Jett: The Far Shore invites us to explore a planet with an erratic ship and without freedom to pan the discoveries.

Until a couple of weeks ago the Canadian artistic collective Superbrothers only had a videogame in his portfolio: Sword & Sorcery EP, a strange, melancholic, poetic and funny adventure developed with Capybara (Below, Grindstone) that is still a paradigm of How to take advantage of mobile devices a decade after its launch. His second title was one of the projects that most attracted me the attention of the presentation of PlayStation 5, with a trailer that promised to recover those emotions by changing fantastic setting by science fiction. However, the translation of this proposal to the most terrestrial plane has not managed to capture the sensations that the trailer was gliding.

Basic information

Developer: Superbrothers
Editor: Superbrothers
Platforms: PS5, PS4, PC
Proven version: PS5
Availability: 05/10/2021

Jett: The Far Shore puts us in Mei s skin, crew member of a ship destined to explore a planet that matches what is described in a prophecies. After a trip from a millennium in lethargy, she will be part of the team just a dozen people who should start contact with the new world. The objectives of it happen to know the environment better and inform the nodriza ship of the conditions that expect the rest of the travelers, which await a few kilometers of the surface still asleep.

The exploration and curiosity are the initial engine of Jett, which after an intense introduction launches us to a planet that has never been touched by human hand. The first chapter and the disastrous landing of Mei and the Crew Companion of her Isao of her on the new planet serve to become familiar with the controls. Much of the role s protagonism in the ships that give name to the title, which allow us to travel a few meters above any surface. The main thing is to turn on or off the turburies depending on whether we are interested in moving great distances or exploring nearby environments, controlling the speed with an impulse that we should be careful not to overload. Exploration has its own tools, although in practice we will use on all two: a radar with which to inspect objects of interest and a hook with which to collect and throw objects.

The weight of the Jetts in the game turns against him when we realize that he bending them is a more difficult task of the account; The fault is somewhat uncomfortable controls and unpredictable physics that give more head breaks than joy. It is really complicated to describe all the small erratic interactions, ranging from shields fall into chopped when we climb certain slopes because it interprets that we are suffering from a multitude of small collisions to changes between the two modes of displacement for random reasons, going through puzzles that would be sewn and sing If the ship did not decide to rebel against our instructions when we carry a burden. To top it up, performance is inconsistent in the scenes that demand the engine most.

In the few moments when we can leave the Jett we will have the chance to interact with the rest of crew, discovering a little more about them and the interesting background of the trip. We can discover a civilization in which science and religion are given by the hand, where the prophetic signs are interpreted with the same rigor as the climate analysis and the creatures of the new planet. It is a pity that it does not fall more in this aspect, because the little bit that it is left to see is undoubtedly the most attractive thing that the game offers. Although the controls of the ship are the most obvious problem, Jett s large defect is in that how he became all this ambience with some mechanics that betray the proposal.

The title should exploit all that facet of curiosity and exploration by giving us a certain freedom, but it takes up the control too often. Interrupts the action in an unnatural way and leaves the feeling that we are trapped in a continuous tutorial. Sometimes everything is paused simply because we took two more minutes of the account to look at a subject that Jett wants us to observe. Our companion does not stop talking and giving advice to a point where he is irritating. There is a stretch of about ten minutes towards the end of the game in which Isao falls asleep and was one of the moments that I most enjoyed the most because there was no one taking me by the hand and running my actions at every second.

Being an adventure about discovering a new planet, perhaps it would have been more interesting to let us lose or at least introduce those aids in a more disguised and subtle way. Especially because one of the most interesting but least exploited parts of Jett is the cataloging of fauna and flora. The title of Superbrothers employs animals as a subject of puzzles and combats in a way that, again, little house with the game premise. If I had taken as Model in Other Waters, which puts this mechanics at the center and introduces more organic puzzles, these problems could have been solved. It is a pity that, and may have been discovered in discovery and observation, ends up going to creatures as an object of final combat divided into three phases.

Sometimes there are brushstrokes of what could have been: the few moments when our only goal is to explore freely, the lyshergical experiences that leave behind the background, the relationships between characters built from brief talks in privacy, certain interactions Something more interesting with the fauna and the environment, the scenes in which we abandoned the ship and we can appreciate the scale of the first-person environment, the collaborations for the soundtrack … all this dissolves when the final anticlimatic arrives and the credits come out , leaving in the air the question of whether it has been worth following this trip.

Jett: The Far Shore deapproves the premise with a design that plays against her. The idea of ​​exploring an unknown place as observers is stimulating, but the advance is so directed to suffocate any feeling of freedom. The control of the ship is the drop that fills the glass of an experience that could have given for a lot more if you had stopped to listen to what your gameplay and narrative demanded. Some details of lucidity allow us to imagine the potential of a title that, unfortunately, never ends up materializing.