Magrunner Dark Pulse (2013) Online

You're Dax(Hanford, an orphan, his growing unease, even panic, mirrors your own). Mocked for not having corporate sponsors, you're one of 7 astronaut trainees, learning how to use the MagGlove(right hand when you use it, but lefty in the artwork…) in the titular program. There are other characters… Gamaji(Brimble, a six-armed mutant and your mentor), Gruckezber(Forde Iosco, a sure-of-himself CEO), Cassandra(Rene, a gutsy journalist), and Xander, a brilliant engineer. I give few details as, frankly, and you'll see this even early on, they end up being pretty pointless, not affecting anything, just expositing. The acting is mixed. It doesn't help that many of the lines are awkward, very ESL. You start out in the test facility, which gives way to, and stands in stark contrast to, caves with stone statues(at least you hope they're just that! Of huge, hideous, unearthly beings with tentacles) and an ancient version of the same building in eerie, Gothic horror: die by(and possibly have to hear conversations again! Then again, that's not exactly uncommon), and this is going to happen a lot(as is missing shots and barely messing up the timing), lethal drops into, or even just touching, ominous, colored liquid or bottomless pits. Otherwise no fall damage. You'll get horrifying visions. You're stuck in there, while the world, you're told, is falling apart outside! Of course, all of this has to do with Cthulhu, whose interests include looming in the distance, watching you with his deep, turquoise eyes, and ominously saying his name every so often, as if he just learned how to pronounce it, and/or he's related to Pikachu. To be fair, he really pulls it off, not everyone can rock that Elder God look… seriously though, I wouldn't rule out that they started out, for fun, modeling and skinning it, realizing it *works*, and built everything else around that. And it's not me spoiling that he's in this – he's right there in the loading screen for booting this up. Oh, and, this is all set in a future where social media has removed privacy and freedom. That comes into play in the opening and ending, which barely feel like they connect to each other, or are part of the same product. While the theme has something to say, it fumbles it.

Some say this has elements of parkour. I'd like to try what they were on. This lets you make objects attract or repel each other, toggling charge between none, red and green. You can separately imbue it into boxes(sometimes stand atop them, pick them up which resets them to "none", place them which awkwardly sometimes requires pressing a key and other times not(and can force you to hop… unexpectedly and for no readily apparent reason... just bungling it?), they can be power sources, they can stay very still when moved speedily, some are explosive not to mention highly volatile and can destroy objects/turrets, or kill the monstrous sea creatures(being eaten by them is just the screen fading, boring)), platforms(going up, down or to either, or both, sides) and the like, and each has a field(you can choose to see all of these or none of them) within which they will affect the other ones. The effects are cumulative. Move yourself to the door, smash glass in your path, activate switches. This goes through walls. Employ and deploy Newton, the robot dog with small load that can be shot at "any"(not quite all) flat surface, vertical or horizontal, albeit only one at a time. These physics-based puzzles are far from all that make this a Portal-lite: and there's no question magnetism(still, don't let ICP near this one) is much less interesting than teleportation – meanwhile, you can activate much more than two at the same time, unlike that. This does sometimes get to be overly involved, though. It does have a little more of a plot than that, which is minimalistic all the way, so in that way, distinguishing itself from it. And it has been noted that the story is too serious for its own good.

This has sleek design of the futuristic aspects and great graphics. Between the individual rooms, you see the vast scope as the lifts transporting you between floors show that the place is huge. Some cutscenes are done in documentary, TV program style, with animated stills with voice-over, others are in-engine and still from the first person perspective, feeling organic, real. Mostly, you're spoken to via holograms, which repeat visually to the point where you start to wonder why they didn't make them static, as it would draw much less attention to itself. And why do things like that always look worse to use than what we have today? The controls are streamlined, to the point where you don't even have a crouch function, and you don't miss it, and the only unusual aspect is the useful zoom. There's no HUD. Achievements give a little replayability, still, once you know how to complete it, there's little reason to go back to it. You do get a mission selector. It took me 10 and a half hours to complete. It autosave at checkpoints, whether you want it to or not(manual activation would have done wonders... why is that so foreign to developers today), and there may be two or three for one big brain-teaser. It's especially egregious at the final boss, where one false move can mean redoing a lot, even the whole level, not due to it not storing it, or in spite of it doing that, no, specifically *because* it does. Take two steps, there, new file. Go back, yup, new again. That's the only place that it's that bad, however, it remains a potentially good idea that is implemented poorly. Actually, that sums this up as a whole. For starters, pick one concept and stick to it.

There is a lot of disturbing content and some bloody violence and in this. I recommend this to big fans of the genre. 7/10