Review: Corpse of Discovery

One Man’s Sky

I’m a huge fan of the recent resurgence of sci-fi blockbusters such as Gravity, Interstellar and the upcoming The Martian, and when I watched the trailer for Corpse of Discovery I couldn’t help but see the influence from these films. 

“Could this be an indie No Man’s Sky or The Martian game?” I excitedly thought to myself

It could have been, if only the game functioned anything like the lie of a trailer and Steam screenshots led me to believe it would, but instead Corpse of Discovery was a non-optimized jetpack simulator — the hot new take on walking simulators. 

Corpse of Discovery (PC)
Developer: Phosphor Games
Publisher: Phosphor Games
Released: August 25, 2015
MSRP: $14.99
Rig: Intel Core i7-3930K @ 3.2 GHz, 32GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 980, Windows 10 64-bit, Intel 750 SSD

“Our feature presentation” is displayed on the screen the moment Corpse of Discovery is launched, followed by a live action video of a press conference with a representative from the “Corps of Discovery” — a space exploration company — explaining that communication with one of their astronauts had been lost. Cut to an astronaut groggily waking up in a space station to a recorded voice stating this is your final mission and to make your way to the main computer to be briefed.

On the way to get briefed you’ll come across various items to interact with including laptops playing silly videos, pictures, and a hologram with an audio message from your wife and kids. Upon reaching the main computer a hologram of the planet is displayed and your mission is read aloud by a recorded voice, letting you know you’ll be placing markers on this unexplored planet. Just outside the main computer room is a space suit you’ll have to slip on before stepping outside into a barren red planet. The atmosphere of this planet is exactly what one would expect as a lone astronaut on an unexplored planet; extreme emptiness, a lifeless wasteland, and your thoughts. 

After you get over the initial awe of walking out of the spaceship onto the planet you’ll notice the framerate often dips quite low when moving quickly, and there is a great deal of objects popping in thus breaking the immersion. I played the game on two different computers to see if it was just me or if the game was just optimized really poorly, to unsurprisingly find out my suspicions were confirmed. No matter what settings were adjusted, the results were the same: pop in and frame rate dips; It sure as hell didn’t look silky smooth like the slow movement and quick cuts of the trailer lead me to believe it would be, nor was there a helmet around the edges of the screen like shown in both the trailer and screenshots. 

Once you’ve accepted the dismal optimization, you’ll find a nearby helper AI– a floating orb-shaped robot with glowing blue eyes — that gives you directions, tips, updates from the Corps HR department and seems to have an intelligent personality of all her own. She warns that standing in direct sunlight will cause radiation levels to increase and points to the first place that needs to be marked, so you set off in that direction. Along the way, between heavy breaths inside your suit, you’ll hear the bot remind you that after this mission you will be retired, how appreciative your family will be for all your hard work, and that she hasn’t been able to get out a distress call as your ship crash landed leaving you currently stranded.

As you find the last marker the bot says her battery is about to die, her distress signal was never heard and that your family will be well compensated. After your bot passes into the battery-less afterlife, you’ll be given one last point to go to while avoiding gigantic tornadoes surrounding the area. Taking floaty jumps across the map until arriving at the final point is horrifying, as you’re given no hope of surviving and you’re light years from home. Upon arriving at the last way point an alien flies onto screen and fills you with radiation causing you to black out, only to wake up back in the base for your final mission, again, only this time on a different planet. 

This passing out, waking up back in the base cycle happens a handful of times before the credits roll. Each cycle has hints of passage of time and new messages from a family that misses you, all while being told this is your last mission yet being on a brand new planet. Each planet looks vastly different, with the second being full of lush vegetation and some living organisms, a stark contrast to the starting planet’s emptiness, while others have floating rocks, lava, and deserts filled with caves and rocky peaks.

There isn’t a lot to do on any of them though, as every mission is “walk over there, press action, rinse, repeat” though eventually a jetpack is added to the mix. The catch is that it can only boost for so long before you’ll have to wait a bit for its power to recharge, though you can reach the altitude you want and keep tapping it every couple seconds to nearly infinitely stay midair, allowing you to quickly glide between points of interest. 

Other than the main objectives there are some other interesting objects to find — though I use the term interesting loosely in this case as finding mirages of food you miss from Earth is anything but interesting — that add a bit of information to the astronaut’s backstory, giving glimpses at his family life and personal tastes. There are also a couple of kind of funny celebrity impersonators that can be found, one of which is Matthew McConaughey talking nonsense about wormholes like his character in Interstellar. The best extras to find though have to be satellites that play commercials, TED talks and a music video, all that are tailor made to reference what is going on in the game and taunting you with “You’re going to die alone on this planet.” 

Later in the game the tone switches from mystery, to deep hypothetical questions about choice and religion before going off rails and becoming a satire of itself. Suddenly your AI robot friend is more self aware, swears and doesn’t even provide you your assigned mission, before mocking you for doing the same thing over and over. Perhaps your character is going mad or is in Hell, the game doesn’t really ever make it very clear.  I have a feeling the developers don’t even know what to do with the story and kind of just gave up and decided to try to make it comical, which makes the last level feel less like an awesome sci-fi adventure game and more like a shitty mod a teenager would make of a game to impress their friends.

Corpse of Discovery’s intro sets a very serious and cinematic tone that is carried on through most of the first half of the game before derailing and turning into a parody of itself, ruining what could have been an otherwise beautiful experience apart from the horrible optimization.

At around three hours, it’s hard to recommend Corpse of Discovery to starved sci-fi fans, let alone the general public, and especially at full price. With some optimization patches it would be at least worth a play through for sci-fi fans, but as it stands I’d let this one get lost in space.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}