Story:
The story of Edengate: The Edge of Life is that your playing as Mia. Mia is a scientist that wakes up in the hospital and has to work through how she got there and the events that have transpired.
Gameplay:
Played in the third person, you play as Mia. You’re tasked with exploring your surroundings, and picking up photos and documents to help progress the story. You not only progress the story by touching specific objects, but it also helps to guide you in the direction you need to go to get to the end of the game. The game is very linear with very little exploration and the game even has arrows to show you where to go.
Graphics and Performance:
The environments in Edensgate are pretty realistic with the lighting able to set the mood for the areas you explore. The character model for Mia looks like it was lifted from a PS2 game and upscaled. The game performs terribly on the Xbox One S with everything having a grainy look to it. Things move at a sluggish pace and cutscenes stutter quite a bit as well.
This is the opposite on the Xbox Series X. The environments look as realistic as the lighting effects, in game models are smooth and lifelike with no film grain look or anything that would hinder the game visually. The FMV cutscenes run very smoothly with zero stuttering and look like what you would expect from this system.
Sound:
The music in the game is subtle and tends to remain in the background unless it’s an intense action scene or cutscene and is used to highlight what’s going on in the moment. The sound effects of the alien-like tentacles sound squishy, and metal sounds have a nice metallic sound to them. The voice acting is pretty good and I wish there was more of it, especially from the main character or that the game featured more characters on screen to interact with.
Conclusion:
The game is very short at just over an hour to complete. Going into this, I was expecting a survival horror-type game with a good story. Instead what you get is a game with a good story, zero combat, and a heavy emphasis on environmental exploration with light puzzle solving.
If you want a game with a good story, and creepy environments to explore, then this game would be a good game to pick up. This game is meant to be an introduction to games of this genre with zero combat and it practically holds your hand with its linear paths and arrows literally pointing the way.
Despite my expectations and what I found out about this game going through it, I would still recommend it as it’s a very well-done game.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided