Jett: The Far Shore is an indie game about exploration, discovery and hope. Let’s check out what this game has to offer and see if it’s worth the buy.
Jett: The Far Shore starts off with a send-off. Our heroine Mei has been been picked as one of the pilots that were to go into the vast universe. They seem to be speaking a different language so I’m not sure if they are from Earth or not. Everything looks earthly but maybe this is happening in the distant future.
Right off the bat, I don’t seem emotionally connected to Mei or her cause. Or why they are doing this. I just know I’m going to be riding a spaceship into the beyond and try to find suitable land. I guess it doesn’t help that Mei can’t really speak so she passively hears out what everyone else has to say. However, as the game goes on you get a sense of what her goals are and the story picks up its pace. However, if you’re impatient and do not want to endure the boring stuff, you might miss out on its interesting story.
The tutorial then commences where the game teaches you the basics. It teaches you how to manuever the spaceship and lets you go through checkpoints just to see if you have a sense of direction. It also teaches you how to pop and hop. Two of the most important commands that you will heavily use later on in the game.
After that, you are now then sent off to another world and start your journey of exploration. What I like about the game is that it is broken down into chapters. Before you start off a chapter, it tells you the approximate time the chapter can be completed. This is definitely helpful for those who has limited amount of game time so they can gauge whether to play the game now or save it for later.
The game relies on auto save so you can’t manually save if you wanted to. However, if you end up quitting within a given chapter, it does auto save at the last checkpoint so you can pick up the game where you left off.
The first chapter of the game also introduces you to other features. One of them is your resonator which you can use to identify objects and locate islands. At first, I really had no idea how the resonator worked so I pointed it aimlessly around the water that surrounds you. I thought I was already done and I was heading to the island but I didn’t realise I needed the game to prompt me that I have found the island. This kind of defeats the purpose of exploration because you are gated by prompts, just like in the tutorial. You miss the prompt and the game won’t advance. It also makes the world feel less like open-world and more like cages that you need to unlock.
Another feature of the spaceship is the grappling hook. Which seems to be a very short one because you’d have to get closer to an object to retrieve it. Mind you the scaling might be the reason why it looks so short, so I will forgive this one. Grappling an object allows you to throw it or drop it. It will show a little projection to where you can throw off the object but it can take getting used to as you’d also need to manuever the ship as well.
The world that you explore is very bleak and dreary. I’m not sure if that was intended but I was thinking because you are trying to explore a world that you would want to live in, then I would think it would at least look vibrant and inviting. Heck, this world reeks of danger and tragedy, I would rather move on and find a more inviting world than this one.
Despite the many boring parts of just endless exploring, the music at least helps you get through them all. I would have been bored to death if it weren’t for the music so it’s good that it’s there for you to listen to while you traverse the world.
The game makes full use of the haptic feedback. Pressing the right trigger just enough so you can gain a steady speed while controlling the jett. Pressing the trigger at full will increase the speed of your jett but it can get to a critical condition that will stop your jett from flying to repair its shield. So a balance of pressing it halfway and full will help you in ensuring you can fly at great speeds without having to go critical.
Camera issues seem to be present when you go into tight spaces in the game but it’s not that bad that it breaks the game. It can get a little annoying though. Speaking of tight spaces, the game doesn’t really prepare you for this instances. And when you do encounter them it auto shuts down your thrusters. This is one other thing I don’t like because the game takes it upon itself to turn off your thrusters whenever this happens or when you are in a dialogue. They don’t even turn it back on afterwards.
Overall, the game has a very interesting story but it’s too far gone in the game that you might not get there before you give up on it. If you like slow burner games though, then this is a game