Monolith

8 September, 2024 - 2:56 pm by Gaz Jones
About 9 mins to read
Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch

Monolith by Animation Arts is a point and click adventure that thrusts players into the space suit of Tessa Carter, a research expedition leader who finds herself crash landed on an unknown planet. The theme and style initially reminded me of other titles in the genre, classics such as Revolution Software’s Beneath a Steel Sky or LucasArts’ The Dig – I was hoping this would be right up my street, as both of those are amongst my favourites in the genre. The grittiness and tech of Beneath a Steel Sky and the sense of isolation from The Dig both look like they may be present in this game. The game invites exploration and problem solving as players look to guide Tessa through an unfamiliar and foreboding environment. With its focus on uncovering the secrets of this enigmatic world, Monolith appears to offer players a blend of adventure and mystery. However, whether it will propel us into a galaxy of intrigue or simply disappear into the black hole of also-rans remains to be seen.

So let’s step into the void! The opening cutscene starts off promising, with some ‘not too bad’ panning shots of space and your ship moving through. Alright, okay, let’s see what happens her… holy crap, we hit an asteroid! Going down! Time to crash land and hope we stop – cliff edge! CLIFF EDGE! Ok phew we’ve landed. Wait, what now? Cut to the hospital where we are met by a somewhat jarring set of character models. The up close shots of the characters have a very early-2000s look about them (think GTA San Andreas); there’s a real ‘uncanny valley’ level of shading to the skin, and the eye and mouth movement just makes you feel like you’re watching a really creepy marionette show.

Into the gameplay, and we find ourselves in the crashed space shuttle and another quite ugly looking model of Tessa in her smashed up stasis tube. Here we’re introduced to the controller interface and how to interact with the environment, and I gotta say, I can’t get on board with whomever okayed this control set up. The Joy-Con is used as a motion controller and this cannot be turned off – whether you’re playing Docked or Handheld makes no difference. Trying to play by using only the motion controls is not a pleasant experience; they are extremely sluggish and all of the action buttons are set to that same Joy-Con when playing right-handed, so you can end up moving the cursor off the option you want when you press the button to select actions. It really should have had an option to have either motion or thumbstick control.

At a Glance

Positives	Negatives
+ Good initial storyline + Several puzzles are engaging + An innovative mi-point storytelling mechanic	– Graphics are dated – Voice acting is wooden – The end game is disappointing – Poorly applied controls for the Switch
Available on:	Nintendo Switch PC (Steam)
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Getting into our adventure, the camera zooms out to give us a wider shot of the environment. I must say that the backgrounds are far more pleasing to the eye than the opening shots we’ve had so far, and that the character model doesn’t look so bad at a distance. We now get to see the game start to show its strengths.

The world created by Animation Arts is really enticing; you want to explore it, you want to find out what’s happened to your pilot, you want to know where you are. Monolith does a great job of leading you on to the next part of the story without it feeling too much like it’s holding your hand or that it’s put you on rails. There are some really interesting levels of puzzling, from the simple stuff to get you warmed up, to some quite challenging but rewarding encounters later in the game. A particular favourite of mine is a puzzle where you take advantage of the strange alien bugs in order to find your way through the overgrowth, following the mystifying signal that your new found companion CORE has alerted you to.

CORE is a really well thought out addition to the game. Your very own little robot companion (think Ghost from Activision’s Destiny), floating alongside you, giving you some small solace to snap you out of the trepidation of exploring too far from the safety of your crashed ship. It allows them to drip feed your character information without giving the game away. There’s a storytelling mechanic with CORE later in the game (no spoilers!) that’s something I’ve not come across before, and I enjoyed its implementation greatly. I also think that there are some charming interactions between Tessa and CORE that, although quite hammy, are pleasant enough, and really lean into Tessa’s feeling of isolation in this desolate place. I think there are perhaps some translation difficulties, as some of the lines do hit a bit strangely in English, and the delivery can be quite wooden. However, as the developers main language is German, it’s mostly forgivable and it doesn’t grievously break the immersion.

Exploring further, you really get into the swing of things and you can feel that the writers and developers were in their groove during the main part of the story. There’s an interesting plot line that runs throughout and that you’re constantly exploring and discovering more. It truly does an excellent job of making you want to know what the next part of the chapter is going to be. Playing late at night with the ambient music softly lilting out of my speakers and a green lava lamp on (for ambience) really put me in the game; like a kid hiding under the bedsheets with a torch, wanting to finish the current page to find out what happens on the next.

The only problem is that someone has seemingly ripped out the last few pages of the book and left in its place an ending to an unfortunately awful, cliched story.

What was once a fantastic sci-fi romp into the unknown, with some truly fantastic twists and turns becomes a turgid, on-rails game, where the story is so bland it’d make buttered bread look adventurous. What was becoming a ramped up chase to the finish line becomes a trip and fall, and you’re standing there with your shorts around your ankles, as everyone watching wonders what the hell happened. I know I’ve stressed the point twice here, but I don’t think I can express how much I was absolutely gutted by the finale. I don’t want to go into too much detail, as I still feel this game is worth a play for anyone who casually enjoys a point-and-click and likes an immersive experience, but the end left me extremely disappointed and questioning whether I should have put all that initial effort in. I’d argue that, for the 8 or so hours I played to completion, it’s not too costly to finish the game, but if you want to be left with a sense of wonder, maybe turn it off at hour 6? Like a magic trick, sometimes it’s better not to know.

Overall, Monolith is a bit of an enigma of a game. Worth a go, for sure, but this might be one that really leaves you most with a feeling of disappointment. If you like ambient settings, some light hearted dialogue interspersed with some fascinating story arc ideas and absolutely loooooved what they did to the finale of Game of Thrones, it’s time to blast off and pick this one up! If you’re someone who can’t stand a bad ending, maybe leave this one on the digital shelf – personally, I’d have preferred a Sopranos style fade to black… hole.