematic thriller movie than a game. I also understand if they were trying to leave the best for later, but beforehand, you’re just walking around a lot of the time.
After more than an hour of playing, I finally got an ounce of suspense, and you have to wait much longer to get a little taste of what is going on in the story. It shouldn’t take this long for that to happen, and it could have some players unmotivated to continue playing. But the real shocker is that the entire game time is very short – in fact, it’s probably no longer than the Titanic movie.
On top of that, the gameplay lacks depth; other than the aforementioned, there’s not much else you’re able to do. Furthermore, you’re not able to run, not even a light jog, during missions, except for certain QuickTime events and cutscenes. When you want to just get going, but you’re only able to move at walking speed for most of the time, the slow movement will make anyone want to pull their hair out.
As for the boss fights – if you want to call them that, although they’re quite exciting to watch – ironically, this is where the problem lies. You’re just watching the fights, as well as a few instances of QuickTime events, to act out these fights. And eventually, you’ll realise that not pressing the required buttons on time doesn’t drastically affect the fights’ outcomes, as well as other situations throughout the story. I question where exactly the challenges in these come in.
Fort Solis has so much potential, and not enough was done to meet it. It’s not close to perfection, and it’s far from a game I would tell others to avoid completely. However, despite the low price – for what you’re getting, especially the very short and limited gameplay and content, I’d highly recommend to even the biggest science fiction fanatics to hold out until the game becomes free. And the only reason I’d play Fort Solis again is to try and obtain trophies I missed out on in the previous playthrough.
