Interurban Era

Let's look at the beautiful new New York Central J3 Hudson together!

The last few maps have really tested my suspension of disbelief, but it remains an engaging journey. There were some puzzles that I'd 95% solved, but didn't quite get whatever I was trying to manipulate, be it a stuck valve or set of circuit breakers, to behave properly. It forced me to return to the walkthroughs posted on steam threads a few times just to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

It's that kind of thing that takes me OUT of the game though. I had to use the official strategy guide for RIVEN as a kid to get through some of the more obtuse puzzles in that game, and IDK. I like the experience of playing a game with puzzle elements, but do I enjoy solving similar puzzles across such a vast game as INFRA? There is some relief when I encounter a circuit breaker I know how to operate, or the controls on one of the mining locomotives, but there almost needs to be more variety or less variety? I understand the mark is different for everyone though.

I'm enjoying the protagonists' narrow scrapes through a crumbling city, and despite some architectural gripes, it's been a remarkably good, but stressful game for me to play.

Now in real everyday life when I ride transit, I'm inspecting the inside of the metro stations for spalling concrete and leaking panels, haha! The worst part? I'm actually spotting real hazards now and THAT makes me uncomfortable.

It's akin to when you learn the art of kerning type and then misspaced le tter i ng begins to bother you increasingly more often and you can't "unsee" it.

(Click on images for detailed captions)

Often when you play a video game, you play a presumably fit, presumably younger character. Our protagonist is ostensibly a middle-aged cisgendered Finnish male. He's not capable of double jumping or taking flying leaps without mortal consequences. It's kind of a fascinating new way to explore roleplaying AS him, specifically. A lot of his limitations I do not currently share being more limber and younger (for now) so I was getting frustrated often when he couldn't match my own agility. It really gave me an epiphany that this could be a fascinating thing to explore more in RPG's in the future. Imagine a first person RPG where you're a grandma with the physical/sight/hearing limitations that come with it, I've yet to see it, and it'd be fascinatingly challenging to play.

That brings me to less fascinating limitations though. The Stalberg Steel mill must have been one of the earliest levels they designed, because it has ISSUES. Wayfinding is more clunky than previous levels, and I felt my own knowledge of steel mills and railroads actually broke my suspension of disbelief when playing it. The intra-plant mill railroad which is used to move the ladle cars around the plant has track so unrealistically sharp in curvature as to be laughable, not least of which some truly illogical switch placement that was clearly a rush job by the level designer.

The improbably tiny locomotives that shove the ladle cars seem deeply inadequate to move a 750-1000 ton ladle car after the blast furnace pours the molten steel and slag out of the refractory and into the ladles. Real mills have somewhat petite narrow gauge locomotives, but not glorified speeders! They also assumed the mill operated like DC model trains with an electrified 2-rail system, the direction of which (for the puzzle) is controlled like a model train from a control room above the shop floor instead of from the locomotives. ABSURD!

Considering the immense map size, I wish they'd just have modeled the plant accurately 1:1 scale. I do enjoy that you follow the process of steelmaking in reverse, entering in the delivery shed, going through the rolling mill to the ladle pouring room and blast furnace, up the blast furnace to the cupola of the blast furnace, satisfyingly ridding the skip cart down to earth and into the iron ore pile. I feel a single day's more research and having access to historical plans could have made this level shine far brighter, but the constant spamming of my suspension of disbelief left me colder than the slag stuck in the steel ladles.

Also, the game has up until this point been rather gorgeous to look at considering the limitations of the game engine it uses. The view from the top of the blast furnace was so broken with tiled LOD textures, it kinda robbed me of the reward for making it through what, from a puzzle standpoint was pretty fun.