It's not often that you play a game that feels fresh, but it's a magical experience when you do. CONSORTIUM is one of those games. You're plunged into a world you don't understand, hearing terms you don't recognise, encountering a ranking structure that is unfamiliar. You get the greatest feeling you can get in a game: the need to explore and learn more about this fascinating universe.

Suffice to say the opening is excellent at drawing you in and the music of Jeremy Soule is well utilised here.

It's a game about people and relationships. You will spend most of your time walking around the ship interacting with the crew, and every member of that crew has their own voice, personality, relationships with other crew members. Everyone feels like a real person, there's no lazy stereotypes here, no accented characters firing off lines about "in my homeland" or anything like that. They're just people.

The dialogue system helps with this feeling of a living vessel. Conversations don't pause the game or take control away from you. You can walk away, they can walk away, people can interrupt, other conversations carry on around you, they keep working on whatever task it was they were doing. Rather than taking you out of the game, conversations draw you deeper into it. And, hallelujah, keyboard shortcuts for dialogue options!

This game is part one of three with a larger meta arc straddling the series, but this game features a central mystery around a traitor aboard the ship. And this is my favourite bit: whether you discover who that traitor is is entirely up to you; you can end this episode not knowing. And it's not easy, you will most likely fail. How awesome is that?

It's reasonably short with about five hours of gameplay (though there's tens of hours of material in the console if you want to read it all), but it replays well. You're going to miss events, things play out differently depending on your choices, conversations might not happen, characters might not appear. I think you could easily get three playthroughs out of this without feeling bored. While I wouldn't recommend browsing the achievements before playing this game, they give you a good idea of the number of different things that can happen and how many of them you've missed.

The game isn't without weaknesses and there are a few biggies:

1. Combat isn't great, primarily because the entire episode takes place on the ship and the ship makes for a really poor combat environment. There's not really any cover to work with or great ways to maneuver, you will generally just hold down the trigger or find ways to cheese the AI for the tough bits. It is supposedly possible to make it through the game without firing a shot though. I've almost done it.

2. The inventory doesn't feel like it has a reason for being and is incredibly clumsy. It has that Mass Effect vibe of existing because people expect to see it.

3. The game just sort of ends without any feeling of closure. Sure, it's part one of three, but games like Mass Effect and The Walking Dead have shown how you can be part of a larger arc while still managing closure at the end of your game.

4. I have concerns with the meta element of "you are playing a game" which is being worked into the story. It works in dialogues in a jokey "are you mad?" kind of way, but it seems to be becoming a larger part of the plot in a way I'm not that keen on.

All-in-all though I'd recommend it. It feels new and exciting, and setting the whole game in one location works really well.

It's not often that you play a game that feels fresh, but it's a magical experience when you do. CONSORTIUM is one of those games. You're plunged into a world you don't understand, hearing terms you don't recognise, encountering a ranking structure that is unfamiliar. You get the greatest feeling you can get in a game: the need to explore and learn more about this fascinating universe. Suffice to say the opening is excellent at drawing you in and the music of Jeremy Soule is well utilised here. It's a game about people and relationships. You will spend most of your time walking around the ship interacting with the crew, and every member of that crew has their own voice, personality, relationships with other crew members. Everyone feels like a real person, there's no lazy stereotypes here, no accented characters firing off lines about "in my homeland" or anything like that. They're just people. The dialogue system helps with this feeling of a living vessel. Conversations don't pause the game or take control away from you. You can walk away, they can walk away, people can interrupt, other conversations carry on around you, they keep working on whatever task it was they were doing. Rather than taking you out of the game, conversations draw you deeper into it. And, hallelujah, keyboard shortcuts for dialogue options! This game is part one of three with a larger meta arc straddling the series, but this game features a central mystery around a traitor aboard the ship. And this is my favourite bit: whether you discover who that traitor is is entirely up to you; you can end this episode not knowing. And it's not easy, you will most likely fail. How awesome is that? It's reasonably short with about five hours of gameplay (though there's tens of hours of material in the console if you want to read it all), but it replays well. You're going to miss events, things play out differently depending on your choices, conversations might not happen, characters might not appear. I think you could easily get three playthroughs out of this without feeling bored. While I wouldn't recommend browsing the achievements before playing this game, they give you a good idea of the number of different things that can happen and how many of them you've missed. The game isn't without weaknesses and there are a few biggies: 1. Combat isn't great, primarily because the entire episode takes place on the ship and the ship makes for a really poor combat environment. There's not really any cover to work with or great ways to maneuver, you will generally just hold down the trigger or find ways to cheese the AI for the tough bits. It is supposedly possible to make it through the game without firing a shot though. I've almost done it. 2. The inventory doesn't feel like it has a reason for being and is incredibly clumsy. It has that Mass Effect vibe of existing because people expect to see it. 3. The game just sort of ends without any feeling of closure. Sure, it's part one of three, but games like Mass Effect and The Walking Dead have shown how you can be part of a larger arc while still managing closure at the end of your game. 4. I have concerns with the meta element of "you are playing a game" which is being worked into the story. It works in dialogues in a jokey "are you mad?" kind of way, but it seems to be becoming a larger part of the plot in a way I'm not that keen on. All-in-all though I'd recommend it. It feels new and exciting, and setting the whole game in one location works really well.