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- MAG Studios
- MAG Studios
- MAG Studios
- MAG Studios
Ghostship Aftermath
Released On: Jul 18, 2014
Metascore
Available after 4 critic reviews
6.0
All Platforms
A weird, twisted take on a horror game that combines excellent gameplay ideas with truly horrendous mistakes. It’s brilliant and disgusting at the same time, but, alas, the latter prevails.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 42 User Ratings
6.0
60% Positive
25 Ratings
25 Ratings
2% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
38% Negative
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 42 User Ratings
6.0
60% Positive
25 Ratings
25 Ratings
2% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
38% Negative
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
This game is not an FPS, it is a sci-fi survival horror game. Survival here means you have resources you need to manage other than health and ammo. You start out with only 90 minutes of oxygen so you need to keep track of how much you have and try to find a place to recharge before you run out, and sprinting uses 4x the oxygen so you have to be aware of your situation and decide whether it's more important to move fast or breathe longer.
Light is a limited resource that needs managed for survival, but also plays into the horror side of things. Dark is scary and scary is good, but you can't see items, messages, or enemies in the dark so you need a flashlight to survive. If you're using a flashlight it's not so dark and not so scary which is bad for horror. So for middle ground between a scary dark ship and being able to see things and survive you only get 60 minutes of flashlight battery (non-rechargeable). If you run out completely... good luck with that.
All gamers know with melee enemies and guns that backup+shoot=win. To disrupt this equation there are boxes all over the ship that are collision enabled. Here if you try and run backwards shooting you risk running into a box and getting caught by the bad guy if you don't jump over it fast enough. This is an intentional feature designed to make you watch where you're going and prevent you from playing this like an FPS. Remember where I said "this is not an FPS" earlier?
Additionally, enemies are very difficult to kill, especially in groups. It imbues a sense helplessness in the player, and being helpless is scary. In one variation of the storyline I ended up in a corridor filled with aliens yelling "F*CK YOU DIE DIE DIE! F*CK YOU DIE DIE DIE!" as I poured plasma rifle fire into the oncoming swarm and screamed "NOOOOOOOOO!" as I was overwhelmed and eaten.
Perma-death is listed in the features section and seems self explanatory, but I feel it needs reiterated because some people don't quite get how it works. The game does save at loading screens so that you can quit and pick up the story later if you need to, but there is no manual saving or loading. When you die though your last save point dies with you and you have to start a new game. Having a save point to fall back on makes dying less of an imposition and alleviates the player's fear of dying and doesn't emphasize survival.
The game does lack some polish and is rough in some areas and had it been AAA I would have deducted some points. But it was made by 1 developer with 0 budget, and is understandable. He has been continually improving the game over time, releasing updates periodically. He has also already released 1 free DLC and will be releasing another for Halloween as a token of appreciation to the customers and as an apology for the buggy release. He's not perfect, but how many developers even bother to try and make things right with their customers? Not enough, and thats why this gets a 10.
Even if it is rough in places, the tension in the game is palpable. I usually play games to relax, and I've got to say that I almost don't like playing this one because it keeps me wound up the whole time. The biggest part is you don't know what's going to happen next. The storyline is randomized, enemy spawns are randomized, the only thing you can be sure of from one game to the next is your own name, the location of some weapons/objects, and that you're on a big scary Ghostship.
Even the way you move is tense, difficult, and adds to the atmosphere. You clunk along slowly in your heavy spacesuit with magnetic boots, and although you can "sprint" (I use that word loosely, its more like a fast jog) it is only for a couple seconds before you have to go back to walking speed. After all, you are Dr. Jake Abbots from the Colonial Science Division, not a space Marine.
I recommend this game because it achieves its overriding goal, to scare you the entire time, and the randomized storyline is a novel idea that provides tons of hours of replayability. I should note that I HIGHLY recommend reading the manual and watching the getting started video from the developer before playing the first time as you're thrown into the deep end on this game.
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PC
Ghostship Aftermath is a good indie game but only if you play it in VR with the Oculus Rift! I would give the game a 7.5 but i deciede to give 10 points because of all the non vr players who gaves so negeative critics. Sorry for my english ;-) ...
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PC
I cannot respect the developer enough, a single man dev. I hear a lot of bad things about the voice acting and also about the game in general i picked it up yesterday and was overwhelmed by the available support. Actively ready to speak and help and solve issues almost overnight, true dedication. Now the game, it is awesome especially with all the different ways things can go it truly is a block buster with some flaws, hopefully they are all addressed,Personally a 9.5 out of 10. I cant believe the negative response to this game, probably due to all the creative and different aspects of this game.
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PC
[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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PC
[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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PC
I was really hoping for an immersive survival horror that took place in space. I love space sci fi and sci fi horror so this really looked great to me. On paper, Ghostship Aftermath isn't an original product, but that's not saying it doesn't have potential for greatness. Unfortunately, the game is so unpolished it's more of a hassle to keep playing than it is to stop and play something else. Ghostship Aftermath has one thing going for it, atmosphere. Unfortunately though, everything else about it hurts the atmosphere. The controls are absolutely dreadful. I didn't play with a controller but I can tell you that using a mouse to look around or "aim" feels like aiming with a D-pad for Nintendo 64. It was obviously made for Oculus in mind, and not the average mouse and keyboard gamer. Not very smart when the Oculus hasn't even been released yet, and the upcoming bad reviews aren't going to persuade people into buying the game when Oculus is released. Moving around is boring, yes, there's no gravity for the time that I played (2 hours) but moving around isn't fluid, it doesn't feel natural and it gets very boring, very quickly. Then there are the A.I. glitches. My constant interaction with an enemy A.I. was comedic, in a very bad way. No matter how many times I shot the thing, it wouldn't die and it was bouncing around the room, absolutely no quality control when it comes to the A.I. When you add terrible voice acting to the mix you have a very terrible game. It has potential, and I think with 4-5 people working around the clock for another 20 months it could actually be a good game.
Since it's a PC game, I should also tell you that it severely lacks graphical options and key-binding options; or at least I didn't see the option to bind keys. Graphical options include either 1080p or 720p resolution, Anti-Aliasing Off, 2x and 4x and motion blur. With motion blur turned on you can't see your gun or your HUD at all while turning, it doesn't blur, it just fragments what's on screen, very ugly and when turned off you still get that effect only in a smaller dose.
So, save your money, put that money aside for a game like Routine, which is (supposedly) releasing sometime in 2014 or wait for the release of Alien: Isolation. After a few hours of Ghostship Aftermath I can honestly tell you that I won't be going back unless very serious changes are made. I was really hoping this game would be different but it's really no different from the other Steam Greenlight games that are putting a stranglehold on Steam. Games like this should not be sold to customers.
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PC
I really like the concept behind Ghostship Aftermath but the execution is so poor that it's impossible to play in any meaningful way.
Keys can't be rebound, returning to the menu exits the current stage. Key controls gets stuck or can't be used. The view gets stuck at bizarre angles.
Crouch doesn't work. This has been an issue from version 1.0 all the way to 1.5. Seriously. Crouching causes the player to slowly rise into the ceiling.
The player gets stuck on everything. Boxes marked fragile, the edges of floor plates, narrow corridors, stuff on the ceiling. It's incredibly frustrating and only sometimes possible to unstick oneself.
AI and aliens. The less said about this the better. The aliens are a bunch of poorly animated, marginally textured, mismatched models found who-know-where. And then they're controlled by AI that sticks them on everything I that the player gets stuck on. Except when they magically phase through things.
Shooting them is damn near impossible as the gun reticule auto-levels when near level but not when looking up or down. Lots of aliens are low to the ground and the player can't aim that low. Most annoyingly the aliens don't seem to collide with the player and can run through you, hit you from behind before you can slowly turn and around and then they repeat it.
Some aliens move faster than you but due to the random nature of the game can only be killed by unreachable guns; which makes for irritating unavoidable deaths.
Ghostship Aftermath has huge potential but is so terribly produced that selling it as a finished product is a borderline scam.
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PC
Summary Ghostship Aftermath is an open world, sci-fi action-adventure with random events and multiple story-lines. No two games will ever be the same. Your survival skills will be put to the test every time you board, the Ghostship.
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Jul 18, 2014
Developer:
- shaun Williams
Publisher: MAG Studios
Genres:
