At first, we assumed that Beautiful Desolation was some kind of lost late-nineties PC game. Its isometric perspective and visually spectacular pre-rendered scenes immediately called the likes of the original Fallout and Planescape: Torment to mind, and this comparison was cemented with the user interface, voice acting and cutscenes. Unfortunately Beautiful Desolation hasn't seen fit to bring over the world-class storytelling or gameplay from its forebears, opting instead for a confusing and somewhat frustrating mess of a port.
You see, in its original PC incarnation, Beautiful Desolation was a point-and-click adventure with pre-rendered backgrounds, rather akin to 1999 classic The Longest Journey. Here, though, on Switch, it has switched over to direct control of the protagonist. And, to be completely forthright, it doesn't work. At all. Your character changes speed and direction depending on their original pathfinding, which made sense when getting around was a simpler matter of clicking on where you want to go and watching the character move there, but not here. The correct path is often somewhat obtuse when presented in this way,
This leaves you brute-forcing your way around environments that simply weren’t designed to be navigated in this way, rubbing up against invisible walls in an attempt to determine the precise path that the game will allow you to take. If this sounds unenjoyable, you’re quite right! And this is constant, seeing you wrestle with this control system throughout the entirety of this 15-20 hour game – and it would probably be closer to 10 hours if the flipping controls worked.
We can’t overstate the impact of this decision on our experience with the game – if we weren’t reviewing it, we’d have checked out almost immediately upon realising just what a slog even the simplest ambulation was going to be. It’s the puzzles and challenges that are supposed to be taxing, not just getting across a screen!
And it’s such a shame, because in basically every other respect Beautiful Desolation is, at worst, interesting. The story, seeing you thrusted into the far future in a world that’s both beautiful and – yes – desolate, is enjoyably wild. It’s certainly far from perfect, with some fairly off-kilter and unnatural dialogue, but that feeds into the quite delightful strangeness of the proceedings, that otherworldly tinge you only get from decent sci-fi.
Indeed, the lore here is well thought-out and a great deal of love has gone into crafting the world. Here, "The Penrose", a bizarre and alien structure, appeared in South Africa ten years ago and accelerated the advancement of science by many, many times. Your player character, Mark, remains suspicious of the artifact and charters a helicopter with his brother to check it out. They meddle, there's an accident, and they end up leaping forward in time to a post-apocalyptic South Africa and left to explore barren but beautiful locales performing what ultimately amount to a series of fetch quests. There are mini-games but very little combat, and what there is in the way of pugilism can be completely avoided.
The potential of the point and click genre - despite this not being a true point and click due to the aforementioned controls nonsense - doesn't seem particularly well realised here as you amble around vainly searching for a viable way forward. It's the spectacle of the visuals that'll keep you playing, as the "puzzles" are rather anaemic and the story is told in such a distant way that we found it very difficult to get drawn in. Personality seems to get a focus above plot coherence, and said personality didn't really amount to much for us - a little too committed to being quirky over being likeable. The ambiguity and general oddness of the conversations and scenarios aren't really reward enough for persevering.
It's a shame that the game is so replete with issues, because there is a germ of something cool here. It's not at all well-suited to the Switch, though, even aside from the enormous pathfinding issue. Visually it's not bad on either handheld or docked modes, but it stutters in both - and quite badly. Granted, this isn't the kind of game that needs twitch reflexes, but you'll find yourself gazing with a profound sense of longing at the 60fps PC version with its control scheme that actually works, and doesn't wrench you out of any atmosphere or narrative fascination by cutting to fairly lengthy loading screens far too frequently. Perhaps this is a game that can shine on the right platform, but it doesn't fit very well with the Switch hardware.
Conclusion
We were, as you can tell from the body of this review, consistently frustrated with Beautiful Desolation, another ambitious and lovely-looking game whose Switch incarnation just wasn't an acceptable way to experience it - shades of Genesis Noir's port (though that was better). It's especially unfortunate because this is exactly the sort of different that the Switch needs, but it needs to run better than what's on offer here. If you can muscle past the problematic controls, excessive loading and weak performance, you may be able to get into Beautiful Desolation. There is a lot to like in its worldbuilding, gorgeous backgrounds and interesting premise. But we felt like it just asked us to overlook way, way too many problems for the privilege.
Comments 15
The guy on the left kinda looks like Val Kilmer 😂
Fetch quests were never fun. Why are developers still doing this?
I liked the look of this from the preview, but I'm glad l waited for the Switch review. I'm not a PC gamer, so I guess I'll give this one a miss
@RoguePirate
Yeah, that was my thought as well. Then I looked at the other guy eager to see who he was supposed to look like - everything went downhill from there.
I'm still looking forward to playing this, but I guess I'll wait to see if the technical problems are fixed on Switch otherwise I'll get it on PC.
@Aneira the other guy kinda looks like Fidel Castro with a cap.
The guy on the left looks like Lebowski and Walter fused into one being.
What a total bummer as I had been looking forward to this one ever since it was announced.
Well this is a PC buy then. Disco Elysium does this direct control too on the console ports and it also isn’t as good as point and click for pathfinding but I prefer direct control as it feels more engrossing. Never liked point and click, even in classics like Baldur’s Gate or Monkey Island.
Love the look and idea of the game, but the long and frequent loading times will definitely keep me away unless they can fix it some.
Im about 3 hours in and for the most part enjoy it.
The biggest hurdle that through me for a loop though… this game isn’t an RPG! When I saw the graphics and post apocalypse theme, I immediately thought I was gonna play fallout of planescape. There is no combat whatsoever (at least in the first 3 hours)
Once I got over that… I really started to enjoy it. It has a really cool alien / unknown world feel to it. It’s very fun to explore the world beyond Penrose. However it is overly simplified… you can really only interact with 2 objects in each location.
The voice acting is horrendous! When talking with your brother Don, he doesn’t feel like a real person living through this conflict with you… rather just some actor reading lines.
The reviewer is correct when he shares his frustration with the controls… they don’t feel responsive and mixed with the gorgeous (albeit confusing) areas to explore. I found myself confused on where I could and couldn’t go.
Overall it’s an enjoyable adventure game with great locations and characters to meet… hindered by awkward navigation and a lack of environmental interaction. …I also would’ve enjoyed shooting stuff.
I give it a 7.5/10
@Farts_Ahoy I think the lack of combat was pretty well documented in the reviews for the PC version, it was one of the main selling points.
@bozz having no combat can be appealing! I’m curious if the dialogue choices lead to different situations.
I did absolutely no research before playing. Just saw it on the new release page and thought it looked like my kind of thing
I would never play a game with such a bad title. Your game should evoke a sense of beauty and desolation - you don't name the game beautiful desolation. It's like naming a Zelda game "Wonderful Exploration".
Playing this at the moment and I have to say that it's not at all like the review. Maybe it's been patched since but I've not experienced the same issues...
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