Universe – A Fair & Balanced Retrospective

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Features by Adventure Game Hotspot staff
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In his latest video retrospective, The Space Quest Historian continues to two-time his favourite series with another game he refers to as "NOT Space Quest." This time it's with Universe, the 1994 science fiction adventure from Core Design, their second – and as it turns out, blissfully final – point-and-click endeavour.

You'd think the team would have learned something from the less-than-auspicious Curse of Enchantia, although to hear SQH tell it (seemingly in one continuous, miraculous breath), the only thing they gleaned was how to make its successor worse. On the plus side, a second flop spurred Core Design to shift gears and create Tomb Raider! On the downside... just about everything else.

Universe sure is pretty, with "gobsmackingly beautiful" pixel art that begs to be stopped and admired. Instead you'll usually be rushing through this "bewildering mess" of a game that sacrifices any kind of coherent storytelling and insightful dialogue for a laughably obtuse narrative that somehow manages to be both over- and under-written in all the wrong places. What starts as a kind of "sci-fi Simon the Sorcerer" – British teen prat with an attitude is suddenly transported to an alternate dimension and tasked with saving the day despite having no discernibly heroic qualities – ends up feeling like a "half-baked" Star Wars rip-off without any of the same elegant simplicity.

The only thing that makes the story of Universe relatively bearable is just how "absolutely excruciating" it is to actually PLAY in comparison. From its cluttered icon-based action bar filled with largely useless options, to sparsely interactive environments, to many "janky little moments" and clumsy navigation, to "atrocious" puzzle design that'll likely have you brute-forcing your way to accidental solutions, there is very little fun to be had here. And that's BEFORE the brilliant idea to combine three of the genre's most despised elements – mazes, timed sequences and death – in a rage-inducing final challenge.

Universe has a strange fascination with garbage, perhaps because its quality shares a certain kinship with all the litter strewn about. You know that expression "one person's trash is another person's treasure"? Yeah, well, not in this case. Garbage is just garbage, which is surely fitting as the refuse bin is likely where the game will end up for those who dare to tackle it. Still not convinced? GOOD, because the Space Quest Historian's video will make you laugh and cringe in much greater quantity at this ill-conceived game that represents the very definition of "looks can be deceiving."

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