The Station Reviews

A mystery-driven walking sim aboard an eerily empty space station that is over almost before it begins.

The Station tells a science-fiction story we’ve all heard before. Earth has lost contact with a crew aboard a space station, and you are sent in to investigate what happened to them. This premise usually reveals flesh-eating aliens, rogue A.I., or astronauts suffering from space madness. However, none of your discoveries made aboard space station Espial are substantial – just cryptic audio recordings and notes that hint at a larger story that never truly unfurls.Following in the footsteps of similar narrative experiences like Gone Home and Tacoma, The Station gives the player little direction, and instead allows for freedom of discovery. The allure here is to take your time, study every inch of The Espial, and get to know the crew by the trail they left behind. Playing the role of an investigator is a satisfying experience, as The Espial feels like a real place, mixing state-of-the-art technologies with ordinary human things. The personalities of the crew emerge from their workplaces and living quarters, such as reading their personal emails, or viewing the photographs hidden in their lockers. You end up feeling more of a connection to each of them than the story you are supposed to be unearthing.While discoveries are made in a nonlinear fashion, some of The Station’s best moments are tied to locked doors used to gate progress. These doors often bring puzzles, each challenging you in a different way, whether it’s learning a crewmember’s security code or figuring out how to awaken a robot. A couple of the solutions are a bit obtuse, but most of these moments either strengthen The Espial as a believable place, or give you a taste of how advanced human technologies are in this vision of the future.

Explore a deteriorating spaceship and find its missing crew.

I enjoyed playing it and venturing through the story, nerves on edge most the time.

There's a fantastic graphical style and story here, but the overly short play time and lack of game mechanics may make it easy to skip.

The Station is one of the shortest games I’ve played on the PlayStation 4. If you are a whiz at puzzle games, or the increasingly popular ‘walking simulators’, then you are going to have no trouble rolling the credits in just over an hour. While my initial reaction to the credits rolling was fiercely negative, after a few days musing on The Station I am left feeling very positive about the experience. This is the kind of game I would recommend to fans of experiences like Gone Home and E...

It's always a pleasure when the storyline is as intriguing as the gameplay. The Station is good at both in equal measure. The solutions to the sundry problems on The Station are just challenging enough—not too easy, not too hard.

The Station is an interesting tale of first contact between two very different civilizations. Taking place on a once undetectable space station hovering above an alien planet that was sent to monitor the world, players are sent to investigate its communication blackout and how the lifeforms beyond reacted to its sudden appearance.

Are we alone in the universe? Whatever the answer ends up being, it has some pretty heavy ramifications across multiple facets of society, such as religion and science. The Station looks to explore these topics by telling the story of The Espial, a space station setup to observe an alien civilisation to determine if first contact should be made. When the facility suddenly goes dark and all contact is lost, you’re sent to find out what happened to the crew and assess the status of the mission.

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A bit on the short side, but with a compelling plot and a great looking location. If you like first person puzzle games, then prepare to like The Station.

The Station still rattles around in my head as I sit here a few days after beating it. For such a short game — I finished my playthrough in a mere two hours — there’s a ton of things to address. The derelict station is moody, but not as big as it seems. The puzzles require some thought, but the lack of polish in execution is obvious. The best part of the game is the story, but a lot of patience for technical mishaps will be required. The Station is an imperfect yet thought-provoking tale, one that will garner some discussion once the final credits roll.

If you’re a fan of exploration titles then you should enjoy this. While The Station doesn’t reach the heights of some other titles in the genre, it is a good attempt and tells a slightly different story. Hopefully the audio and visual bugs can be ironed out, but The Station is an intriguing little mystery that has you guessing what happened to the crew on board right until the very end.