The Uncertain: Light At The End (PC) Review

This is a super low-budget, Telltale/Naughty Dog-style, modern-ish adventure game, so it’s not a big problem if it’s a bit rough around the edges or underwhelming from a technical perspective. Lip-sync is very… late ‘90s and that’s ok; animation is stiff, and occasionally awkward, but it’s easy to stomach that. Subtitles occasionally don’t match word by word what the characters say, which is nothing but a small flaw. There are, however, some things that are a bit harder to accept, small-time indie developer or not, which is a shame, as the concept behind the second chapter of The Uncertain series (robots rebel against humanity) is pretty good, if a bit unoriginal.

Starting with the character models, and especially their faces, they are extremely forgettable. They are basically a tad better than those stock 3D models that come with books on design software, with the protagonist, a bargain bin Claire Redfield being sliiightly better. The voice acting is also stripped of any emotion, or simply not as good as expected from a narrative-driven game. The - few - locales the heroine will explore are surprisingly well-detailed and good looking. Definitely the highlight here. Sadly, like everything else here, they don’t manage to leave an impact. Nothing looks post-apocalyptic. Instead, it’s more like a store after Black Friday sale (aka Zerg Rush).

Everything looks too… clean, doesn’t manage to tell its tale, and is thus devoid of atmosphere. Presentation is generally not Light At The End’s strong point. The players will never feel the threat of the robot dictatorship of this world, because the actual characters behave more like annoyed campers than stressed survivors. There’s even a dream sequence that tries to be unsettling, and ends up being laughably sleep-inducing. Even worse, the gameplay frequently “forgets” its promising setting, and has you search for a battery or something.

The story is full of holes, and for a game that’s generally all about the story, that’s not really a good thing. It’s even more annoying when you realise that this is the second part of a trilogy. If the developer can’t tell a good story in Chapter 2, why wait for the writing to improve in Chapter 3? It would be easier to accept all these issues if the characters and how they interact with each other was any fun. After all, in all post-apocalyptic narratives the core of it all are not the zombies, aliens, or the nuclear winter, but the way humans have been affected. Well… these fellows don’t exactly look very interested on the predicament they’ve found themselves into. Whether because of their blunt dialogue, or mediocre writing, you won’t feel anything for anyone. The same probably goes for them as well. They don’t feel anything.

Gameplay-wise, this is as generic as possible. It's the standard modern adventure recipe: search around for hotspots to interact with, gather items, do some minor puzzle-solving, and engage into some quick-time events. There are a couple of annoying moments here and there, like that quick-time that got you by surprise or didn't register correctly, forcing you to slowly repeat an entire section, but nothing can be categorized as truly bad. Sadly, nothing can be described as good either. You just go through the motions, begging for each location to not last for more than 15 minutes.

Searching around in Steam reviews, there's plenty of bugs mentioned. Luckily, a couple of patches later, and the game, while not perfect, works well, with very few problems, aside from the odd animation glitch or something along these lines. No amount of updates, however, can fix the mediocre writing, boring or annoying characters (almost all male characters, in fact, uninteresting plot, and puzzles that are just… there.