Floating among the stars next to Earth’s real moon lies a bastard moon. Its blood-red hue and larger stature accurately conveys its more hellish nature when compared to its pale, innocent twin. Impossible structures infected with devout demons and bulbous rot pustules have turned this celestial body into a nightmare reserved for the damned and the incarcerated souls forced to wander its endless corridors. Being stuck here is a punishment no one is nefarious enough to deserve, but it makes for a fitting setting for Luna Abyss, a novel bullet hell first-person shooter that uses this dastardly rock to craft an intriguing tale with its share of hectic firefights.
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Any hell is full of its own demons, and Luna Abyss’ demons aren’t too far off from the ones found in DOOM. These twisted mechanical and humanoid beings have no eyes but make up for it through the firepower that has been grafted into their flesh or bestowed upon them. There are many different types of these nasty beasts, all of whom have their own special attack patterns and point out one of Luna Abyss’ most unique qualities.
Rating: 4/5
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Its unique gunplay blends first-person shooting with bullet hell trappings quite well | The well-written codex skimps on fundamental concepts, making some lore hard to keep track of |
| The engrossing story is full of well-acted yet freaky characters, fleshed-out lore, and poetic dialogue | The majority of its difficulty settings are far too easy, and only the hardest one provides a decent challenge |
| Haunting art direction and impossible structures make its brutal world a visual stunner |
Instead of blasting fast-moving fireballs, most of these Adrift — as they are called — fire off slower moving spherical balls more akin to the projectiles seen in bullet hell games. This shift has a radical effect on the tempo of fights. Firefights become a ballet of weaving through the negative space in order to get kills instead of being powered solely by reflex-driven dexterity. The few Adrift types that shoot beams or explode on contact fit right into this dance since they reinforce how important it is to move intelligently. Whether that space is occupied by a laser, cluster of projectiles, or explosive homing enemy, Luna Abyss’ combat is centered around asserting dominance over space and exploiting the gaps, a wrinkle it gains from its bullet hell half.
Luna Abyss Requires Some Tinkering
However, this rhythmic war is not the default experience and is, thus, easy to completely miss. Its moderate and hard difficulties are insultingly easy cakewalks. The controller settings also never feel quite right even after a ton of tweaking, since aiming is either entirely automatic or falls victim to jerky reticle acceleration. It pushes players to use the Metroid Prime-esque lock-on instead of manually aiming, but that kind of assist isn’t necessary in a game this bereft of challenge. The choice initially seems to be either fight its inadequate manual aiming controls or use the lock-on feature and make an easy game even easier.
Pushing the difficulty up to its absolute maximum setting is where these various systems come together more cleanly and illustrate a much more rewarding combat loop. It’s hard to tell if this setting actually dials up enemy aggression like the description says, but the deadlier bullets put players on their toes and make each tool more useful. The shield goes from a power-up used purely by accident to a life-saver during a bombardment. Dodging becomes a crucial part of the flow. Absorbing a dazed Adrift’s essence for health Glory Kill-style is now a requirement to survive longer battles. Weapon quick-switching and cooldown monitoring are more essential, as dishing out burst damage is more important when each demon is tougher. Bosses turn into truly sweaty and glorious duels, and locking on also goes from a suggestion to a necessity.
Luna Abyss is a case study for games that have many of the right elements but don’t design the default experience around them. Without the proper pushback, it’s entirely too possible to ignore a majority of its systems and take the most boring routes through encounters. And this not only paints an inaccurate picture of its depth, as it also goes against the narrative implications of this dire world. It’s not exactly a place cursed by malformed dangers and almighty gods if players can just mindlessly stroll through it. Even with all the dials tuned up, Luna Abyss could still stand to have deadlier non-boss enemies with faster bullets. But it at least has a harder setting that brings out its better features and allows it to fulfill most of the potential its lower difficulties squander.
Luna Abyss Is Full of Rich Lore and Lovable Freaks
Shooting takes up a fair bit of Luna Abyss’ runtime, yet its many quieter moments define the game just as much. Luna, the previously mentioned twin of Earth’s moon, is stuffed with impossible structures. The cold, dead hallways are almost completely shrouded in darkness. Well-placed light sources do just enough to illuminate the way without stealing from the mystery such dimness provides. The crimson lights, black darkness, and white glare combine to create an alluring monochrome red palette that makes for a stark shorthand to convey the moon’s oppressive nature.
The claustrophobic hallways give way to massive vistas that either paint an endless horizon of concrete or intimidating megastructures that hog the screen. The exact nature of these buildings doesn’t quite matter since they are often visually striking and always try to make players feel insignificant. A few natural “skylines” persist in this lunar nightmare, but these slightly less repressive respites are few and far between and still surrounded by Brutalist-flavored destruction. Its beauty — and the boisterous score that often peppers its most ostentatious moments — keeps this style from growing monotonous.
It’s oppressive at almost all times, which is reflected in the locals who are doomed to seek out tiny bits of refuge in this cement prison. Despite the circumstances, this cast of absolute freaks is quite lively. They offer glimpses at life down in Luna’s depths through poetic prose that runs the gamut. Some belabor the dispiriting nature of living under constant threat, while others speak the joys of being an elevator.
The tonal contrast makes each extreme more meaningful, and all of it is bound through its surprisingly well-written dialogue and wealth of strong United Kingdom-based accents. It’s always surprising when some new weirdo shows up since the designs are so out there, be it a creature with a human torso stacked on top of a metal spider with massive human appendages underneath or a giraffe-necked cyborg giant strapped with lanky arms and bulky miniguns. But when a three-eyed ball who is part of a train and speaks like an elderly British grandmother is able to deliver a poignant speech about the values of keeping family close, it becomes clear how looks can be deceiving and how strong Luna Abyss’ writing is.
Luna Abyss‘ Story Is Surprisingly One of Its Best Qualities
These bizarre souls give texture to a mysterious universe filled with equally engaging lore. Luna’s history is gradually doled out through context clues, deftly written text logs, and parts of the main story, all of which players have to piece together to get the full picture. What happened to the ill-fated moon, why prisoners are mentally transported into husks in Luna’s depths and forced to forage, who the major players are, and how they relate to one another are all intertwined and satisfying central puzzles to solve. With such a litany of interlocking historical backstory and details, it all feels thoroughly fleshed out and, as a result, more tangible. An overwhelming rush of proper nouns in the beginning and a codex that fails to explain or reiterate some of the world’s most basic tenets makes some of these threads overly difficult to keep track of, but these shortcomings aren’t severe enough to overwrite the quality of what sticks.
This history plays directly into the story since the protagonist, Fawkes, has to deal with Luna’s checkered past in order to chip away at her lengthy prison sentence. Her journey goes through many turns as the revelations roll in, many of which are surprising, paced out well, and utilize the aforementioned well-written dialogue and talented voice cast. It’s a plot that leverages the world’s lush backstory to lay the seeds for its own twists, tying everything together and rewarding those who pay attention. Its ability to explore topics such as religious fanaticism and how one can find meaning in an unjust life benefits from these strengths, too, and makes the overall story that much more rich. And it does all this with gonzo characters who don’t even animate much when they speak, demonstrating how a strong narrative core can pick up the slack that might kill a weaker game.
With all of these oddball elements, it’s difficult to put Luna Abyss in a box. It’s a blend of DOOM, Returnal, Metroid Prime, and Nier Automata, and while that lengthy list of comparisons implies Luna Abyss is a generic gumbo of borrowed elements, it means the opposite here. It is a strange first-person shooter that pulls from a few different sources well enough and with its own style to come across as something rather distinct. It’s a novelty backed up by solid bullet hell gunplay, awe-inspiring environments, and an absorbing narrative with a cast of memorable misfits. There aren’t many games that can go from a thrilling boss battle that floods the screen with an uncountable amount of projectiles to a scene with a giant cat-like, blade-headed character with a thick Irish accent who painfully regales the cruelty of the world, but that’s what makes Luna Abyss such a distinct experience.
A PS5 copy of Luna Abyss was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
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