Survival, Crafting, Chaos With A Retro Twist
Abiotic Factor is a game that looks to emulate the successes of many games inside and out of its genre. A mixture of survival-based bars, deep crafting, and a setting ripped straight from 1998’s Half-Life. While the cynical may scoff at the Valve-inspired nods and winks, those who embrace them will find a game wholly its own and brimming with intrigue.
Stepping Into Bedlam
After a brief visit to the character creation booth, you are slowly driven towards the story. Desert sands, Australian accents, and a latrine slowly give way to a secret underground facility where you – a newly hired scientist – will spend the majority of the game. A brief elevator ride into the depths of the facility reveals the breadth of the game world you are entering.
A tutorial later, things are not quite as they seem. Aliens have torn through the fabric of reality and are ravaging the facility. The security systems are going haywire. The military has been deployed and left in tatters. You step out of the elevator and your first day on the job is destined to be quite the ordeal.
As you explore the facility and beyond you will uncover why the world you inhabit has fallen into such disarray and what you need to do to escape the chaos. The story is largely told through brief interactions with NPCs and the discovery of video logs. It’s all compelling enough to tickle your sense of discovery even if it does largely exist as set dressing.
That’s because Abiotic Factor is all about the gameplay. It might not seem like it initially as the introductory portion of the game can take a while to fade into the background. However, once it gives you control of the reins, it’s up to you to carve your own path – sometimes literally.
Survival Of The Fittest
Abiotic Factor, at its core, is a survival game. You have various bars to manage – all of which deplete as time goes by. These boil down to hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and poop. Finding food, drinking water, taking a breather, and frequenting the lavatory are all a must and most of them lead to exciting gameplay tidbits early on.
Sorting out a sustainable source of food, memorising or transporting sources of water, and even constructing a bed are all micro-objectives you will need to achieve if you are to survive. Throw in the ever-present threat of degradation and you will need to frequently manage these resources over the course of the game. Food will rot. Water will run dry. Beds will collapse.
Outside of these core survival concepts, you also need to mind your health. Falling from too great a height will break your legs. Being cut on sharp objects will cause you to bleed. Being covered in filth and gore can make you sick. Even the temperature can have a negative impact on your long-term survival. Gordon Freeman, you are not.
Crafting Your Way To Victory
Thankfully there are many creative ways to overcome all of this, but the most impactful is crafting. Crafting in Abiotic Factor is quite in-depth. Interacting with and collecting objects from the environment will unlock new recipes for you to craft. These start as simple as putting a sharp object on a lamp to create a spear or taping magazines to your arms for armour, but expand wildly.
Salvage some computers for some electrical components and suddenly you can intuit how to make everything from a high-powered vacuum to a battery-powered death-windmill. More complex creations require higher quality materials, and locating these materials is always a hoot. In fact, progression is often locked behind complex crafting goals, with an early hurdle requiring you to dismantle security robots. This is easier said than done.
Unleash The Murder-Windmills
Which leads us to combat. Combat in Abiotic Factor is as complex or as simple as you want it to be. Early enemies range from small bug-like creatures to alien dogs, but will advance into much more dangerous variants as you progress. Melee combat requires you to slash, smash, and stab your way through enemies whilst keeping an eye on your stamina. Figuring out how to make ranged weapons allows you to shoot from a distance. So far, so simple.
Once you start to factor in your crafting, you can get more creative. Using a vacuum to suck up smaller enemies and launch them at larger ones for massive damage. Setting up traps to stun enemies before you finish them off. Luring them into your murder-windmills. Within your first couple of hours your options are vast, and they only grow from there. The game even encourages you from the get go with your first weapon being a throwable net to trap smaller enemies and to entangle larger ones.
Self Improvement 101
To further expand your myriad of options in Abiotic Factor, you get better at doing stuff when you do stuff. Hit things with a wrench? You get better at using blunt weapons. Run around encumbered? You get stronger. Build. Cook. Stab. Shoot. Reload. Self-medicate. Just about everything you do is tracked, and as you improve, you unlock helpful perks. Not only that, but you start the game by selecting a class and some starting perks/quirks. These help to direct your character build, but nothing is stopping you from branching out and becoming whatever you want to be.
Abiotic Factor is deep. It’s complex. It’s compelling. However, there are some things that rubbed us the wrong way. Firstly, the game is tedious – especially when playing solo. Your inventory size is restrictive, the number of collectible items is staggering, and backtracking is frequent as a result.
Fly Solo or With Pals
The early game is marred with repeated trips to the same locations to harvest materials before heading home to store them in containers for future use. Enemies also respawn, so revisiting the same area inevitably means you are engaging in more combat, which again, is tedious as early enemy variety is low.
Sadly crafting is also tedious in execution, and it’s only like this so the game can remove the tedium later. Crafting stations do not pull materials from nearby storage containers by default. This is an upgrade you unlock later in the game. This means you are constantly going backwards and forwards between containers to find the things you need to craft the things you want. Over time it adds up to a lot of busy work.
Thankfully nearly all of these issues can be reduced – or even fully circumvented – by playing with friends. Abiotic Factor is very clearly designed with this in mind, and everything goes smoother with an extra pair of hands (or three). Everyone going off on their own little excursions means you can explore the facility far quicker, gather materials more effectively, and progress at a rate that makes solo-play look snail-like by comparison. Of course more hands also means more weapons so enemies become less of a hassle to boot.
But worry not, solo-players are not left out to dry. Abiotic Factor is, in essence, a sandbox game. Before loading into your world you can change just about anything you want. Want to be able to have larger stacks? Done. Level up faster? Done. Weaker enemies? Done. You can even turn off the day/night cycle to avoid having to deal with patrolling security robots and the power being turned off at night. This list is exhaustive, and you can tweak it to your heart’s content.
Embracing Retro Sci-Fi
In terms of presentation, Abiotic Factor is very much trying to evoke Half-Life. It’s a little bit blocky – a little bit pixelated. Everything has this 1998 vibe to it, and if you were around back then, you’ll immediately feel at home. Despite harkening back to an older age, the game is also surprisingly pretty largely thanks to its art direction and how clean and clear everything is.
This also applies to the sound as the game has some crispy audio effects and a real ambient soundtrack that just fades into the background as you explore before picking up a bit during combat.
On Xbox Series X, Abiotic Factor ran flawlessly with solid framerates and quick loading. There were some concerns around how hot the Xbox got when playing, however. The game is pleasing to look at, but it doesn’t have the graphical weight to push the Xbox to the point of searing temperatures. It never crashed our game, but it was always a bit of a concern.
Is Abiotic Factor Worth Your Time?
All in all, Abiotic Factor is fantastic. If you love survival crafting with a dash of retro sci-fi atmosphere, Abiotic Factor is an easy recommendation – especially if you have friends to play with. It’s not perfect, but Abiotic Factor nails the sense of creative problem-solving that keeps you saying ‘just one more hour.’
Important Links
Win the Nobel Prize in Abiotic Factor on Xbox, Game Pass, Play Anywhere, PlayStation and PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/win-the-nobel-prize-in-abiotic-factor-on-xbox-game-pass-play-anywhere-playstation-and-pc/
Science Goes Sideways in Abiotic Factor, Hitting PlayStation and Xbox with Day One Game Pass and PS+ Launch – https://www.thexboxhub.com/science-goes-sideways-in-abiotic-factor-hitting-playstation-and-xbox-with-day-one-game-pass-and-ps-launch/
Download Abiotic Factor (on Game Pass if you like) – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/abiotic-factor/9p4nv23q6qc2
Consider the Supporter’s Edition – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/abiotic-factor-supporters-edition/9MZVD0JQ0FDH/0010
