‘Corpse of Discovery’ Video Game Review

Corpse of Discovery is a game that makes you want to see how the the experience ends while frustrating the player with uninteresting gameplay and tedious objectives. The premise of the game is very enticing, but the payoff doesn’t warrant the handful of hours it will require to see the ending of the game.

In Corpse of Discovery you control the Major, a civilian from Earth who has joined the Corps of Discovery–a private corporation with the intention of finding life on other planets and facilitating other scientific collection. The game starts with Major waking up in his habitation module after a rough landing. You get instructions from the corps, put on a spacesuit, and head out into the unknown.

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Throughout the duration of the game, you’ll encounter mystical elements that has Major questioning reality. Each planet you explore has about four to six objectives to complete, which consists of nothing more than running to a waypoint and pressing the action button. The objectives change from planet to planet: place emergency beacons; take life samples; look for the parts that can fix your spaceship… Over time they become tedious and boring. There are optional way points on the planets, and these can be hallucinations of Major’s life on Earth, or broadcasts of what life is like on Earth in the future.

Helping you along the way is A.V.A., an artificial intelligence bot that follows Major around and gives him information about the planet or his objectives. The way that A.V.A. is written is odd. At times she is quirky and sarcastic, like GLaDOS from the Portal series. Other times she is very stoic and grim. It is like the writing of the character contradicts itself every other line. At times A.V.A. will mock you as you investigate the optional waypoints, saying it is a waste of time. It is almost like the developers knew it was a waste of time, but for some reason left them in the game.

While I love a good exploration game, the way Corpse of Discovery is set up is a little mind-boggling. The optional waypoints disappear after you activate a main objective. For instance, if you see an optional waypoint that would be a broadcast from Earth and the main objective is nearby, one would have the mindset of completing the main objective first, then running over to the optional objective. But once you activate the main objective, the optional one is gone forever. Unless you memorized the location of the optional objective on the massive world, it is lost to you until you start a new game.

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You may be thinking, ‘Well that’s fine. There isn’t a time limit, so just go get the optional objectives first.’ But there is a problem. Roaming the planets are these guardian-like creatures that are like a mix between Songbird from BioShock Infinite and Dementors from Harry Potter. If these guardians catch you roaming the planet, they shine a light on you, Major dies, and you get taken back to your last completed objective. With the objectives so spread out, it makes it incredibly inconvenient to get caught by a guardian. In turn, this makes it easier to just go from objective to objective, ignoring the side information. It is never revealed who these guardians are during the main plot. I wouldn’t be surprised if you learn about their origin through a side plot, but I wouldn’t know since I was running quickly between objectives.

It does help that each planet has its own unique art style that makes it fun to roam around. There are planets that consist of floating islands that you must use a jetpack to get around with, lava planets, desert planets, and planets with colorful plants and fauna every where. An unfortunate side effect of the game is that it is poorly optimized. My PC, with a GTX 980 graphics card, was having a hard time achieving a steady 60 frames-per-second while playing the game. On a planet where it was raining non-stop, the frame rate would dip below 30 quite regularly. Having a smooth frame rate would have made the game a little more enjoyable, but at times the beautiful scenery was ruined by a rough frame rate.

The game’s sound design might be the best part of the game. The voice acting of A.V.A. is done well, as is the voice acting of the family as Major receives audio messages from them every time he gets to a new planet. The noise the guardian figures make is intimidating and let you know when they are near, and the score behind the exploration adds to the serene scenes you’ll come across.

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During my short time with Corpse of Discovery, I had the feeling this was a game developed by a handful of people who were not in communication while they were developing the game, who just put everything together at the end and said ‘that will work.’ A lot of the design choices are confusing, and the ending had me say out loud, ‘That’s it?’ I was hoping for some grandiose reveal that would be reminiscent of a Stanley Kubrick film, considering the game starts out as if it is a campy 1970s sci-fi film. Instead you get a basic plot that has little, if any, payoff. If you want to spend three hours roaming around nice-looking planets, then I would recommend Corpse of Discovery. If you want something more substantial, there are plenty more games out there.


Corpse of Discovery was reviewed on PC. A copy of the game was provided to the reviewer from the publisher.

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