Borrowing a page from first-person shooter horror franchise F.E.A.R., Master Reboot also features a demonic girl with long black hair who would like to eliminate you. Less enjoyable than the mysterious story, though, are the strong horror elements the game tries to implement. Some may find this infuriating, and while some of the levels can be annoying to navigate due to the lack of instructions, I enjoyed trying to piece together this crafty story by myself. Not only is it a lofty and complicated premise, but Wales Interactive doesn’t hold your hand here and essentially sets you on your way with little explanation for what you need to do. In case you couldn’t tell from that description, Master Reboot is a bit of an odd duck. This won’t be an easy task however, as there is another force out there seeking to stop you from figuring this mystery out. In order to do so, you must travel from memory to memory, which are each housed in their own separate areas, and search for clues in the disguise of small blue ducks. You are cast in the role of a mysterious girl, who finds herself deep within a Soul Cloud and has to piece together who she is and why she has awoken there. By uploading the deceased’s souls and memories, their loved ones can experience these moments again and again for as long as they wish. In an undetermined point in the future, the way society deals with death will be changed with the invention of the Soul Cloud. The levels where things do come together do so beautifully, but these other disjointed moments where Master Reboot bogs down becomes the prevailing memory between sessions.What if there was a way to preserve the memories of your loved ones, long after they have passed away? Would you even want such a thing to be possible? How would such a service even work? These are the questions that Master Reboot, an atmospheric first-person adventure title from Wales Interactive, seeks to answer. Different people will have different areas that frustrate them too – Matt and I found completely different sections trying on the patience, too, as a consequence of the developers trying to do too many different things when they should have focused on the basics. They become sore spots, because they pull players away from the narrative and experience and frustrate what should not be a game that frustrates. While some of these work, others are borderline frustrating and feel out of place. The development team tried to create a wide variety of puzzles and activities to help keep the actual gameplay mechanics fresh within this structure. It is a source material with a great deal of potential, and the way a life’s memories play out in snapshots is a fascinating way to approach the storytelling process. Most religions are in no small way a way of explaining the relationship between people and death and people spend inordinate amounts of time and money trying to reach out to lost loved ones, or to preserve their own legacies indefinitely. Thinking around life after death has been the subject of deep thought to people as long as we’ve existed. Some of these areas that you’ll visit while on this memory quest are cleverly creepy (for example, a graveyard), but soon after the game will be resorting to more base jump scares (such as what you’ll experience during a plane sequence).Īnd we are talking about some weighty material here. I found the tone of the narrative to be very uneven, for a start. However, what had the potential to be an intelligent, surreal experience was quite often marred by some curious design choices along the way. That the story can be explored in a non-linear fashion was also interesting to me. I love this setup, because I think it is a fascinating subject. Your adventures have you awakening in The Soul Cloud, trying to piece together why exactly you are there – and what is happening that should not be. In other words, people that use The Soul Cloud create a digital soul for their loved ones to visit or interact with. It is here that a person’s ‘soul’ (or more precisely, memories) are uploaded so that a they can “carry on” after they have died. Slowly you are guided through a series of seemingly disjointed experiences that take place in something called The Soul Cloud. Puzzles have more to do with mental challenges than platforming dexterity. You are not shooting things or engaging in any sort of combat. Things start in a strange, otherworldly environment as you are given almost no direction. The premise has the potential to be fascinating. Master Reboot comes close a few times and has a handful of quality moments, but it is an uneven package that does not quite come together when it needs to. It needs to keep you intensely immersed in its world, in order to keep the mind focused on the ultimate payoff. A horror or suspense title is a challenging one to build, however. They have the ability to engage the senses and mind in ways few other games can.
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