No Way Home Review - A Voyage Fraught With Surprising Challenge
Space. It’s not just the Final Frontier for intergalactic adventures, but also a cold, heartless void that can leave you lost, weak and forced to fend for yourself against unending horrors. That’s where Amelia Cho finds herself after the cushy job captaining a low-rent cruise starship goes south.
No Way Home is all about her adventures to get back home – one that’s a little quirky and more frantic than others, but sadly doesn’t quite nail the thrilling feelings of adventuring in space.
The presentation is fantastic – I’m a fan of the art style used in both the in-game visuals, character portraits and cutscenes. It’s a shame there aren’t more of the latter, as the story is rather threadbare, only advancing after Amelia has met other aliens and completed a series of missions for them, with the ultimate reward for them to help her on the next step of her journey home.
Except, of course, they don’t. Which I feel makes the story worthless, as your actions don’t contribute to the wider quest, outside of earning cash. When combined with the voice performances, it really gives me some early 2000s cartoon vibes, which makes the lack of them sting as they’re pretty charming to watch.
As for the missions which underlie the story, they tend to have a common formula – fly to a region, fight your way through enemies before taking on a boss which’ll release the Macguffin once destroyed, then return to the task giver for your reward. It’s a set-up that I feel is great for a twin-stick shooter, if only because it gives you a reason to fly about and blow things up that is more than just getting a high score!
It’s a solid setup, but I found the encounters didn’t do much to differentiate themselves. The aliens you encounter all feel similar, as little is done to give each a unique personality or way of fighting, making combat repetitive. It also didn’t help that these encounters tended to feel cramped due to how the procedural maps were laid out, meaning I found the best strategy was to try and lure enemies into a tight corridor to blast them at distance instead of going close in to unleash my firepower.
It’s a problem I feel is amplified because No Way Home knows how to set up encounters to use its combat mechanics well – namely the Domes. There are a small set of these arenas located across the game’s world, and entering one tasks you with beating a set number of waves before tackling a boss. One which throws around plenty of bullets around meaning the key to victory is both dodging skills, but also that learning to use the environments to survive the barrages as you grind them down. Each Dome cleared brings you one step closer on Amelia’s journey – so in a way, it kind of makes those other missions redundant.
I also enjoyed Matey’s role as part of the combat system. He’ll join you in battle and gets his own loadout, which compliments your own and can be quite handy in fights. His pathing is questionable though, and on one occasion he failed to spawn, meaning I had to quit and reload to bring him back.
For all the fun of battle, there are a few systems that I feel frustrate. First are load-outs. Parts for both you and Matey can be collected from enemies destroyed in battle or found during missions. New parts typically carry buffs and debuffs, so it’s important to pick those which suit your play style – a more aggressive player might want a reactor which can handle more heat so they can fire more powerful guns, for instance.
Upgrading them is where you’ll really get the edge, as increasing their performance, whether boosting shield or hull strength, but also weapon damage power and your craft’s reactor and how it manages heat. But acquiring the needed parts I felt took way too long, especially those you couldn’t just buy from a friendly store.
Heat is another, if only because I feel it gets in the way of the action, as it only applies to you. Firing weapons generates heat, and should it get critical, your firing rate will be impacted and your shields will be drained.
I wish the rate the shields drained was slower, but what annoyed me more was the lack of warnings until it maxed out. A more refined system could have offered some back and forth with how you engaged larger enemies, but instead, you’re pacing your own attacks instead of punching through when an enemy has stopped theirs. It’s like playing a bullet-hell game, whilst having to monitor the UI at the same time which just gets in the way of getting in the flow.
No Way Home I feel offered a lot of potential, but the finished game is less than the sum of its parts. The charming characters and writing serves a rather threadbare story, which was quite a letdown at its conclusion. Combat is challenging and thrilling, but the lack of personality for enemies made fights far too soulless and repetitive, which wasn’t helped by the map designs where most encounters took place, which were far too cramped.
At the end of the day, I feel that dedicated twin-stick shooter fans will find No Way Home to be lacking in depth and long-term challenge, meaning it’s more suited to a less-hardcore audience. But I can’t help but wonder if the lack of story will give them enough reason to want to push on when things get tough.
No Way Home was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
