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Technosphere Reload is a new version of Technosphere which came out earlier this year, and for various behind-the-scenes reasons, it couldn’t continue with the same name, hence it had ‘Reload’ added to it… but that doesn’t tell you anything that the game is about.
And nothing can explain why I thought I’d posted this review almost a month ago, soon after its release, and then realised I hadn’t, other than my addled mind 😉
I’d never come across this one before, but it’s like the ’80s arcade game Marble Madness… with puzzles. MM always had one fixed viewpoint as you made your way along the track, but this one allows you to turn the camera 90 degrees at a time, either way, depending on where you need to travel. I found it’s usually better to approach a direction going forward or backwards, rather than side to side, since the latter way, it’s difficult to judge precisely where you are, and the slightest movement can tip you over the edge (both physically, and mentally!)
There’s a premise that involves the fact you’re going a dangerous journey, into the heart of an asteroid, to save humanity from disaster… probably due to all the man-made global warming caused solely by David Attenborough as he flies around a lot. Put simply, you have 10 hours in total to get from A to B in each of the ten maps, but blimey, it’s hard!
Some of the puzzles along the way include simply pushing blocks to bridge gaps, but while I do rather like the idea, and while I don’t expect things to be easy, this one does seem way too difficult, and too often, simply because it’s all too easy to fall off the platform. Also, the angles can make it a royal pain since you can turn it around and see a particular platform from the side, but i fell out of a tractor beam going up and didn’t realise I was straying outside of the area going straight up. I tried it front-to-back another time, but still, it was not plain sailing.
Once a level is complete, it will save your progress – and at first, I did complete the first level with one sphere remaining, but when I came to start my game again… I *still* only had one sphere remaining! Surely, this number should reset!
As such, I would fail, and then the Earth would suffer again… as an asteroid is seen hurtling towards it. And this is a pain because when you know this cut-scene is going to come up, you can’t skip it, and with the long load times, it takes forever to get back into a game. And when you only had one sphere left to begin with… oh, this is going to happen a lot!
So, I went back to the start, did the first level with more than 10 spheres remaining (as you’ll pick up more as you go) and I managed to keep this up until I got to the point where I was dying a lot, again.
As for that asteroid cut-scene, although that was coming up when I first tried this game, I put it to one side for a few days and tackled it again, and now, I seem to be able to get straight back into a new game, as it’ll reload from the level I last reached, but without seeing the bloody asteroid. I hope it’s gone for good. I can certainly see on Steam that since the time when I thought I HAD posted this review already, Adaptive Game are still updating it regularly.
However, I enjoy a good puzzler, but I gave this a good few hours, and when you’ve fallen off a tiny quickly moving platform for the umpteenth time, it just really frustrates. Plus, it keeps saying I’m out of energy, even though I’m collecting as many of the little funny balls around the place as I can.
There’s some gaming footage of mine accompanying this review, but I’ve only uploaded footage where I don’t royally embarrass myself as I go through the levels whilst dying a lot. I’m sure there’s better footage of the later levels around somewhere, which shows someone doing much better than me 😉
Overall score: 6/10
Technosphere Reload is out now on PC/Steam.
Important info:
- Developer: Adaptive Game
- Publisher: Adaptive Game
- Players: single player
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: n/a
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.