《End of Abyss》评测：困于自身野心之中

These days, it seems like it’s harder than ever for developers to break through the industry’s glass ceiling and make a game that truly stands out compared to the dozens of other games out there. Indie developers in particular are faced with this question every day, especially when adding onto genres that have been done to death. How do you make a metroidvania that feels unique compared to landmark titles like Metroid Dread or Hollow Knight? How do you make a survival horror game that draws the player’s attention in the same way as Resident Evil or Signalis? 

End of Abyss, the inaugural release from Section 9 Interactive, undoubtedly had to face those challenges throughout the development process. It is a metroidvania that combines elements from twin-stick shooters and survival horror experiences. In theory, that should be enough to separate it from other entries in the genre, especially considering the developers have previously worked on the Little Nightmares games. In execution, however, the combination of ideas present in End of Abyss results in a game that is both frustrating and forgettable in equal measure. 

Atmosphere Without Substance

End of Abyss features a small team of faceless technicians and soldiers, led by an equally mysterious captain. The group ventures into a dark underground facility, overrun by a parasitic infection of some kind. You play as one of the technicians, simply named Cel, as she is tasked with bringing the facility back online and further investigating the horrors within. Along the way, she will encounter monsters of all shapes and sizes, all while she is directed by a haunting voice that emanates from the facility’s many AI control units. 

The story of End of Abyss is shrouded in ambiguity, both for better and for worse. Initially, the mystery only furthers the atmosphere, which is immediately compelling. The brutalist atmosphere of the facility contrasts well with the parasitic monsters that inhabit it. There are great shots where you open a door overcome with infection, and you see the way the flesh-like growth comes apart with an absolutely disgusting noise. One of my favorite moments came in the mid-game, where you see a mass of limbs cobbled together like a rope. It is an eerie visual, and one that stuck with me after I beat End of Abyss. 

That being said, these are the only memorable moments that the story and atmosphere have to offer. From a narrative standpoint in particular, there is no sense of progression, nor are there characters to become invested in. Cel, alongside the rest of the soldiers she arrives with, is essentially a faceless husk with no backstory whatsoever. The other characters aside from Cel have dialogue, but they do not tell me anything about this world or the people that live in it. Yes, there are plenty of text documents that can be found that serve as worldbuilding, but I was never interested enough in the world to want to learn more about it. 

As a result, it made it hard to care about some of the many cutscenes that litter the story. For instance, there is a part closer to the endgame where one of the core characters dies, and Cel is given another message by the voice that has been speaking to her throughout the game. It is presented as a shocking moment that should have inspired me to get to the ending so I could find out the truth of what has truly been going on behind the scenes. In reality, though, I felt nothing because I had no reason to care about Cel, the character she just saw die, or the voice that is speaking to her. Even the ending does not wrap up the story, and instead raises more questions. With the amount of cutscenes that are in End of Abyss, I often found myself wishing that there were more hints of a broader story within them, rather than hidden behind text documents. 

When it comes to the atmosphere, while the visuals look pretty, it is quite forgettable save for a few sparse moments here and there. This is mainly because there is nothing distinct about End of Abyss‘ visual identity. The brutalist elements reminded me a lot of Cronos: The New Dawn, while the parasitic elements made me think of The Last of Us at times. Whether these inspirations were intentional or not is hard to say, but regardless, I have seen every element of End of Abyss‘ presentation done a dozen times in other games.

There is nothing in this game that felt new or interesting compared to other horror games on the market. The parts where you navigate a dark laboratory overrun with robots or wade through a swamp area are all familiar, and its particular execution of those tropes failed to strike a chord with me. Furthermore, as a result of the brutalist architecture, most of the areas in the game don’t really have a distinct look to them, save for the Containment Area and its use of green mist, or the Waterworks’ aforementioned use of swampy waters. 

While I may think about one or two shots from End of Abyss in a few months from now, I do not see myself remembering other parts of the experience in that time period. Even now, I am struggling to recall anything that separates Factory West from Factory East, or Factory East from the Reactor. In fact, if there is anything that I take away from my time with End of Abyss, it is the frustrating gameplay mechanics. 

Master of None

The gameplay of End of Abyss is, for lack of a better term, all over the place. When you look at it at a glance, you might be expecting a traditional survivor horror shooter, in the same vein as Crow Country or Sorry, We’re Closed. In reality, what you get is a twin-stick shooter metroidvania with survival horror elements. Such an odd combination could work if handled well, but here, mechanics from each genre are thrown together into an odd melting pot of ideas with no sense of cohesion. This is made even worse by an overabundance of frustrating bugs. 

At first, the controls feel natural to use, especially when you only have a few enemies to deal with at a time. When you enter a room, you can scan enemies to see their weaknesses before attacking, or go right into combat. You first have a pistol at your disposal, which does weak damage but with the benefit of having infinite ammo. As you continue, you can find more weapons in the world around you, such as a shotgun, a sniper, and a flamethrower. You can then upgrade them using credits you collect from dead bodies or the environment itself at save points. These save points are also used to “craft” ammo for said weapons, or other tools like grenades.

Gameplay feels satisfying in the early hours of End of Abyss, especially as you min-max your credit usage. However, that all goes out the window once you have to fight multiple enemies simultaneously. Enemies can quickly ambush you and leave you unable to defend against their attacks to such a degree that it feels borderline unfair. This is in part because the twin-stick control scheme doesn’t really allow for much precision, so it makes it excruciatingly difficult to target enemies.

Worse still is the lack of invincibility frames (or I-frames) when you get knocked down by an enemy. As a result, you can be knocked down in the middle of an encounter, and before you even have a chance to get back up, you are immediately killed by another monster. In addition, ammo can only be created at the save station and cannot be found in the environment. This may seem like a harmless decision on paper, but there is a major caveat: every time you die, the game saves your current loadout.

What this means is that when you die, instead of respawning back with all of the ammo you had on your last save, all of the ammo and the currency used to purchase it are now gone. Furthermore, since the resources found in the environment are depleted, the only way to get your ammo back is to grind enemies until you are ready to take on the same encounter. It is an exhausting gameplay loop that almost made my fingers sore thanks to just how often I was having to spin the thumbsticks in order to aim at a target. 

The worst-case scenario was the sections when I would spend almost half an hour trying to grind for a boss encounter, only to encounter one of the game’s many glitches, resetting my progress. Sometimes a group of enemies would trap me in a corner, making it completely impossible to move. In other situations, the game would crash at the most inopportune times, setting me back to my last save.

Plus, the previously mentioned frustrating design choices made it hard to tell when a death was my fault, a bug, or the fault of an unfair fight. In one instance, a boss managed to kill me right as I defeated it, resetting my progress. I could not tell if this was a glitch or an intended design choice. Either way, occurrences like these made gameplay feel like more of a slog rather than an enjoyable challenge. 

Above all, much like the narrative and presentation, the use of a bunch of common tropes in different genres results in a game that feels like a jack of all trades, but a master of none of them. In isolation, the concept of an in-game economy, twin-stick controls, a massive environment to explore, and dodge rolls as a way to avoid opponents could result in a great game. When thrown together into one game, in combination with the bugs and frustrating design choices, it resulted in one of the most frustrating experiences I have had in quite a while. Unfortunately, End of Abyss‘ high moments are not enough to distract from its shortcomings. 

A Frustrating Experience

Indie developers are faced with constant challenges the moment they decide to make a game from scratch. Before they even begin production, they have to figure out how to separate their game from the $70 AAA titles that can easily dwarf them just through sheer funding and marketing power. Yet, the developers that are able to overcome those challenges are often able to make games that surpass the greatest giants in the medium. Speaking personally, some of my favorite games of the last decade are ones that do not fit into the typical AAA bubble. I was hoping End of Abyss would end up being one of those titles. Instead, it turned out to be a frustrating experience from beginning to end. 

The narrative of End of Abyss is easily forgettable, thanks to the lack of any dialogue or interesting characters within the story. The presentation is just as unmemorable, as its aesthetic has no clear identity and instead feels like a rehash of tropes that other games utilize far better. The gameplay is similarly messy in how it throws together a bunch of different genres without any cohesion. End of Abyss‘ messy use of the metroidvania, survival horror, and twin-stick shooter genres, in combination with the numerous bugs and frustrating design choices, made for an experience that frequently made me wish I was playing anything else instead.

End of Abyss had all the pieces it needed to be a truly great experience. Certainly, some of the early gameplay situations and atmosphere were initially promising. However, the lackluster narrative and presentation, alongside the frustrating gameplay, made the game’s few high moments just as forgettable as the rest of it. 

Disclaimer: Epic Games Publishing provided a PlayStation 5 copy of End of Abyss for review purposes. 

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