Beyond Contact Review (Steam)
For our Beyond Contact Review, an innovative science fiction survival crafting game that features a top-down art style inspired by pulp science-fiction comics, providing a distinct visual aesthetic. Offering players the option to engage in a narrative-driven Story Mode or an open-ended Conquest Mode, Beyond Contact’s narrative objectives and moral dilemmas are reminiscent of contemporary science-fiction films.
Beyond Contact Review Pros:
- Decent graphics.
- 7.68GB download size.
- Steam achievements.
- Controller support.
- Graphics settings – resolution, borderless fullscreen, quality level, v-sync, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, bloom, depth of field, and screen space reflections.
- Can rebind controls for both keyboard and controller buttons.
- Invert axis and sensitivity sliders.
- Map rotation setting for both mini and main.
- Controller button styles – Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Steam, and Nintendo Switch.
- Two game modes – quick start and the main game.
- The join game uses a server browser system.
- Solo and multiplayer game types.
- Story and conquest modes of play.
- Conquest is more about stopping corruption by taking over territory any which way.
- Three difficulties – Easy, normal, and hard.
- One initial character to play is Quinn Hicks, but you can unlock two additional characters – Zaine, and Kangah.
- Appearance settings – primary, secondary, tertiary, glow, and map.
- Advanced game settings – game name, description, seed, play style, game mode, difficulty, and custom settings.
- Animated cutscenes.
- Fully voiced.
- Decent loading times.
- Main and side missions with full management and mission pinning.
- Pin crafting tasks so you can keep track of resources needed.
- A full 3D main map that shows points of interest, NPC, resources, etc. You can put your own markers down.
- Credits can be earned and used to buy new characters, colors, etc.
- Basic crafting can be done in the menus, More advanced crafting needs the appropriate workbenches.
- Day/Night cycle with the night dropping the temperature and you need to stay warm.
- Many biomes from deserts to poisonous gas and forests.
- Set up trade routes with the alien species you make friends with.
- C.A.R.L is your AI companion that follows you around and gives out help and advice.
- Scanning is done so you can catalog what you scanned and what it does etc.
- Resources and materials can be harvested from the land using tools like pickaxes, shovels, and the like. Another way is by salvaging from broken down machinery.
- Earn EXP and level up to get a point to put into the basic skill tree.
- EXP earned pops up as you farm resources, Kill enemies, and the like.
- The research tab has you putting required resources into a new craftable time that then unlocks the next one and so on. The research is split into categories like health, combat, and crafting.
- Missions are doled out and filled in on a huge web of hexagonal slots, clicking one tells you the details and lets you track them.
- The map uncovers as you explore.
- Each new game will spawn a random world unless you use a set seed number.
- Big base building emphasis with a lot of ways to build a self-sufficient ai controlled base.
Beyond Contact Review Cons:
- Not Steam deck compatible.
- Playing with a mouse and keyboard is functional but very clunky as you use WASD for movement and then the mouse for interacting.
- The game doesn’t perform that well with a lot of slowdowns and screen tearing.
- A lot to take in.
- Item management is a problem for a long time as you collect more than you can carry.
- Items and tools degrade and break over time.
- You start the game with no weapons but plenty of hostiles.
- The voice work goes a bit off the track at times.
- Combat is very mashy and usually ends in you running around trying to get a cheap shot in.
- Starting the loop of building basic tools, researching, etc can be tedious.
- Later on, the base defense stuff feels and plays more like a slightly unbalanced tower defense.
- Mission markers are not great.
- Honestly, I don’t see the point in the credits system to unlock characters.
- The mini-map shows so much that it actually makes it harder to use.
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Beyond Contact:
Developer: Playcorp Website
Publisher: Deep Silver
Store Links –
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7/10
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7/10
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7/10
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7/10
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7/10