Industria (PC)

If there is one consistent thing in the world of gaming it’s that trends come and go and then return, hot off of the heels of the Boomer Shooter resurgence the developers at Bleakmill have decided to return to the cinematic, story focused world of the FPS, welcome to Industria.

Industria puts you behind the eyes of Nora in East Berlin, she wakes up concerned about a work colleague, making her way to their lab, not all is what it seems and as luck would have it your colleague has discovered tech that will allow you to travel to a parallel dimension.

This parallel Berlin just so happens be a little more “advanced” in the aspect that it contains many killer robots, a resistance group to fight said robots and of course you find yourself thrust into the middle of this narrative.

The level design offers your standard ruined city design you’ve seen many times before, layered with weathered warehouses, sewers, sprawling rooftops and overgrown city streets, it’s nothing absolutely groundbreaking and yet nothing that drags on too long, in fact the scenery just isn’t all too memorable which is shame considering the narrative set up. 

The game is well voice acted and the music works for the title though I was more taken back by the ambient sound while skulking around than anything that played during the combat sequences of the game.

Gameplay is again nothing that is going to set the world on fire and those of a certain generation are going to be right at home with this title.

You’ll be exploring the environment looking for ammo and batteries for your flashlight while solving puzzles such as environment based ones or trickier ones such as an early one where you have to mix chemicals.

To break the puzzles and story up you have combat which is made up of fighting off a few different robots, all easily identifiable on sight and after you’ve come across them you’ll know their exact attack patterns. 

Weapons are your standard affair, starting off with an axe then building up to handgun, machine gun, shotgun and sniper rifle, you know the script at this point, combat feels fine and much like the game its emulating it doesn’t have the visceral bite of titles like Quake or Doom but helps to be a distraction from the puzzles and world building. 

Industria isn’t here for a long time clocking in at around 4 hours and isn’t too difficult on the standard difficulty, there is a “Hardcore” difficulty which is a little more challenging but the runtime remains, fortunately what is here is mostly killer for gamers looking for an interesting narrative and setting. 

Performance for the game was fine when I played through it, initially there were some bugs and an area would tank frames but this was patched really quickly and the developers are continuing to support and improve the product. 

Industria is a nice budget priced, narrative focused first person shooter in the vein of Half Life, it’s not quite at those lofty heights but remains a solid title where it’s only crime is that it doesn’t go further with its idea and do more.