Aphelion review

By the year 2060, Earth will be uninhabitable. Humanity's last hope is a newly discovered 9th planet of the solar system: Persephone. Two astronauts are sent by the European Space Agency (ESA), Ariane and Thomas, to scout the planet and determine if the human race has a future there. The pair have an on-again, off-again love life as they travel the stars, but are split up by their ship crash landing on the planet. Ariane is lost in the frozen wasteland, while Thomas is injured, running out of oxygen, and finds himself in a rocky landscape surrounded by the vestiges of what looks like another mission to the planet. The pair need to decide if they'll continue the mission individually or work to find each other.

Like Twin Mirror before it, Aphelion has a very interesting setup. Its premise has the potential to explore the human yearning for companionship through the isolation of space exploration. Also Twin Mirror, the game seeks to add a bit more gameplay spice to the narrative adventure focus, with Ariane's gameplay being like Uncharted without guns and Thomas' being more movement puzzle focused as he moves between oxygen tethers. In an inverse of Twin Mirror (like a... reflection), setup is all Aphelion has going for it. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen in the plot, like learning what the much discussed Source and its Nexuses are, but then I realized I was over halfway through the game, reaching the climax, and then the credits rolled after a nothing burger of an ending.

While the story has basically nothing going on and consists mostly of the two main characters talking to themselves or recording logs, the acting is pretty dang good. Ariane has a pretty thick French accent, but Vanessa Dolmen gives a phenomenal performance. She's got basically nothing to work with in her role of a work focused astronaut who's constantly worrying about Thomas, but she really does elevate the material far beyond what's presented by the writing. The music does the same, with some gorgeous strings to play into the lonely ice planet vibes. Sonically, Aphelion is a great experience.

Unfortunately, that's basically the only part that's great. The gameplay for both characters reminds me a lot of missions in Rockstar games. You need to do exactly what the game expects of you with absolutely no deviations, otherwise you die. Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA can be pretty bad about that sometimes, but Aphelion is significantly worse as it's often far too difficult to divine what the designers want you to do. For example, in the stealth sections, it's impossible to know what actions will alert your pursuer. Simply standing in a body of water without moving will get you instantly killed, but apparently grappling across a chasm and landing hard on the other side won't? Deaths more often than not feel random, like falling through the end of a bridge because you were holding the right direction to keep your balance, I guess. Another example, there are a few moments similar to the mach speed sections in Sonic '06, where Ariane is running forward at full speed and you need to move left, right, and jump to avoid obstacles. The last one of these has spikes appearing from the ground that are, admittedly, telegraphed pretty far in advance. I don't have a problem with that part. What I do have a problem with is one appearing right under me to kill me instantly or smack dab in the middle of a narrow hall that is, quite literally, impossible to avoid. As the game goes on, Ariane's sections just feel like waiting for the game to decide you're allowed to continue playing, whether that's due to design or the increasing frequency of glitches, which also kill you instantly.

Thomas' gameplay does suffer from a lack of wiggle room, but not nearly to the degree Ariane's does. I never actually died as Thomas, for one, but that's because his gameplay style never gets any more complex than walking towards the next oxygen tank. You have more than enough time to get between them, so there's never any need to double back for a refill after clearing a path of debris with your grappling hook. The only time I actually struggled was to input a passcode, but that was because I couldn't read the picture that had the answer on it without getting very close to my TV. He's the one more plot focused, actually interacting with the remnants of what set the story in motion, but it's obvious what happened from moment one and Thomas doesn't do anything to change the current circumstances. His final section might end with a bang, but it has zero significance to anything that happens before or after.