Developed by ZG40
Published by Merge Games
Released for Xbox One (1/20/2016)
Also on Mac/PC/PS4
Albedo: Eyes from Outer Space not only has an odd title, but is a strange game as well. The opening of the game proudly declares that the game was created by a single person, a dude named Fabrizio Zagaglia (ZG40). Albedo was originally released for PC & Macintosh in October 2014 and received a port to the PlayStation 4 & Xbox One in January 2016. Albedo: Eyes from Outer Space is an adventure game that looks to invoke a B-movie sci-fi vibe.
The game kicks off with a brief cutscene, showing you sitting at a desk as a watchman for some sort of facility. After watching a co-worker leave for the night, a sudden explosion occurs and you fall through the ground as it busts open. When the game starts proper, you find yourself down in the basement looking up a giant hole in the floor. Albedo's gameplay is a mix of puzzle and adventure. The game progresses by rooms and each room will have puzzles to solve, which will involve interacting with various objects you'll find scattered about. There will be some traveling back and forth between previous rooms, but for the most part the game is linear in progression.
Albedo takes place from a first-person perspective. Featuring detailed 3D-rendered environments, it's not a bad-looking game. Though it's certainly not a good-looking game either, as many of the environments have so much packed into small areas it can be a bit too busy, making it difficult to tell what you're looking at sometimes. While acceptable on a graphical level, the control department is where Albedo really starts to blunder. Items have to be accessed via a menu, then once you've selected an item you need to scroll through another menu to determine what you'd like to do with that item. The game doesn't pause to let you do this, causing for some frustrating combat where you'll have an enemy attacking you while you clumsily try to select an item then select the menu to attack with. It's quite clunky and I never really got a feel for it even towards the end of the game. The controls definitely could've been mapped out better.
Aledo is a rather short game, though unless you use a guide there will no doubt be several areas where you're unsure what to do. Without a guide, the game could last anywhere from 10-20 hours, though once you inevitably end up using a guide the game can be cleared within a few hours. The areas and rooms you'll explore aren't that memorable for the most part, but there were a few interesting sections. The outdoor section toward the end was a standout sequence, but much of what led up to that was easily forgettable.
Albedo allows you to adjust the difficulty of the puzzles and combat individually. When puzzles are set to easy, the objects you can interact with glow green, but even set on easy I still found myself struggling with the puzzles at points (more on this later). Adjusting the combat slider will make enemies tougher and deal more damage. As I've already addressed how bad the combat is in Albedo, you'll want to do yourself a favor and set this to easy.
Albedo started off at least somewhat promising, giving the impression it might be a solid puzzle/adventure game with a lot of weirdness. While the game definitely delivered in spades on the weirdness scale, whatever fun I had with the game completely vanished at the fourth room, which is a boiler room. After a bit of frustration trying to figure out what I was supposed to do, I had to resort to a guide. Even reducing the difficulty to make the puzzles easier didn't help, which speaks volumes to the non-sensical design of the puzzles. It's like the developer knew the puzzles were bad, giving you the ability to skip certain puzzles and having no repercussion on getting the achievements.
This was one of those games I couldn't wait to end; it was painful to play at times. The best part was getting that last achievement and uninstalling this from my hard drive. I consider myself a fan of both puzzle and adventure games, but this was easily among the worst of either genre I can recall playing. The puzzles are convoluted beyond belief and the game is buggy enough that sometimes required objects clip through walls and disappear, making certain parts un-completable. Couple that with terrible voice-acting and clunky controls, Albedo is a game I can safely recommend you avoid. While the game is a relatively quick completion, there are much better ways to earn some easy gamerscore.
Final Verdict: Albedo: Eyes from Outer Space is a strange first-person action/adventure/puzzle title that has a few interesting ideas but is held back by a clunky interface, clumsy controls and nonsensical puzzles. I wouldn't even recommend this game to my worst enemy.
Related Links:
Buy Albedo - Microsoft Store
Merge Games - Official Site
Albedo - GameFAQs
Albedo - True Achievements
Albedo Achievement Guide - Xbox Achievements
Albedo Platinum Walkthrough - PlayStation Trophies
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