Taken for a Quickie | Morphite

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Join us as we take Crescent Moon Games’ sci-fi adventure come FPS, Morphite, for a low gravity gruntfest.

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​by Rob Holt

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​@acousticmagic

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Developer: Blowfish Studios
Publisher: Crescent Moon Games
Platforms: Xbox One, PS4, PC, iOS
Players: 1

So, what’s it all about?

You control the lead character, Myrah, as she journeys across the galaxy exploring multiple planets, scanning new fauna and animals, fighting hostiles, solving some fairly basic puzzles and uncovering the mystery around a nearly extinct material called Morphite.

Ooh, can we expect Metroid-style gameplay, then?

Yes and no, chums, but we’re leaning more towards the latter. Whilst Myrah looks like Samus, has vague objectives like Ms Aran, and certainly has some eerily similar items (scanner, bombs, gun, etc.) the gameplay just doesn’t have the joy of Metroid. Everything feels a bit sluggish, honestly, from the speed of fights, to the floaty platforming sections, to often tedious exploration jaunts, which is a shame.

How’s the presentation?

Morphite boasts a low-poly look, held together by a gorgeous, vibrant colour palette which is often undermined by ugly, blocky terrain. The simplicity of the character models and structures is both a blessing and a curse too, with trees and water appealing to the eye, whereas exploding rocks and rigor mortis-like animal movement left us with bowed head.

The audio is a bit of a mixed bag too. The moody keyboard music isn’t on par with anything in a Metroid game, but it does work well enough. In addition to that, the voice acting and some of the sound effects are a bit pants, honestly. The main cast members are tainted with some awfully written lines to go with their tally-ho voices (see Myrah & Mr Mason), while other characters are just plain irritating (see the know-it-all feline robot KitKat).

Don’t hold back now, is there anything else we should be wary of?

It doesn’t take a genius to notice that Morphite wears its influences a little too obviously on its sleeve, which left us with the distinct impression that we’d encountered many of the planets and creatures in the game elsewhere.

Some tedious side-quests and resource management don’t help proceedings either, leading to tedium eventually setting in.

With that in mind, would you recommend it to anyone in particular?

Sci-fi lovers and fans of exploration games will definitely find some enjoyment here, as there’s many hours on offer to keep folks going until Metroid Prime 4. Everyone else will most likely be left cold by Morphite’s offerings, though.