LifeisXbox’s 41 Hours review | After writing my preview for the demo of 41 hours prologue, I did not think I would be returning to the full game one day. I was however hopeful that the developers over at Texelworks would be going back and fixing some or most of the things that felt off in the first. However, upon playing the first two levels that also made up the prologue I was met with a near identically poor experience, much to my dismay. 41 Hours is developed by Texelworks and published by Valkyrie Initiative.
We played 41 Hours for 6 hours on PC. This game only available on Steam.
What we liked!
- Special powers | Almost right out of the gate, Ethan gets access to the special powers that will carry this otherwise regular human through the titular 41 hours. With your Predator-like cloaking power, you can pretend you’re Prophet from Crysis for a while. The second one of Ethan’s powers, and by far the most useful and fun one, is the ability to slow down time for anyone but you. So while they are moving in slow motion, you retain your regular movement speed and reaction capabilities. It’s a lot of fun to put down an entire group of human enemies in what looks like an instant to bystanders. Even better when it’s a giant robot. Both these powers require you to have a certain amount of energy stored up to start using them, meaning you can’t use them all the time or have to constantly be killing stuff and finding blue orbs to keep it active. And lastly, you get short-range telekinetic abilities. The only use I found for these is during the environmental puzzles 41 Hours sometimes sprinkles in. While it gets the job done, it will require a fair deal of practice.
Somewhere between
- Gameplay | Gameplay is a bit of a mixed bag in 41 Hours. While it can be somewhat rewarding at times, the majority of the time it’s dull at best. It doesn’t throw enough enemies at you to make it difficult, but those enemies also aren’t strong enough to pose any real threat if you use your powers wisely. You often also get either not enough ammo of a certain kind, or are constantly have full bullet reserves. I’ve also found out rather late that enemies guarding landmarks spawn in waves. But not proper, kill ‘em all before the next batch spawn, waves. While in some cases this provides an enjoyable trickle of enemies, in other cases it makes it so you can never search a location for whatever objective you have to collect.
- Graphics | Visually, 41 Hours is pretty solid, yet it isn’t anything worth writing home about. The guns all look very realistic and with a decent eye for details. There is however a bunch of inconsistencies in the level of detail and model quality between the various enemy types. Let us take the standard human soldiers as the baseline. If you then look at the robotic enemies, they will have noticeably bulkier, less detailed models. Except for the smaller robots, which I suspect are just scaled-down from their larger brethren. The opposite is true of the ghoul-like looking aliens you can find. And while most of it looks right in its own category, when you see them side by side it can be slightly uncanny.
What we disliked
- Telekinesis puzzles | Each level I’ve played has at least one puzzle that has to be solved with telekinesis and nearby or far away objects. While I’m not against solving puzzles by thinking outside of the box, almost all were a pain in the behind to solve. At least twice have I had the exit to the next level be a wormhole a good 6 or so meters in the sky. The tutorial early on in 41 hours would tell you to go look for some boxes, simple right. Oh, it is simple but extremely tedious. As for more than just this returning puzzle, you usually need at least 2 or 3 boxes from a place halfway on the other side of the level. One by one. While this is already a massive dealbreaker for me, enemies also respawn around you while you do so.
- Audio | This was in the prologue, and still is in 41 Hours, my biggest gripe. For starters, the audio setting is non-existent. Yes, there’s a nice button in the menu that says audio, but click it, and you will be greeted by only a single other button to “turn on / off music” which doesn’t actually have any noticeable difference. This still means that the game is screechingly loud when mostly any of the sound effects or even some of the background sounds are playing. The animal cries seemingly have been turned down a little, but still nowhere near enough in my opinion.
How long to beat the story | About 12 hours
How long to get 100% achievements | About 15 hours
Similar with | I don’t wish to compare this to anything
CONCLUSION
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Hey there. Thomas is the name, Sci-fi, action and (J)RPG’s are the game. I strongly prefer co-op over PVP games. Whenever possible, you may find me run wild at a convention in western Europe. Certified anime enjoyer.
