Pulse (2015)

 PC
Metascore
57

Mixed or average reviews - based on 8 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 8
  3. Negative: 2 out of 8
  1. Critical Hit
    Oct 21, 2015
    70
    Pulse is a great idea, translating the isolation of being blind into a funky adventure of discovery. It's just not much more than that really, as the concept can be short-sighted in the long run.
  2. Destructoid
    Oct 20, 2015
    65
    If Pulse had a longer, more in-depth story with evolving gameplay, it would be easily recommendable. As it stands now, it feels more like a proof-of-concept than a full-fledged game.
  3. Everyeye.it
    Oct 26, 2015
    64
    The idea of experience blindness is creepy and interesting in equal measure, but this is still halfway between a tech demo and a fully accomplished product.
  5. The Escapist
    Nov 3, 2015
    60
    Playing a blind girl helped me see how challenging it was, but I wish I saw a reason to care about the world Eva lived in.
  6. We Got This Covered
    Oct 20, 2015
    60
    What Pixel Pi Games have with Pulse is a charming tale of peril and danger, all thrown squarely at a character with a major disadvantage.
  7. 4P.de
    Nov 13, 2015
    50
    Pulse takes a distinctively different approach to blindness than Beyond Eyes. And while I welcome the gaming aspects that give you a sense of danger the audiovisual concept is hardly more than a tech-demo – a very arduous one, which makes the short playtime even sweeter.
  8. Hardcore Gamer
    Nov 7, 2015
    40
    For all the promise Pixel Pi shows amid the early phases, Pulse sadly delves little further into evolving from out its basic foundation — new ideas introduced later on feeling out of place and poorly executed, it’s hard to see them as anything other than square pegs forcibly shunt into round holes.
  9. COGconnected
    Nov 1, 2015
    40
    Pulse is a victim of the Kickstarter craze. It had a unique idea and successful campaign, but failed to go anywhere meaningful from a gameplay standpoint. The music and visual style are redeeming factors, but the short length and uninspired mechanics (not to mention the brain scrambling acid trip sections) make Pulse an experience that feels unfinished and one I can’t honestly recommend.

User Reviews

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User Score
5.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 9 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 9
  3. Negative: 3 out of 9
  1. PublicNuisance
    Mar 6, 2019
    3
    I loved the idea of Pulse. That love didn’t last long at all. The game runs at between 10-22 fps for me. I tried changing the graphicsI loved the idea of Pulse. That love didn’t last long at all. The game runs at between 10-22 fps for me. I tried changing the graphics settings from glorious all the way down to good but the fps didn’t change one bit. The game doesn’t look nearly good enough to justify such performance. The gameplay itself is not bad at times but I found that often I was staring at mostly a black screen. I’m not sure if this was a glitch or if this was part of the game. After falling and drowing a few times because of not being able to tell where I was going I quickly said to hell with this. The music itself is very well done and calming but the rest of the game is a mess.

    I played Pulse on Linux. I tried copies from Humble Store and Steam, both version 1.01, but both ahd the same framerate issues. I tried both Solus and Manjaro as well as different versions of Mesa and kernels but nothing got the game running well. Alt-Tab also didn’t work. There was just the one graphic option aside from resolution. You also can’t remap keys at all or even view what the key maps are. My CPU usage never got above 32% and my total system usage for RAM never got above 2.3GB so it wasn’t either of those causing the issue. The game used 3734MB of disk space. I’m not sure which engine was used.

    I don’t recommend Pulse at any price. I paid $1.12 CAD and can’t even say it is worth that. It had a great concept but was just poorly executed.

    My Score: 3/10

    My System:

    AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 18.3.3 | Manjaro Mate | Kernel 4.20.11-1-MANJARO    … Full Review »
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