Why is (or isn’t it) cool? When it’s at its best, it really does feel like an old-school horror-tinged stealth-’em-up—except, you know, wicked pretty. But after I got comfortable in my space sneakers, I realized that each stomping step carried with it a certain hollowness. The story, while creepy and well-acted, leaned on tired tropes. It felt a bit too inspired by games like System Shock. On top of that, levels used old-school game design techniques as a crutch rather than an appeal, leading to areas that didn’t make a whole lot of intuitive sense (get the first key from an objective, the other is in a random box or some shit I guess). And instead of allowing for Deus-Ex-style limit-ignoring freedom, Solarix reveled in arbitrary invisible barriers and things of that sort. Basically, it wanted the player to be a little clever, but punished me for being too clever. Deus Ex: Invisible Wall, I’ve taken to calling it.

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Also, the stealth—enemy patterns and AI, your options in each scenario—struck me as pretty basic. When you can shoot out a light over a guard and they don’t even react with a Metal Gear courtesy “whatwassat,” you’ve got a problem. They’re also functionally blind unless you’re standing directly in front of them. And yet, if they hear a single non-crouched footstep, they act like you’re detonating nuclear bombs between your toes.

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Yikes. So it’s terrible? Not terrible per se. Just flawed. I did not have a bad time during my few hours with it! I just never had a great time either. I kept having flashbacks to moments in Deus Ex and System Shock and realizing that, while Solarix was prettier, it wasn’t better—or even close to as good.

Should I buy it (even though there are a million-billion other Steam games I could spend my money on)? Only if you’re really hankering for an old-school-style stealth-action game and have replayed all the classics too recently for another replay to sound appealing. In fairness, Solarix is only $20, so you could do a whole, whole lot worse. But you could also do a lot better, so maybe wait for a Steam sale.

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Steam’s new release section is chaos. Steam Snapshot is a regular feature in which I post my brief impressions of a new Steam game in hopes of letting you know, as quickly and succinctly as possible, if it’s worth your time/money.

To contact the author of this post, write to nathan.grayson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @vahn16.