3079 is an Open World FPS set on an alien planet where you are sent in to stop a never ending war between two species. At least that’s what you’re told to do but upon landing you instantly pick a side of the conflict and work as a mercenary for hire. The species friendly to you at the beginning are the humanoid looking aliens but you can switch sides by killing enough of them to please the other side. It may seem like a good idea to immediately head out of the city and hunt some aliens but as you will soon find out they are soldiers that only know war while you on the other hand are the space equivalent of some random dude running off to the battlefield with a Nerf gun. You will immediately realize how useless you are at fighting at the beginning and it is an important lesson to learn since dying means losing a random item. I say random but most of the times they seem to take away your grappling hook or your most used weapon.
It is a really rough introduction to the game and even if you manage to knick a weapon off of an enemy killed by someone else you will not be able to use it. There is no ammo in this game, instead everything relies on your energy meter and the more powerful a weapon is, the more it uses. At first you may as well be carrying a broken gun as you will not be able to fire off a single round without it overdrawing your energy and harming your health. This game features skills like stealth, energy and charisma to name a few, which get more effective as you use them in a certain manner. Unfortunately the way to improve them are usually insanely tedious. You’d think that by using energy its stat will go up but the way it works in this game is that by using more energy than you have and harming your own health it will eventually increase. Since in the beginning you can barely fire off any rounds at all that means you will spend most of your early adventures staring at a wall and repeatedly firing just to get your energy up. Enemies regenerate health so by the time you have enough to fire again they will be mostly healed meaning you must use the better weapons with heavy energy usage.
Honestly, this energy thing is what harms the game the most and will be a problem for the entire game as you need more and more energy. Stealing is pure RNG and requires you to get caught in order to increase its stats while being hit when you are camouflaged makes you better at Stealth. The progression system is a complete, nonsensical mess sadly and by that logic I’ll become a mathematician by failing my math tests. Seems like a petty thing to complain about it but it is honestly no fun and means you only get better by either doing tedious things or getting shot in the face. The only thing you really get for killing enemies is their weapons to sell to a vendor later on. Vendors are the same as any other alien but with a ”$” symbol on their shirt. You could buy useful objects from them like grappling hooks, armor or generators that increase your stats while active. These generators can have some rather cool effects such as increasing your jump height enough to be able to jump houses and walls which makes you feel pretty awesome as you take down several enemies midair.
You can tell any none busy ally to follow you around and gather up your own posse to hunt down the enemy if you so please. It is a really handy feature, especially early in the game when you are pathetically weak. The AI is not all that great so they are only useful in open fields, don’t expect to be rescued while in buildings. AI is embarrassingly bad for the spacecraft that fight like if you had a giant magnet to your face and will stick right on you until one of you is dead. You can attempt to hijack which is a pretty cool feature and lets you zoom around the skies though it is rather weak and likely to get you killed if used in a fight. It’s also a bad idea to go too far out as the further you go the stronger the enemies are. Along with the two species at war there are also demons that look like red gummy bears out to kill everything. These are a very annoying as they will pull you in near them no matter the distance between you two. They are not rare and it is not unusual that you have to fight with the controls just to escape their gravitational pull any time you want to go somewhere.
Demons can only be killed by a very specific kind of sword which brings me with another issue. You can only equip 4 weapons or items to the hot-keys at any one time. The rest of your number keys are useless and you will always want to have the demon sword and grappling hook equipped so you only have two hotkeys to work with. This adds completely unnecessary micromanagement whenever you need something else like a satchel charge, your drill or your construction tool. You can mine the randomly generated world for gems though they offer very little money compared to simply scavenging guns from a battlefield. This game does feature destructible environments but only with the satchel charge unfortunately. Building your own base is possible but ultimately pointless as the point of the game is to move further and further out into the map while staying in a low level area is useless.
Grappling hooks in this game are a ton of fun to use and have a pretty long range making you feel like a mix of Spider Man and Rambo as you quickly navigate the environments. There is an anti-gravity device that allows you to float around at the cost of not being able to recharge your energy. It is really useful for reaching the floating buildings and did lead to an insanely awesome moment where I was near death & surrounded at the edge of a cliff, jumped off and managed to activate it a few feet from the ground. 3079 does have its moments and incredible potential but seems to sabotage itself at every turn. Like the previously mentioned grappling hooks an anti-gravity device can only support a certain amount of weight from your inventory. It sounds reasonable enough but as you head to a higher level area which happens quite often, everything starts weighing more and more. That’s not anything unusual in video games but it feels so artificial here where even the health packs start weight over 30 pounds. One area will have a grappling being sold with up to 400lbs usability and the next one will have one with 440lbs. You don’t think “Wow, I can carry more now!” instead you’re feel the need to facepalm as everything suddenly gets heavier in order to make your gear obsolete time and time again.
You receive missions from allies with stars on their chest but they are rarely worth the price. There are main missions that revolve around the fight against demons and you will need to do at least one of those to get yourself a demon slaying sword. At the end of the day 3079 implements a ton of ideas into one package but fails to make the overall product fun. As an example you turn on your night vision and grapple onto the top of a tall tree with a sniper rifle to take down some enemies. Multiple things keep this from being fun. For one your night vision goggles only pick up enemies of a certain level so you will have to keep buying new ones every time you enter another area until you can’t be bothered. Second your sniper uses up a ton more energy while using the scope yet has no added damage, so you may as well use it without the scope which defeats the purpose of a sniper. And finally, it is not unlikely there will be a demon in sight that will cause you to fight with the controls just to keep your footing in the tree even if it is far away and unaware of you. 3079 has a ton of ideas and a ton of heart no doubt but I’m afraid its progression system, annoying mechanics and combat heavily hampered by energy make this a game I simply can’t recommend.
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