JETT: The Far Shore: Review
There are many games about planet exploration, and everywhere this process occurs differently. Somewhere we mostly walk and collect resources, like in No Man’s Sky . Somewhere we constantly fly above the ground and complete quests, like in Starlink: Battle for Atlas . And some games are generally limited to primitive graphics, like In Other Waters . Before the release, it seemed that JETT: The Far Shore would offer something of its own, adding to the exploration a fascinating story about an interstellar expedition.
New wave
In the role of scout May, we and the team set off to explore an alien planet that could become a new home for humanity. Along the way, the astronauts want to discover the source of the anthem wave – a mysterious signal that prompted the group to set course in the chosen direction. After just a few hours, it becomes clear that everything in this universe is not so simple, and May begins to have strange visions.
It sounds intriguing, but it is difficult to maintain interest in a plot that is presented in such a strange way. Firstly, the developers seem to have reconsidered arthouse cinema – with drawn-out scenes, demonstration of beautiful panoramas and a slowly moving main character. Sometimes the game allows you to quickly run when May leaves the ship and walks on the surface of the planet, but in most cases (for example, inside shelters) the acceleration does not work.
If a character can be spoken to, a symbol appears above their head. True, these dialogues are rarely interesting.
Secondly, the characters are constantly talking, but everything is voiced in a fictitious language. Quite quickly it begins to irritate – the characters, like annoying mosquitoes, constantly make some sounds, without which the dialogues would lose nothing at all. Imagine that someone is standing over your soul and chatting incessantly in Simlish – and so on throughout the entire game. Because of this, you have to constantly read subtitles, which doesn’t fit well with the gameplay – you either fly or stand still and wait until everyone finishes speaking.
Emptiness
And the gameplay in JETT: https://triumph-casino.co.uk/mobile-app/ The Far Shore without it there are plenty of problems, the main one of which is that he’s just boring. In a game about exploring a planet, there is no exploration as such – everything is linear, although you have to overcome huge distances. The developers constantly lead the player by the hand: fly there, follow this, collect this, scan that. There is no time left for experiments or curious riddles. The environment turns into a simple decoration, and May looks not like an interstellar expedition scout, but like an errand girl.
The planet itself is beautiful in its simplicity – the dull colors make the place mysterious. However, over time, the impressions become less and less vivid, because you realize that exploring the area is not so interesting. The flora is simple, animals rarely interact with each other. The boredom is relieved a little by colossi, large creatures that are not always happy to see people, but you don’t meet them very often.
The environment can be scanned to find out details about a particular plant or animal, but all this is done primitively. I immediately remember In Other Waters, where the heroine wrote down her observations in a diary and described in beautiful literary language the appearance and characteristics of representatives of flora and fauna. Here the notes are limited to the fact that a bush with a light bulb reacts to sharp sounds and can explode, and its fruits can be grabbed with a hook and moved somewhere. Out of habit, you scan everything in your path, but there is no need to go into the menu and re-read the completed encyclopedia.
Therefore, the story about people looking for a new habitat does not find any response in the heart. Here you are not engaged in the development of new territory, but simply fly from point to point, increasingly ignoring your surroundings. Sometimes gameplay moments seem superfluous, as if the authors added them against their will.
Light spots
There are also light fragments. For example, when you take the fruit of a plant, drag it to a puddle with a mysterious substance and turn it into a bomb, with which you clear the passage to the cave. Most of the fun comes from traveling from one point to another on a flying ship. You fly among the endless ocean to pleasant music, you can jump, do a roll and dash forward. The engine overheats if you hold down the boost button for too long, but you can get around this by activating the boost near the shiny dots. And later you can collect these cooling particles and use them whenever you want, so that nothing gets in the way of moving quickly.
But this is good only in open spaces, and on land the ship is more annoying. It moves either very quickly or very slowly – switching between two modes (and for this you have to constantly hold the button) is tiring. A jerk could help, but the engine gets very hot, and the ship doesn’t fly that far when using it. Flying up a mountain is also quite painful – you constantly crash into rocks, since you can’t adjust the flight altitude.
The local fauna is not always happy to see a foreign object on its territory, so some creatures attack the ship and damage its shield. A group of researchers arrived on the planet in peace and do not want to disturb the natural balance, so there are no guns on the ship. You either scare away the sucking creatures with a pulse, or distract their attention by exploding the berries and encouraging them to flock to the strong aroma. This kind of pacifism makes the already boring gameplay even less exciting.
In the end JETT does not give anything that would be worth the torment that you experience in the process of passing. The story seems to be becoming intriguing, but the countless number of neologisms sometimes confuses. The simplest example is that instead of the word saga they write tsaga. Not Disco Elysium, of course, but without knowledge of English it will be difficult – there is no official translation. Maybe it’s good that the ending of the plot is disappointing – those who missed the game will not lose anything.
The idea of JETT: The Far Shore was too ambitious, and the developers either did not have time to complete some elements, or were unable to successfully tie them together. As great as the game is during long flights over the water, it is just as tiring when completing quests on land. It’s not very exciting in itself, and when the authors watch your every move and rarely let you do something on your own, you lose interest faster and faster. It’s easy to imagine what the game could be like – with exploring locations, a beautiful universe and an enveloping atmosphere. But we won’t be able to play this version anymore.
Pros: nice visual style, thanks to which some scenes turn out very beautiful; Flying at high speed over the ocean is great fun.
Cons: characters talk non-stop in a made-up language, so you have to stop and read the subtitles; the player is led by the hand too often; there is really nothing to explore on the planet – the entries about flora and fauna in the diary are very boring; control of the ship on land leaves much to be desired; dialogues full of new words and an unsatisfactory ending.