AWAY: The Survival Series Review (PS5)

There are some developers that insist to give their games an educational flavor, trying to teach gamers more about subjects such as history, evolution or survival. None of these games end up as household names in the industry, but some of them are at least interesting or entertaining. But there are some that make you scratch your head trying to guess what the developers were thinking. After Ancestors developed by Patrice Desilets, now another bunch of former Ubisot developers brought us a new nature documentary experience.

Although at first glance AWAY: The Survival Series has a very different topic from Ancestors, there are similarities between the two, beyond the resume of the developers. First and foremost, both games are going to be equally successful and memorable, because both seem to struggle grasping what is a fun and entertaining experience. And the main issue is no the topic structured as an interactive documentary, but the game mechanics that are not up to par.            

Breaking Walls, the studio that is responsible for this game, tried to put together an experience inspired by the breath-taking stories of great narrators such as Sir David Attenborough. Taking a step further they imagined a cataclysmic event that led to the extinction of the great mammals, making room for smaller species to thrive in the environments reconquered by nature. Starting as a young and determined sugar glider you can explore the game and face challenges that require animal skills, but human logic.

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You can choose to explore freely or to follow the narration, but in both cases, you will lose your interest quite fast. Despite the decent job the narrator does, and the soundtrack put together by Mike Raznick, AWAY: The Survival Series lacks the magic of the most famous and spectacular nature documentaries. The events you will be part of are heavily scripted and although you have to control a sugar glider, they feel very anthropomorphic.

Instead of an interactive documentary it feels more like a third person action adventure, where the hero has been replaced by a furry rodent capable of gliding from branch to branch. You will have to jump a lot, get involved in fisticuffs, hide from larger creatures and steal in order to survive. Unfortunately, not a single game mechanic behind these actions is flawless or fun. The jumps are imprecise and haphazard, the only thing you rely on being the indicator that shows where you will land. The combat system is a joke, and a bad one for that, the gliding mechanism being the only thing worse than going into combat with scorpions or snakes.

AWAY: The Survival Series oozes poor production value from all its elements. Next to the shabby mechanics, we have poor animation quality, rudimentary design and painful stealth sections. The story that is supposed to be endearing comes across as ridiculous, and the level design nullifies any remnant of immersion that could have been generated by the open wilderness. The graphics tries to be realistic, but everything else about the game feels synthetic and out of place. The best example can be the two logs you will encounter in a whirlpool, that you will have to jump on in order to reach the exit of the cave.

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Or even worse the logs that swing endlessly tied to some creepers, having the sole purpose of being a ridiculous obstacle in your path. The fact that the developers used nature as an excuse to make these kind of obstacles defeats the purpose of building an interactive documentary. But even if you can get pass the in-your-face design flaws, you cannot ignore the huge number of bugs the game still contains. Even after the patches that have been released, AWAY: The Survival Series is a collection of bad jokes. Like your first encounter with a snake that you will pass by being defeated and devoured by the snake. At least this is the story the animation is telling you, because the narrator and the game are taking a different stance and congratulating you on passing yet another hurdle.

Beyond the hilarious, the title suffers from game breaking bugs as well, and these affects not just the story, but the exploration mode as well. These second mode had some potential since it lets you control an entity capable of inhabiting different creatures. You can experiment around with the different abilities of the different animals, but the level design breaks again any hope for immersion through a series of limitations. Instead of being an interesting and almost limitless playground, this second game mode disappoint even more than the story.

Although the animations are amateurish, the 2D art of the game is remarkable. The environment is maybe the best feature of the game, combining breath taking vistas with artifacts left behind by the extinct human civilization. It is very hard to fathom how can be such a discrepancy between static visuals and the animations. The soundtrack signed by veteran Mark Reznick, does a great job in trying to create an atmosphere ruined by the gameplay.

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The Good

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