Factotum (Wii U) Review

It's Portal 0.5. There is little other way to describe Factotum. When making puzzle games, especially ones with seemingly-unique mechanics, it is important to attempt to utilise them all to the best of the developer's ability. In Factotum, control of not one, but two, robots is granted, which are needed to save a spaceship that has been struck by an unknown object and is now almost destroyed, with only a mysterious voice used for guidance.

It's the Portal 2 multiplayer maps minus the portals and second player to yank away a vital portal at the last second for giggles. A series of puzzle rooms are navigated, switching between the two available robots while using bombs, redirecting lasers, and standing on switches to control moving platforms, doors, and the like. It's not that Factotum is, somehow, bad; it just does not contain the spark of originality that this sort of property should have.

One of the primary issues with Factotum is that it suffers from some potentially easily amendable problems, such as the graphical quality. It is one thing to be okay with sub-par graphics, but the visual aesthetic is simply underwhelming on the whole. The puzzles, while intuitive, are also fairly easy, and easily end up more tedious at times than actually challenging.

The biggest and most basic problem is that it simply holds no 'hook' to get players invested in the game. The two-robot mechanic is interesting, but amounts to being little more than two navigable crates. The various items may sound nice, but end up being unengaging. Most of all… it just doesn't leave an impression.