ADR1FT Reviews
Adr1ft has everything that a walking simulator should have and gives us the entire outer space to dive into. This game will reach its true potential when PlayStation VR comes out.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
It's a short game and doesn't get everything perfect, but it's also quite unique and has a strong narrative to it. And I do love a game with a strong female lead. This is also a game that feels that it has been released a little early, and by that I mean Adr1ft badly needs to be a strong VR experience when PlayStation VR lands. Then it will truly will be a game that will stick with me for a long time to come.
Ultimately, Adr1ft is an exceptional experience which should be played by everyone who is a fan of the adventure genre. Its simple, yet extremely effective narrative also shows that the genre of the so called 'walking simulators' doesn't need an overproduced story, with hundreds of moral choices, and a cast of meaningless characters.
ADR1FT is a beautiful take on the space disaster genre, but ultimately one that not everyone will get pulled into. It's subtle, slow, and crawling at times, instead of intense, bold, or peppered with action moments. It could have used a bit of both personally.
Overall, ADR1FT has good intentions, but it just fails to execute them phenomenally. Aside from the stunning visual moments — namely moments where you are in the open and can look down at the Earth as it is lit up at night, ADR1FT is a tedious experience that should have been just a 2 hour ordeal. The game's lack of urgency — other than the constant cycle of oxygen tank-grabbing, makes it incredibly hard to believe that my character is struggling to survive at all.
Without virtual reality support to increase the novelty this this would-be walking sim proves a disappointingly bland experience.
Coming from someone who followed it for so long, Adr1ft is massively dis-encouraging. However, I feel it might be worth it to a couple of folks who are looking for a more minimal and ambitious gameplay experience. Just keep in mind that it's far from perfect, and that most would be suited elsewhere.
Even if played in its traditional form, Adr1ft can be entertaining and impressive thanks to its unique setting. However, the console edition is still suffering from the previous version's lacks, such as its repetitive gameplay as well as some technical problems that can strongly compromise the playability of this product.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Adr1ft has a great concept behind it, but like many others it fails to execute it quite right. The game's lack of urgency makes it hard to believe that I'm struggling to survive in the vastness of space. It's bare bones gameplay may be fun for most,but its lack of interaction and simply drifting through the vastness of space is just simply boring. It can be beautiful to look at and its score is delightful when it's there. Adr1ft just doesn't bring enough to the table to make it a great outer space survival experience.
ADR1FT may have atmosphere, but it doesn't have much else. I wanted to like Three One Zero's lonely and despairing adventure into a destroyed space station, but it seemed to resist being enjoyable at every turn. What really confuses me is that so many of its problems seem to stem from the conception level, including a bizarrely wrongheaded narrative, terrible controls and a mystifying lack of freedom thanks to the oxygen meter. In fact, I'm not sure it was such a good idea in the first place, which is why it makes me cringe to think of the time and energy its developers put into realizing it. I would never presume to know their experience and call it a waste, but the wait certainly won't have been worth it for most of its players.
Adr1ft is by no means a bad game, but it comes with a few key caveats. Its opening hour is fantastic, as you begin to piece together what has happened and perilously search for the next oxygen canister, but it's the back half of the game that severely lets this intergalactic adventure down. And despite the story and its setting being so intriguing, it's not enough to paper over the glaring flaws present.
ADR1FT makes something as exciting as space exploration a complete bore.
Beautiful and haunting, but fails to fully engage
Despite all of this I still felt myself compelled to play it through, above and beyond writing this review. The age-old argument of gameplay being more important than graphics still rings true, but for those interested in flat-out gorgeous visuals then there's enough lurking here to perhaps warrant the price of entry. It's a superficial reason to like it, sure, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that was the main thing which pulled me through. To that end, from my experiences with VR I can comfortably see a digit or two being tacked on to the score for the sheer immersion present. Without the $600 headset though, this is about as flat an experience as I've had in a long while.
Adr1ft's mix of tense gameplay and mature storytelling stays with you after the mission's end
The core activity is a repetitive fetch quest, and narratively it has no satisfying conclusion or even any build-up. It's easy to get lost in Adrift's space environment, but in the end, Adrift is just as lost as you are.
The most impressive mechanical feat of ADR1FT, however, is the three-dimensional movement system of the player and free floating objects.
An exquisite game with a great story, but control and graphical issues could hinder a player's experience.
But I keep thinking back to that jump I made, to all the times I saw the lights down on Earth. I think back to that feeling of weightlessness, and how it's finally given me the space game I wasn't getting anywhere else. For all it's lacking as a traditional "game," that alone makes Adr1ft's short excursion into the unknown one worth taking.
Adr1ft is an absolutely stunning visual experience. It looks amazing and feels great to be in nearly at all times. That is until you progress to the point when you realize you're doing the exact same thing in a new sector of the ship, not even with different objectives or quick time moments to try to mask the fact that you're hitting enter to make yet another core and plug it in. The whole experience is relatively short, and while it's something to behold visually and feels good while in it, it might not be something for everyone.