Everreach: Project Eden (PC) (2019)
Developer: Replay Studios

Review by Faididi and Co.

Definitely not to be confused with Core's action adventure

Story: Average

Nora, a young security agent for Everreach Industries, is sent to the planet of Eden to investigate the mysterious attacks on the research outposts there. Don't expect to find any spectacular story, though, because the writing is mediocre. The characters are uninteresting and one-dimensional, with the robot drone partner being awfully unfunny to everyone except Nora. There are multiple endings, but the final chapter rushes through the secret behind the enemies' actions.

Gameplay: Poor

Replay Studios' Everreach: Project Eden is a relatively simple, mostly linear third person shooter. Although Nora can check minor side areas and dead ends to find bonus items used to acquire upgrades, she can't return to previous regions to explore them again, and the game's very few optional tasks all occur during the earliest chapters. Some of the skill upgrades give Nora special abilities, like creating energy shields or temporarily boosting her offensive power, but her main weapons consist merely of a rifle and a handgun, and unless she runs out of ammo with the former, there's no need to bother with the latter.

Being simple is one issue, but Everreach suffers from an overwhelming lack of polish across the board, especially in the controls, the physics, and the level design. Nora snags against every single wall surface, and she must always walk around to the front of ramps to step onto them, because she can't jump or climb over their sides. The checkpoints are unevenly paced, occurring close together in relatively quiet areas while being spaced far apart at some places with many enemies. Among the worst parts of the game are the awful hoverbike scenes, due to the shitty controls and the fact that lightly colliding into surfaces will kill Nora faster than taking a barrage of laser bolts to the face.

Controls: Poor

The unresponsive controls are garbage through and through. Catching against every fucking wall and slope edge is bad enough, but Nora needs to stop completely still to holster her firearms before she can sprint. The hoverbike's slow turning controls are made more infuriating by the loose camera tracking, preventing you from clearly seeing what's in front of Nora when she is weaving through cluttered spots. The upgrade points can't be reallocated, the movies can't be skipped, and even the menus are glitchy and fail to apply changes to certain settings.

Graphics: Below Average

The visuals can be better. Nora already looks semi-creepy with her plastic doll expressions, but the bizarre, inexplicable wavering of her upper body when she is aiming with her weapons makes her appear drunk, and not in a good way.

Audio: Below Average

More glitches can be found in the sound effects, as Nora's gunfire isn't audible. The voice acting is okay for the most part, except for the irritating delivery for the robot partner. Whether the forgettable music is turned on or off hardly affects the rest of the game.

Overall: Poor

Everreach is an action shooter bogged down by problems from end to end. The horrid controls and the bad physics cause its heroine to keep stopping against surfaces instead of brushing past or climbing over them, while the slow steering and the weak camera tracking for the hoverbike scenes turn them into an anger-inducing experience. Throw in the half-working menus and the laughably bad upper body wavering animations, and you clearly have amateur-level work that shouldn't have been released.