Aphelion review: "Life is Strange creator's Uncharted-like sci-fi adventure fails to land"

Aphelion is a sci-fi adventure from Don't Nod, who isn't just the creator of Life is Strange, but in relatively recent years has given me one of my favorite narrative coming-of-age stories in the phenomenal Lost Records: Blood & Rage, and an absolutely gorgeous and mechanically swish climber in Jusant. Aphelion sees two astronauts crash on an ice planet, having to clamber their way to its mysterious energy source while unravelling the mystery behind an expedition gone wrong. It should combine the best of Don't Nod's strengths. Instead, this is one bumpy landing.

Aphelion is stuffed to the brim with clunky storytelling and endless monologuing, and its clambering feels closer to a less polished Uncharted than Jusant's rock-climbing, except with super stiff, unreactive animations and a dearth of interesting platforming setpieces. That's before I get started on its constant stealth sequences that mostly just slow down movement.

Lost in space

It's a shame, as there are moments where Aphelion is striking and beautiful. The broad strokes of its story, following two separated astronauts after the crash, offers some compelling hooks and mysteries even if it's not rewriting the sci-fi book. But, it overwhelms with constant chatter that overexplains every situation, when quiet awe would let Aphelion's good qualities shine.

It'd be awe that's deserved, as well. Many areas throughout Aphelion's sequence of chapters can look gorgeous: icy fields where alien winds and magnetic forces have twisted shards into strange shapes, and glittering rivers where ice has begun to melt and flow through canyons. Occasionally, having to switch your helmet to detect magnetic energy, aethereal blues and reds flow through the air on invisible currents. The strange planet, Persephone, would make for some beautiful balcony views if successfully colonized.

Though, even with a short runtime – about six hours or so – environmental variety does grow thin. You can only jump through so many ice caves, canyons, and abandoned research stations until you end up going through the motions. Unlike something like Uncharted (which the cadence of ledge-hopping obviously seems to draw inspiration from), the climbs themselves are rarely interesting, and can often feel like Aphelion is just giving you something to do without having to think too hard about it.

Aphelion simply doesn't feel good to control no matter what you're doing. Climbing revolves around pressing one button as you land to grip perfectly, or hitting a different button to recover if you fail to press the other one. The jumping feels slow, cumbersome, and unsatisfying. Using a grapple rope is much the same, whether that's swinging or abseiling. Even when odd glitches aren't seeing characters clamber into empty space, Aphelion feels heavy and unresponsive in the hands.

There's very little impact to anything, which doesn't help sell any of Aphelion's action. There's nothing wrong with having no combat in a game like this, but moments that should still thrill – accidentally slipping and tumbling down an incline towards a cliff, or desperately running from a spikey, icy, alien threat – through a combination of weak sound design, poor controls, and inconsistent animation lack any punch whatsoever. Areas might look pretty, but with lacking interactivity they fail to become immersive spaces.

At times pursued by an alien stalker called Nemesis – a floating collection of shards that hunts through sound – action slows to a crawl, becoming more of a chore than a challenge. Pressing a toggle to crouch walk, you merely shuffle along to your objective while avoiding the threat. At points, you will need to remotely activate noise distractions to allow yourself time to perform a louder action like wading through an underground stream. Most of the time, it requires little thought to progress.

Most of the jumping and evasion happens during Ariana's sections. Thomas, on the other hand, was injured in the landing, so cannot properly climb. I like the idea of separating modes of play between the two, but Thomas' sequences don't have much meat to them. With a damaged oxygen tank, he has to plod between sections of scientific installations to hook back up with a fresh one before moving on, but it's so simple it doesn't provide much friction.

A later section has Thomas exploring a denser, abandoned section of a research base, digging through documents and personnel logs as he tries to uncover a door code and track down a security password. The nosy pulling at threads of mystery briefly reminds me of the likes of Life is Strange, but it's the only time Aphelion really engages with this – a shame as a greater investigation edge would have helped Thomas stand out more.

Other modes shifts are equally dull. I like the idea of moving slowly and carefully across thin ice as the laser-like cracking sound echoes through the valley. Likewise, another has you moving between bluffs in an ice storm as you trek against a blowing wind, letting the ice on your suit thaw between each. But, ultimately, these just result in different ways to have you move slowly through a pretty basic area.

Not all games need to provide deep friction to be interesting. Nor do they all have to bring new things to the table to still be satisfying. But, ideally, I'd like there to be some substance. Aphelion feels incredibly spread thin for its brief runtime, and doesn't feel good to interact with.

Between the odd moment where I'm thinking the game's environments look beautiful, it feels like I'm moving forward just for the sake of it, pressing buttons and tilting the stick to progress without feeling satisfaction in the sense of movement, or struggling against any meaningful consequence. Worst of all, I can't get Don't Nod out of my head. Lost Records had a story that deeply moved me. Jusant's rock-climbing felt fantastic and expressive. Aphelion, like the planet they've landed on, just feels devoid of life.

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