3 out of 10: Episode 2 “Foundation 101” – Review (PC)
Episode 2 of 3 out of 10 is quite a departure from the inaugural episode. In this installment the gang leaves the studio in an attempt to return a new shipment of interns to their “university.” Midge finds it very unsettling how the interns are treated and convinces the rest of the team to help her return them rather than feed them to the engineers like they have been doing since the beginning of time.
Like the first episode, there are a bunch of mini games here that act as the only form of actual gameplay. The first mini game takes you on a road trip to the university. With the interns piled up on the roof of your car you have to follow your GPS device while collecting stars and checkpoints before time runs out. Oh yeah, you can’t lose any interns or crash along the way either or it’s game over.
Once you arrive at the university you realize that things are even more dire than you thought. With no real visible connection to the events in the first episode it will be interesting to see how this eventually connects to its ending. The school is overrun with “non ex-military” robots that chase you down in the next minigame. You have to move the gang in different patterns in order to escape from the missiles being launched in your direction. This was one of the more frustrating mini games in an episode full of frustrating mini games and much like Surfing with Sharks, it feels like death is unavoidable in this game.
Eventually you’ll find yourself in the school in search of a classroom to drop off the interns. There are five rooms you can peak in and each one appears to be a worse option than the last. One of the issues with this episode is how niche it appears to be. The developers seem to be giving us a very real look at game development and how difficult it can be, but most of the humor could be lost on the average Joe. It feels as though this episode is aimed at developers and airs a lot of the industries’ dirty laundry. While not a bad thing, the humor doesn’t always land the way it seems to have been intended.
Eventually you find yourself locked in a secret area of the school and have to use interns to escape. Here you’ll find another mini game that involves launching a crated intern from point to point until they reach the keys you need to escape.
Once free you’ll have a chance at revenge on all of the robots that tried to end you and bring peace back to the often-rebranded university.
The second episode did little to build on the story that was established in the pilot and, though there were some interesting moments, the mini games were mostly frustrating and the humor wasted on those not part of the industry. We’re still interested to see where this story is heading, but with only five episodes total, it seems like this was a side quest a la the X Files monster of the week episodes. But we’ll wait patiently for next week to see if this becomes a key piece of the puzzle.
*3 out of 10 was given to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
