If a game even remotely reminds me of Dead Space, I will have an urge to play it. There’s just something about feeling claustrophobic and on edge in the stars that captivates me. Fort Solis brings about that appeal from even a glancing look. As I continue waiting for episodes of The Expanse: A Telltale Series to arrive, this game is on-brand and aims to be an “immersive cinematic experience” more than a survival horror game. While not entirely misleading, it’s important to understand what kind of game Fort Solis is before you boot it up. With that expectation in check, how does this expedition to a Mars base fare?

It can’t be understated that Fort Solis has more in common with a walking simulator like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter than a gritty, edge-of-your-seat shooter like Dead Space. The trailer presents the game as action-packed, but in reality, you’re going to uncover a deep story within this game, one slow step at a time… literally. The movement speed in Fort Solis is so aggravatingly slow that I’d pass for even a speed-walk option. Sadly, you’re restricted to baby steps as you explore every nook and cranny. It’s agonizing and makes exploration more tedious than stimulating.

Fort Solis runs on Unreal Engine 5, a relatively new iteration. It is quite the looker and maintains its immersion thanks to great animations and motion-capture that never looks fidgety or out-of-place. It’s a shame that the game performs like crap on PS5 at launch, even worse than Star Wars Jedi: Survivor did. Your framerate will regularly drop from 60fps to 30fps and even lower at points. I’m chalking this up to the inability to maximize Unreal Engine 5 output due to its age, but with the game outputting at 1440p, performance needs to be up-to-snuff.

The centerpiece of Fort Solis aims to be its storytelling. Gameplay nary utilizes combat until its late stages, so you’ll be spending the first half of the game’s brief 3-4 hour runtime moving about and absorbing the story through audio and video logs. Troy Baker (as usual) delivers a standout performance. You can hear his frustrated emotion match up with his character Wyatt’s facial expressions. The rest of the cast is a bit less inspired but serviceable enough, and the intrigue of “what’s going on here?” is persistent from the moment you get the lockdown alert to when the inevitable twist happens.

The question is now posed: Why should you play Fort Solis when similar titles like Dead Space remake and Callisto Protocol exist? The easy answer is that Fort Solis provides just as immersive of an experience with more of a mystery focus than an alien-killing one. It’s most certainly on the short side and feels more like a movie than a game, but is a fine experience that is likely to hit the bargain bin sooner than later and will be worth a few bones once that time comes. If anything, its story and the graphics are worth that much.

A PS5 review copy of Fort Solis was provided by Dear Villagers for this review.

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Fort Solis

24.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Suspenseful Intrigue
• Exemplary Visuals

Cons

• Dismally Short for its Scope
• Bad Framerate Drops
• Slow as Molasses Walk Speed