Review: Far: Lone Sails (Xbox One)
Traverse a dried-out seabed littered with the remains of a decaying civilization. Keep your unique vessel going, overcome numerous obstacles and withstand the hazardous weather conditions. How far can you make it? What will you find?
Pros:
- Really nice graphics.
- 2.6gb download size.
- 1000 Gamerscore.
- Dark color palette with your character in red.
- Survival gameplay.
- Ship/craft is used for traveling the land, on it, you must control speed, fires that break out, storage of goods and maintaining the equipment.
- Light puzzle elements.
- Upgrade your ship with new parts like a vacuum to pick up items or sails so you can save energy.
- Strong orchestral soundtrack.
- Camera-you can zoom in and out.
- Lamps are used to illuminate the ship compartments.
- Hooks on the ship can hold fuel.
- All controls on the ship are buttons.
- Thought provoking.
- Energy and steam build up need to be monitored, you feed energy into it and have a clear bar whilst steam builds up again with a clear indicator and you need to release it.
- Minimal but powerful story.
- Fantastic locations.
Cons:
- No tutorial.
- No real story.
- Can’t lock controls on meaning you need to keep pressing buttons.
- Easy to fall off the ship.
- Very slow paced.
- No guidance/tips.
- Basic puzzles.
Summary
Far lone sails is a minimalist sort of survival game, you travel along a 2d world in search of fuel and answers and upgrade your ship as you go. I found the game to be engaging and fun to play, after a few hours I did tire of the constant grind of refuelling and stop start obstacles with puzzles. I wanted more set pieces as over time it all gets a bit stale. For the time I put in, I thought half of it was spent well but the latter half lost all its sparkle. Basically far lone sails is a great game that is best split across multiple game sessions.
