The Entropy Centre | PS5 Review

On the Gaming Outsider Discord server, I am pretty notorious for not watching a plethora of classic movies. Unfortunately, that also extends to video games as there are a lot of titles I get flak for not playing. I have never touched a Final Fantasy game, the only Zelda title I have played is 5 hours of Breath of the Wild, and I have never played Portal (sorry Scott Clark). So when I got the opportunity to play Stubby Games’ The Entropy Centre, I had the unique perspective of going in without playing Portal, which is being compared heavily to this game. And while I cannot speak to the similarities outside of what I have heard and the gameplay I have seen, this game was such a delight that I now want to experience Portal.

What Happened?

You play as Aria, who wakes up in what appears to be a deserted building and does not know how she got there. After a few minutes of trying to figure out where you are, you stumble across an Entropy gun, which is sentient and goes by the name Astra. From there, mystery and intrigue abounds. Why is this place deserted? Why are the only other beings unfriendly entropy bots? Why does this place exist? Turns out, The Entropy Centre is on the moon and houses an even larger entropy weapon that rewinds Earth. Your goal is to solve puzzles to create enough entropy to power this weapon to rewind Earth. Oh…and The Entropy Centre is collapsing around you.

The Entropy Centre is unique in that it only has three voices you hear throughout the game: Aria, Astra, and Tannoy. The latter is the overhead robotic voice that updates on the failing status of the facility. The voice actors do a phenomenal job, as Astra produces some funny dry humor, and I feel the frustration that Aria is feeling. However, the dialogue is not the driving force for uncovering the surrounding mystery. It’s mostly told through environmental imagery and 76 unique “intel” scattered throughout The Entropy Centre on computers. Even though the game does drag for a couple of hours at the end, the story is well told and finishes satisfactorily.

When I was on Episode 423 of The Gaming Outsider, I made a mistake when I said that this game has a “political agenda.” At the time, I could not come up with the right phrase and threw that out there. However, The Entropy Centre asks thought-provoking questions about inevitability and uses humans’ effects on Earth to ask these questions. I do not believe this game pushes an agenda, more so wants to make the player think about what we can and cannot change. I hope people are not turned off of this game because, spoiler alert, I recommend it.

“I Pick Things Up And Put Them Down”

Again, I have never played Portal, nor Half-Life for that matter, but I have seen plenty of gameplay from those games to see that The Entropy Centre is heavily inspired by them. Like Portal, Aria uses a weapon to solve intricate puzzles in different areas. But unlike the portal gun, Astra is an entropy gun that can pick up objects in the environment, similar to the gravity gun in Half-Life. However, Astra has one additional perk: she can also rewind the objects in time, allowing you to move them around the environment to solve these puzzles. 

The majority of the game is spent solving puzzles using cubes to flip switches and open doors to the next puzzle area, with some combat scattered between different puzzle areas. Initially, the first couple of puzzle areas are very simple, but it starts to add new cubes and environmental objects to add challenge to the puzzles. However, even with the extra cubes and elements, I was able to solve most puzzles in the first eight areas in five minutes or less. Even though the early puzzle areas were not very challenging, they still felt fresh with the new cubes or environmental objects they introduced in each area. But after section 8, the puzzles accelerate the challenge, as almost all took me more than five minutes to solve. Many took greater than ten minutes to solve. This is where solving puzzles started to feel satisfying and made me feel very intelligent.

So This is Why I Bought a PS5

It took me a couple of years, but I recently purchased a PS5, and I am glad that The Entropy Centre is the first game I played on it. This game is absolutely stunning. The environment is gorgeous with greenery growing inside the abandoned facility, as well as beautiful beach areas built within. The movement feels fast and purposeful, and the loading screens are less than a couple of seconds. I only experienced some minor glitches, mostly with moving objects that never affected gameplay, and only a small nitpick that the game did not have an indication that the game autosaved. Otherwise, this game felt like it was meant to be played on a next-generation console.

Final Verdict

The Entropy Centre is a beautiful game with a thought-provoking story told through excellent imagery and interesting intel. The voice actors deliver great performances that produce some good humor and emotional moments. While the game takes a while to feel challenging, the puzzles feel fresh from area to area, and the eventual challenge makes you feel very intelligent. I highly recommend this game for anyone looking for an enjoyable puzzle platformer, especially if you enjoyed Portal (I think). Now it is time for me to go and play Portal.

To hear me talk more about The Entropy Centre, be sure to listen to this episode of The Gaming Outsider podcast around the 1:24:30 time stamp.

 

This review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy of The Entropy Centre provided by Evolve PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox, and PC via Steam.