Jacob 最近的评测

Are you going to stay down when you hurt, or are you going to get up and do something about it?

Need more games like this. Ones where it feels like the team poured themselves into the game, clawed through the hard times, and came out the other side ready to kick ass.

Routine was announced in 2012. I was 15 years old. Routine released in 2025. I am now 28 years old. I have been waiting like so many others for so long to finally play, rewatching trailers and keeping my eyes peeled for any news. It was almost surreal to actually be playing it, and now that I've completed a first playthrough, I happily feel that this was well worth the wait.

Extremely atmospheric, lacking any HUD, Routine is an immersive experience. Looking out at the moon in the opening moments conveys the emptiness of our environment and the creeping feeling of something being wrong. Interacting with the world through in-game projects (which look great, from PDA points which adjust to textures in the environment to the red laser grid scans of the Type 05s) is immersive. The story is largely told through terminals via emails and diary entries, but there is a great quasi-mixed media approach in which a handful of video recordings are scattered across these terminals as well. That was really chilling to see visual documentation leading up to what went wrong on this base. There are also cassette recordings to provide different personnel's diaries of these events, along with various documents that can be picked up and read. I was instantly hooked on the mystery.

The base looks great as well, pulling off a bleak, retro-futuristic style. The base is in various stages of dilapidation - flickering lights or broken lights, locked off areas, scattered papers and cases. There's some additional worldbuilding here. Whereas other space horror games may leave dead bodies around the base, there are a disturbing lack thereof here.

Routine's gameplay is a mixture of navigating the base, completing puzzles, and stealthing around or hiding from enemies. The puzzles aren't too difficult, not requiring too much of my time. At the same time, they have a bit of depth, so they don't feel like meaningless obstacles to progression. Working around the enemies hunting you down imbued my playthrough with a lot of tension. The Type 05s' heavy, banging footsteps put me on edge every time I heard them approaching me from my thinly-veiled cover. The game gives you some in-world tips like "don't aim your C.A.T. at them," which obviously means you should, but I never actually had to. The game makes it very doable to work your way around them, and while you're likely to be caught sooner or later, I never felt like I needed to directly engage them with my C.A.T. They scared me more than once as I turned a corner only to see one lying dormant in front of me.

Navigating the moon base wasn't too bad in the first half, but I definitely felt some confusion in the second half. Ultimately it's not terrible, but most of the time when I was stuck, it was because I kept getting turned around. This was amplified by the threat of death waiting around any corner. It's not so labyrinthine that I felt it detracted from my experience, and the doorway signs help, but be prepared to do a little running around.

From what I've heard so far, opinion is a little mixed on something that gets included in the second half of the game. I'm a little mixed on that particular element, but the story remains just as intriguing as it had been. It builds to a tense final moment.

I'm so happy that Lunar Software was able to see their vision for Routine through to the very end.

Fun co-op puzzle/shooter. The game has its challenging moments and maybe an obtuse puzzle or two, but it never feels insurmountable (though maybe at times a little frustrating). The game looks nice, has a banger score. In my experience, the checkpoints were pretty forgiving, and I don't recall ever needing to redo long stretches of the game after a failure.

This was fine, but there are too many times where I'd get one-shot from some undetectable enemy, or a grenade would land and blow up before I actually had the momentum to run away. Doesn't tell you what button to press if you're using a controller. Story was okay. It takes lengths to pose some moral questions, but overall it's a fairly standard narrative.

I loved pretty much everything about this.

Has an appreciable level of jank. Reminds me of playing games as a kid. The story is totally unrelated to Part 1. It's kind of annoying when they just throw waves upon waves of enemies at you.

Worth picking up on sale. Pretty short but fun, though my enjoyment also came from playing through it with friends. It's funny throwing dudes around. Still gotta play Part 2. Not very challenging, though I did die a few times due to being swarmed by enemies. Later stages of lockpicking doesn't play nice with a controller as it gets tricky to just align the pick using an analog stick.

I usually don't go for survival horror games in this style, but Sorry We're Closed really hooked me. It might be because the game is pretty forgiving when it comes to ammo and health refills, along with saves both automatic and manual. I died a handful of times, but I never felt like I really had much (if any) ground to make up.

I really enjoyed the mid-90s/early-00s art style, especially the way the colors popped. Every character, both their personalities and designs, is memorable. There's a good sense of humor. I was also surprised that there's a good amount of choice to be made in the game. Each one feels meaningful, and while they don't necessarily shape the moment-to-moment aspects of the world, they do have an impact in the end. Some of the resulting dialogue didn't quite match where I thought my choices were intending me to go, but this doesn't ultimately prevent you from getting to the ending you work towards. Another nice part was that switching between Third Eye vision and normal vision would give alternate text for some objects throughout the world.

The shooting mechanics are pretty interesting. They can be a little clunky, especially in cramped spaces and/or with fast enemies. However, it's a nice touch that switching to Third Eye when an enemy is close enough gives you a brief pause to attack. Ultimately, I found it pretty satisfying to pull off a perfect chain of hits. There are some difficulty spikes very late in the game and a set piece here or there which suffers from the clashing urgency between needing to react quickly and fighting the gameplay style, but nothing ever took me more than a few tries. It's all manageable.

Sorry We're Closed presented a story of lost love on multiple fronts. Everyone just wants to be loved, but that means different things to different people. To be loved is to be changed, but change isn't inherently bad. à la mode games has crafted a unique way into a genre with a long history. Can't wait to see what they do next!

Excellent case of telling a story through gameplay.

Great style and execution. Short but sweet. Sometimes it seems like the lighting is kicking in which, combined with the art style, can make it feel impossible to navigate. Felt something similar at the end, perhaps more intentionally, but still had some issues just finishing the game. 100% looking forward to playing the next two in the trilogy.