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Similar to Half-Life and a few other first person games, the story unfolds in game, with only the intro and outro being pre-rendered (although even these seem to have been largely done using the game engine). The story is mostly told through logs that you pick up, left behind by dead crewmembers. These logs are quite simply a brilliant device for unfolding the story. You get to know, sympathise with and even like or hate these dead crew members as past events slowly unfold through these spoken logs and you'll find yourself eagerly awaiting the next log that you come across, hooked on the intricate story and eager for the next snippet of the tale. You'll occasionally even come across a ghost and these ghosts are usually of the dead person's final moments. Seeing a ghost get shot or die from lack of oxygen in an echo of pasts events is, needless to say, plain spooky and unnerving even though it serves further to develop the detailed story of the game.
OK, so it has a cool story. So what. If a game doesn't play well it might as well be a literary classic and no one would care. Thankfully, it does play well. In fact it has gameplay oozing out of every orifice and pore thanks to a deluge of great ideas brilliantly executed by the developers. Firstly, for an RPG it is ridiculously easy to get into. Like in Thief, left clicking is for firing, right clicking for picking up. Open up the inventory with a single key press and you can move things around by dragging them with the left mouse button or use them by right clicking on them. And that's it. No huge array of buttons to contend with for various tasks. RPGs don't get more intuitive than this. Even navigating the various Staff Logs, key card lists and person statistics is made simple. Hacking and repairing things is also a breeze. You simply have to do a small puzzle involving lighting up three squares in a line (with the occasional dark node showing up to hinder your efforts) on an odd skewed grid with a few easy clicks and your chances of success get better the higher your skill levels get.
The other in-game puzzles are unfailingly excellent. You are often given clues regarding how to solve various puzzles. For example one log revealed that special access cards needed to progress were hidden on a certain enemy that you can find wandering the halls of the Rickenbacker. Other challenges include finding a code for a transmitter, the catch being that the code has been split up and hidden throughout the deck you are on. The puzzles are all interesting and heavily linked with the storyline so it really feels like there is a point to you doing them rather than the old mindless "find key, use on door" puzzles of old.
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