{"id":11520,"date":"2026-06-24T21:59:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T11:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/?p=11520"},"modified":"2026-07-27T20:37:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T10:37:19","slug":"aphelion-torn-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2026\/06\/24\/aphelion-torn-apart\/","title":{"rendered":"Aphelion: Torn Apart."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The realizations I’ve come to over the years about what reviewing a game really means has been illuminating and humbling. There was me, some 16 years<\/em> ago thinking that reviewing a game should focus on the objective essence of it: the depth of narrative, it’s gameplay mechanics, the visuals. All of these elements could be assessed well known criteria that would give me something to fall back on should someone question what gave rise to the final score that I’d dish out after saying my peace. Now though it’s so much more complicated than that as I know those objective measures aren’t the full story. Today I know that how I interact with the game, what was going on in my life and the tsunami of past experiences I have are all jockeying together to bend and warp my perception of the game. So this is how I, the rider of this particular wave, have come to wonder what circumstances led to what feels like a severe misstep from Don’t Nod. My research shows that, possibly, it was simply falling prey to their own ambition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now I’m not going to sit here and say that I’m clued into Don’t Nod’s aspirations but, looking back over my past reviews of their games, I can see that most of them are hitting the level of good enough<\/em> with none of them ever reaching the heights of something I’d call great. That isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed some of them, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage<\/a> and Tell Me Why<\/a> both stick out to me as ones that I have fond memories of, but the scores I gave them at the time tell the story. That’s when the pattern stuck out to me: there were a lot, and I mean a lot, of releases in a short time for what many would consider to be an indie studio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure enough, checking their release schedule shows that the past 3 years has seen them pump out a total of 5 games all of which are new IPs. They had a similar spurt of creative output from 2018 to 2020, riding high on Life Is Strange<\/a> no doubt, which is only when they decided to give themselves a break for 3 years. Part of this is likely due to Tencent taking a rather large stake in the company in 2021 which has driven a desire from them to see a return on said investment. As with all things like this that money may be the poisoned pill that kills the company as it’s slated to run out of cash in November this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tell you all of this because when I begin my criticisms of what Aphelion is you have an idea of the circumstances that led to them happening. Because in its current state Aphelion feels like an unfinished husk of what it was meant to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the box Aphelion is one of those linear narrative games, one that you can’t really call a walking simulator but it isn’t far off. The core game consists mainly of you walking from one place to another, using some basic mechanics to solve puzzles all whilst the characters narrate mostly to themselves about whatever happens to be going on. It’s a formula that can work well, even when parts of the whole aren’t exactly pulling their weight, but the trouble for Aphelion is that none of them do. What you have is a cobbled together experience where each part feels like it was rushed to meet a deadline and no part of the experience is better for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the game’s main mechanic, climbing, for instance. It’s clear that the devs wanted this to be a core part of the game but the experience is so utterly basic that there’s little separating it from the climbing sections that are tacked on in other adventure games. Worse still this game released in the same year as Cairn<\/a> a game that showed that climbing mechanics can be deep and<\/em> fun, something which Aphelion simply can’t hold a candle to. That’s not to say if it released say, 3 years ago it’d be much better but the comparison certainly isn’t doing Aphelion any favours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That could be put to the side though if it was only a small part of the game but the walking\/climbing\/exploration mechanics are so repetitive that it’s hard to ignore just how bad they are. I caught myself audibly groaning when I saw the telltale marks of a climbing section coming up as I knew that it was simply another wall in the road, something for me to climb over in order to draw out the play time without adding any real value to the experience. Indeed in the 4 hours that I played the game I’d yet to see the point of making me go through so many climbing sections that were basically all the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings me to probably the worst part about it all: the narrative and its presentation. There was obviously a lot that the game wanted to be said, with plenty of worldbuilding needing to be done, but it’s done in such a hamfisted way that it never feels organic to the story. All too often your characters will just start talking to themselves, spouting random facts or one liners completely out of the blue in order to explain what’s happening on screen. Worse still the game takes forever to even setup a proper premise for everything, to the point where I still have little idea as to where the story was actually going to go some 4 hours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’ve often chided developers for falling prey to their ambition; trying to do too much when a more focused experience would be all the better. Aphelion instead bears the same wounds of that kind of ambition, but the responsible party isn’t the creatives or those with a vision they want realised this time around. Instead it’s in the executives, in those who I feel have come into the industry seeking a quick return on their money only to end up shoveling dreck out the door and wondering why it isn’t working. Aphelion then, like another upcoming game review, might be the swan song of a studio who’s grasp exceeded their reach and we are all the worse off for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rating: 5.0\/10<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aphelion is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X\/S right now for $45. Game was played on the PC with a total of 3.8 hours playtime and 40% of the achievements unlocked. Game is also available on Xbox Gamepass. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The realizations I’ve come to over the years about what reviewing a game really means has been illuminating and humbling. There was me, some 16…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,16],"tags":[6635,6488,733,839,6402,6449,2410,6401],"class_list":["post-11520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games","category-review","tag-dont-nod","tag-linear","tag-pc","tag-platformer","tag-playstation-5","tag-singleplayer","tag-third-person","tag-xbox-series-x"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Aphelion-Review-Screenshot-Wallpaper-Title-Screen.jpg?fit=739%2C415&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppBqt-2ZO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11520"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11565,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11520\/revisions\/11565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}