My journey with P.A.M.E.L.A. actually started a year ago. I was keen to try it out, as its premise of combining survival elements with an engrossingly looking station to explore and galavant through caught my attention immediately. Yet, my first playthrough was pretty short, as the game’s performance was terrible enough to cause overheating on two different computers of mine, and even some of the other fellow reviewers I know had the very same issue. Thus, I decided to wait for a patch. It never arrived. To my unpleasant surprise, this title was left alone to its own fate, meaning abandoned.

As I am a curious boy by nature, I tried it once again during the past weeks and even managed to fix that problem. Now, I could finally venture into this new world, and I was honestly excited about it. Oh, I was so unaware of that dreadful experience that awaited me. Let us start from the beginning, though.

You wake up in the city of Eden, located on the surface of the vast ocean. While it is not as unique and elegant as BioShock’s underwater Rapture, it still looks nice enough, and it managed to ignite my interest in it. Anyway, the citizens of this lovely utopia connected themselves to the station’s AI, with which they shared their thoughts, desires and basically the whole life. However, a sudden disease made them turn against each other, reminding me of generic zombies. Even though the AI tried to stop this madness by employing robotic guards, its plan failed, and there is barely anyone sane now. Except for you, as you happen to be present in the aftermath of these events, trying to figure out what actually happened and if you can still do something about it.

While this premise is not the most original one, the intro managed to captivatingly put it and made me want to uncover this mystery. Unfortunately, the way P.A.M.E.L.A. provides the rest of its narrative is terrible, as it forces you to visit several places, but once you reach them, the AI will only say a few vague sentences and send you to another location. Even though there are additional listenable tapes and readable emails, their content is uninteresting and bland, and after a while, I felt that I knew these pieces of information already anyway. Sometimes I even thought that those tapes were mentioning unrelated events to the area in which I found them. Due to all of that, I just lost my motivation to bother with it.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2524063692
The last thing that could save it for me would be the gameplay, which tries to offer a lot. Elementary survival elements such as hunger and thirst are present, as well as basic base-building. These mechanics naturally urge you to explore your environment, so that is great. However, if you die, you lose all of your items, crafting materials and money; only your level and acquired skills remain, and enemies along with the loot will naturally respawn. Now, I do not have anything against such an aspect, but the issue is that money stopped appearing for me, and it only dropped randomly from mobs. Due to that, I could not buy items from the store, such as healing equipment. The same problem occurred with weapons, as I could not find any after a while. Thus, instead of slowly getting stronger, I rather felt that I was weaker after every death.

Unfortunately, the combat system itself is not much better. I must admit that weapon variety is quite sweet from what I have seen, as I found flamethrowers, energetic swords and various grenade types. Yet, participating in fights feels clunky and unsatisfying; even when it “works”. Because it usually does not. I witnessed multiple times that my, or even enemies’ ones, hits are not registered, even though the animation showed otherwise. Sometimes mobs got stuck in a wall or random obstacle, or they just ignored me completely. Well, I could go on and on about dozens of terrible situations I saw. You know what? Here is a short video showing how the combat looks when two AI entities decide to fight each other. It is hilarious, and I think it nicely underlines my point about this disaster of a combat system.
https://youtu.be/KHbPrfA6_wk
Due to all of the abovementioned issues, I started questioning whether this title is even worth my time to finish it. I mean, the storyline definitely did not get the proper care, and the gameplay reminds me of several early access titles. A so-called last straw for me was when I met an enemy type called Widow. It is apparently blind, yet it can hear everything. Well, I was moving stealthily in a large, empty hall. Emphasis on word empty. I heard it from the next room, which was dozens of meters away, so I decided to go up to the next floor. However, that creature suddenly spawned behind me and immediately killed me. I am not aware of the existence of teleporting devices or abilities in this game. And that was the turning point for me because realizing I would have to suffer spending more time through that nonfunctional boredom was discouraging enough.

If I had to name at least one thing that I still like about P.A.M.E.L.A., it would be the UI and hacking system. There is no HUD, so to see your health, inventory, map, and anything else, you have to open your hand’s device and browse through the options. It feels both intuitive and immersing. As for the hacking, I enjoyed its simple minigames, such as connecting various hieroglyphs during the time limit.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2524059775
As for the visuals, they are okay, I guess. Nothing outstanding, but it gets the job done. Overall, I was fond of the station as a whole, as its design is satisfactory for exploration needs, even though there is not anything interesting to find. However, sounds are pretty bad, and sometimes I was not even sure from which direction they come. There is also barely any music playing, so the game is quiet at times.

Painful. Abandoned. Mundane. Egregious. Lacklustre. Atrocious.
That would be my definition of P.A.M.E.L.A., as you can basically use any adjective that describes something horrendous for it.

I am just disappointed because I would still want to give it, but the still growing number of bugs and other issues puts me off. This title should have stayed in early access, and the fact that there is not even proper care after its release is sad. I tend to finish games even if I do not like them, so I could try to understand the others. I will gladly not do so in this case because the one and only thing I would achieve would be getting more footage for my YouTube’s bugs playlist.

PC Specs and Performance

I played it with an i5 8300H, GTX 1060 6GB, and 16GB RAM, at highest settings, with unstable framerate from around 20 to barely 60 frames per seconds, at 1920x1080 resolution.

Acknowledgement

This game was provided for review purposes by the developers through DitD. Thank you!

Curator link

Remember that Blue Lips Never Lie! Thus, follow my curator, Blue Lips and their Quips, to find more honest yet humorous reviews!

[h1][b]What did I get myself into now…?[/b][/h1] My journey with [i]P.A.M.E.L.A.[/i] actually started a year ago. I was keen to try it out, as its premise of combining survival elements with an engrossingly looking station to explore and galavant through caught my attention immediately. Yet, my first playthrough was pretty short, as the game’s performance was terrible enough to cause overheating on two different computers of mine, and even some of the other fellow reviewers I know had the very same issue. Thus, I decided to wait for a patch. It never arrived. To my unpleasant surprise, this title was left alone to its own fate, meaning abandoned. As I am a curious boy by nature, I tried it once again during the past weeks and even managed to fix that problem. Now, I could finally venture into this new world, and I was honestly excited about it. Oh, I was so unaware of that dreadful experience that awaited me. Let us start from the beginning, though. You wake up in the city of Eden, located on the surface of the vast ocean. While it is not as unique and elegant as [i]BioShock’s[/i] underwater Rapture, it still looks nice enough, and it managed to ignite my interest in it. Anyway, the citizens of this lovely utopia connected themselves to the station’s AI, with which they shared their thoughts, desires and basically the whole life. However, a sudden disease made them turn against each other, reminding me of generic zombies. Even though the AI tried to stop this madness by employing robotic guards, its plan failed, and there is barely anyone sane now. Except for you, as you happen to be present in the aftermath of these events, trying to figure out what actually happened and if you can still do something about it. While this premise is not the most original one, the intro managed to captivatingly put it and made me want to uncover this mystery. Unfortunately, the way [i]P.A.M.E.L.A.[/i] provides the rest of its narrative is terrible, as it forces you to visit several places, but once you reach them, the AI will only say a few vague sentences and send you to another location. Even though there are additional listenable tapes and readable emails, their content is uninteresting and bland, and after a while, I felt that I knew these pieces of information already anyway. Sometimes I even thought that those tapes were mentioning unrelated events to the area in which I found them. Due to all of that, I just lost my motivation to bother with it. https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2524063692 The last thing that could save it for me would be the gameplay, which tries to offer a lot. Elementary survival elements such as hunger and thirst are present, as well as basic base-building. These mechanics naturally urge you to explore your environment, so that is great. However, if you die, you lose all of your items, crafting materials and money; only your level and acquired skills remain, and enemies along with the loot will naturally respawn. Now, I do not have anything against such an aspect, but the issue is that money stopped appearing for me, and it only dropped randomly from mobs. Due to that, I could not buy items from the store, such as healing equipment. The same problem occurred with weapons, as I could not find any after a while. Thus, instead of slowly getting stronger, I rather felt that I was weaker after every death. Unfortunately, the combat system itself is not much better. I must admit that weapon variety is quite sweet from what I have seen, as I found flamethrowers, energetic swords and various grenade types. Yet, participating in fights feels [url=https://youtu.be/1muzq_24xto]clunky and unsatisfying[/url]; even when it [i]“works”[/i]. Because it usually does not. I witnessed multiple times that my, or even enemies’ ones, hits are not registered, even though the animation showed otherwise. Sometimes mobs got [url=https://youtu.be/HcUXYaNBqEo]stuck[/url] in a wall or random obstacle, or they just ignored me completely. Well, I could go on and on about dozens of terrible situations I saw. You know what? Here is a short video showing how the combat looks when two AI entities decide to fight each other. It is hilarious, and I think it nicely underlines my point about this disaster of a combat system. https://youtu.be/KHbPrfA6_wk Due to all of the abovementioned issues, I started questioning whether this title is even worth my time to finish it. I mean, the storyline definitely did not get the proper care, and the gameplay reminds me of several early access titles. A so-called last straw for me was when I met an enemy type called Widow. It is apparently blind, yet it can hear everything. Well, I was moving stealthily in a large, empty hall. Emphasis on word empty. I heard it from the next room, which was dozens of meters away, so I decided to go up to the next floor. However, that creature suddenly spawned behind me and immediately killed me. I am not aware of the existence of teleporting devices or abilities in this game. And that was the turning point for me because realizing I would have to suffer spending more time through that nonfunctional boredom was discouraging enough. If I had to name at least one thing that I still like about [i]P.A.M.E.L.A.[/i], it would be the UI and hacking system. There is no HUD, so to see your health, inventory, map, and anything else, you have to open your hand’s device and browse through the options. It feels both intuitive and immersing. As for the hacking, I enjoyed its simple minigames, such as connecting various hieroglyphs during the time limit. https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2524059775 As for the visuals, they are okay, I guess. Nothing outstanding, but it gets the job done. Overall, I was fond of the station as a whole, as its design is satisfactory for exploration needs, even though there is not anything interesting to find. However, sounds are pretty bad, and sometimes I was not even sure from which direction they come. There is also barely any music playing, so the game is quiet at times. [h1][b]No…[/b][/h1] [b]P[/b]ainful[b].[/b] [b]A[/b]bandoned[b].[/b] [b]M[/b]undane[b].[/b] [b]E[/b]gregious[b].[/b] [b]L[/b]acklustre[b].[/b] [b]A[/b]trocious[b].[/b] That would be my definition of [i]P.A.M.E.L.A.[/i], as you can basically use any adjective that describes something horrendous for it. I am just disappointed because I would still want to give it, but the still growing number of bugs and other issues puts me off. This title should have stayed in early access, and the fact that there is not even proper care after its release is sad. I tend to finish games even if I do not like them, so I could try to understand the others. I will gladly not do so in this case because the one and only thing I would achieve would be getting more footage for my YouTube’s bugs playlist. [b]PC Specs and Performance[/b] [quote]I played it with an [b]i5 8300H[/b], [b]GTX 1060 6GB[/b], and [b]16GB RAM[/b], at highest settings, with unstable framerate from around 20 to barely 60 frames per seconds, at [b]1920x1080[/b] resolution.[/quote] [b]Acknowledgement[/b] [quote]This game was provided for review purposes by the developers through [b]DitD[/b]. Thank you![/quote] [b]Curator link[/b] [url=https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/41545671][quote]Remember that Blue Lips Never Lie! Thus, follow my curator, [b]Blue Lips and their Quips[/b], to find more honest yet humorous reviews!