Divide

Overall, thanks to some quick release patches that really made playing Divide more enjoyable, it’s a game I would recommend. It’s not without a few sticking points, but none of them are bad enough to wreck the experience, resulting instead in a cool experience, even if it’s one that’s best played one or two hours at a time.

Divide doesn’t excite, doesn’t surprise, doesn’t reach out, and doesn’t look in. It tests my patience, wastes your time, and can’t keep its eyes on the prize. The cool architecture is basically copy-pasted to death. And the gameplay, which is thankfully short on bullets, is still rehashed ad infinitum. It's a twin-stick shooter that removed the gunplay but replaced it with little more than checkpoints and crate scrounging. It often feels like there’s no end in sight.

Rich in story, but less so in execution, Divide suffers from a few technical issues that makes it a little more clunky than it should be. That said, the cyberpunk narrative is evocative of the best of sci-fi, backed up by a fantastic score. I just wish the controls matched that potential.

There's a decent science-fiction story holding all of Divide's pieces together, but it's not quite strong enough to outweigh the disappointments of excessive backtracking through repetitious metallic levels that barely look different from the last. A great musical score and a moderately interesting combat help keep it interesting, but bugs and repetitive encounters made the campaign feel much longer than it needed to be.

An exercise in apathy, neither solid nor liquid. Not exactly bad, but not very good either. Just a bit "meh," really.

Divide stretches on for a bit longer than it probably should, but the strengths of the story are heightened by decent writing and voice performances throughout. Conversations feel organic and real, line deliveries have a satisfying amount of emotion, and each character comes across as genuine. But the strength of the story is undermined by a game that poorly communicates necessary information and is built on repetition to the point that it loses the personality contained within the characters. If there’s a second meaning to the title, it describes the division between a strong narrative and mediocre gameplay that would’ve been better served with more variety and direction throughout.

Divide could have been an interesting, indie sci-fi game, but poor design decisions hold it back.

Divide‘s curious narrative and enigmatic characters can only do so much; for every genuine moment of intrigue there are a hundred other moments to be spent aimlessly wandering the endless, grey corridors, desperate for the whole thing to just end.

Divide has the potential to be a decent game, but it’s over ambitiousness in the face of its low-budget ultimately nets a forgettable, half-baked sci-fi game. If Exploding Tuba Studios dumped the twin stick gameplay, and instead fully-embraced the adventure genre, I would be interested in seeing it take another stab with a new game. But more Divide? No thanks.

A neat concept alone is not enough to save a poorly-designed, technical jumble of an adventure game. Divide flickers into life on occasion, but far too briefly, and nowhere near bright enough to keep it interesting.

[A] poorly-designed, buggy mess.

Perhaps if they baked their ideas a bit longer, fine tuned the controls, and fixed some of the latency issues (especially with loading), Divide could have been the big sci-fi adventure they clearly aimed for. But as it is, I was only relieved it didn’t take too long to complete.