izigame.me

I abhor it when an opinion starts forming inside my head from the very first moments I spend in the game. I much prefer to approach new worlds with no expectations that would affect my further experience.

With Lifeless Moon I had this persistent feeling. Not even at the back of my mind, it was tangible and prevalent from the very first steps the protagonist took. Lifeless was just like the last time I’ve visited. Not looking great, awkwardly written, governed by the clumsy controls and physics that were far from perfect. It gave me an idea that the authors didn’t use those nearly ten years that separated the two games to properly develop their workshop.
Yes!
Axiom Verge and then Red Bow,
Contra! Contra!
Some of the design choices were a visible step backwards from the first installment. Take the logs found all over the locations. In Lifeless Planet, the discovered messages were all read in Russian, and the PDA device carried by the protagonist translated them in real time for the player. It did miracles for immersion. This time around, they are plain scraps of paper. Furthermore, the protagonist’s model gets locked inside the animation of the action they were performing while the inventory or log is displayed. Consequently, if the menu is opened while the protagonist was moving, the player can see them (ba-dum-tss!)Lifelessly Moonwalking, their legs constantly moving behind the currently opened pane.
That was also the moment I’ve noticed the game’s pause menu (there’s no separate options menu available during the story, basic options and controls are displayed immediately on the pause screen) has never showed the resolution my game was running in correctly.
And since we are at the bugs and glitches already.
Somewhere around the middle of the game’s campaign, the batteries in my gamepad went dead while the protagonist was walking. From that point on, regardless of the controller I’ve tried to employ (wireless, wired, finally keyboard and mouse) the game kept registering the direction I have been pressing when the batteries died. As a result, it made it impossible for me to either continue the game or access any option from the pause menu. All I could do was to watch the ’37 minutes since the last autosave’ information at the bottom of the screen as I quit. And when I came back, I’ve discovered that this entire story segment could have been completed in approximately 3 minutes if the player was not roaming around the spacious location looking for the collectibles. There also was no way to skip the cutscene which I have already seen in my previous game.
During the puzzle that followed in the same location, one of the key items disappeared when I reached the solution without triggering the story event that should have happened next. 13 minutes since the last autosave. Luckily it was still only that 3-minute run followed by an unskippable cutscene and the said item worked on the second attempt.

Later, there was a glitch that made the protagonist exit the ladder to an opposite side from the platform they needed to be on, since the platform was located in front of the ladder and the character exiting the ladder is only animated towards the back. No more than two steps from that place, there was a spot on the ground through which the protagonist kept clipping through and falling to their death.
J.J. Missing, Cassette Beasts
Layers of Fear
From the very start, the story doesn’t make sense. And not in a way of the properly constructed mystery in which the player is not yet able to decode the plot due to the pieces of information missing from the picture, but rather the already given portions of the narrative not fitting properly together. Also, the story appears to be following the now extremely tired trope of a planet unfathomably bringing fragments of imagination to life. Finally, there is absolutely no reason for it to be happening on the Moon.
During the first minutes of playthrough, the protagonist walks around an abandoned city (the events initially resemble the first game) in complete silence. Then they flip a particular switch and the music starts playing. Said music is clearly aimed at creating an atmosphere of tension and urgency, with absolutely no reason for such a change of pacing given. The cutscene following only presents the next destination the protagonist is supposed to visit with no noticeable source of the threat in sight. In the end, it led to nothing more than a series of fetch quests for three different keys separated by nothing besides a minute or two of walking that ultimately guided me back to the same location in which I’ve initially pulled the lever.
While initially such a choice of music appeared puzzling, I’ve grown to think it was a deliberate decision on the side of developers, since similar scenario kept occurring during the entire game.
Lifeless Moon follows the trend of letting the protagonist into large, mostly empty areas with several tasks to complete, which nearly always rely on walking from point A to B, then C and D with a cutscene or two somewhere in between. And since the game offers absolutely nothing to break the tedium of another long trek, the developers attempt to trick the player into some sense of urgency with the music.
During the entire game there is one sequence during which the protagonist encounters an entity that resembles an enemy (not even a competent model, just barely animated tendrils that emit an unpleasant, slithery sound). They need to be lured across an extremely simple maze. Yet, when the said entity manages to catch up with the protagonist (it moves slowly and gets caught up in the game’s geometry extremely easily since it seems to be following the player in a straight line only, with no regard for any obstacles in its path), it causes them no harm at all, only the stronger film grain filter appears on the screen.
Pools and Creature in the Well
CULTIC! CULTIC!
The graphics have improved. Lifeless Moon looks almost as good as Lifeless Planet should have back in 2014, although admittedly, the player is treated to some impressively looking vistas, especially during the later chapters of the game.
The protagonist no longer slows down while carrying the objects needed for solving a certain kind of puzzle which plagued the first game. Furthermore, the jumping is no longer as annoying as it was in Lifeless Planet due to the improved jetpack capabilities.
Nonetheless, when compared with the shortcomings that plague Moon, the list of improvements is rather unimpressive. It is difficult for me to recommend this game to either fans of the prequel or people unfamiliar with it. With the ‘very positive’ rating this game receives on Steam, it is quite probable that it is me missing the point here, nonetheless these are my experiences and, being the fan of the first game, as much as I wanted to recommend the Moon, I feel that I cannot do so.
Crimsonland, Coromon, Crawl
Lifleless Planet too! *

*If you’re wondering, these are the suggestions of games I recommend playing rather than the Lifeless Moon. You can sing them to the “Brain Stem” song from Pinky and the Brain if you’re drunk enough. Do with it what you will and, as always
Try to have a wonderful life.