Red Matter (PS4)
On our world, the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union pretty much ended when America landed on the moon. There were some other milestones battled over after, but eventually cooperation become more important and eventually the U.S.S.R. would dissolve entirely. In Red Matter though, it seems space still remains a place for world powers to compete. The names have been swapped, the collectivist and oppressive tendencies of the nation of Volgravia lining up with familiar Soviet ideology while you work under the English speaking Atlantic Union eager to pilfer their secrets. Rather than just a mere political squabble though, the quest to press much deeper into space has lead to something far more concerning you’ll need to uncover.
Christened with the codename Agent Epsilon, you land on Saturn’s moon Rhea with the task of recovering top secret documents kept in a Volgravian facility. While the game definitely includes technology far greater than what we have in real life, the research outpost on Rhea is actually quite utilitarian and grounded in the machines it features. There are bulky consoles with buttons and lights on them, things operated with levers and cranks rather than any holograms or touch screens. Even when you encounter an artificial intelligence, it’s contained in a thick monitor and only communicates by way of printing out small cards, it mostly just devoted to performing operating tasks while its understanding of human behavior only extends so far as it can evaluate whether people are properly loyal to the Volgravian cause. The facility you’re exploring is empty of life and definitely sells the brutalistic design choices of this Soviet Union analogue, but while it is laid out for straightforward emotionless practicality, it doesn’t forget that the people that did once work here were human beings. You’re provided with a scanner that can evaluate nearby objects and translate the Cyrillic messages around the facility, and while official channels glorify self-sacrifice and objectivism, the personal quarters and notes left by the crew add more complexity as their own thoughts and feelings are shared as things went awry thanks to the discovery of a strange red substance.
Red Matter isn’t a long experience, but it does do its build-up on the central mystery excellently. Once some early time is spent coming to grips with the controls of its VR world, this mix of a narrative-exploration game and puzzle game starts to lay down the start of its deeper narrative if you do take the time to explore and scan. You’ll hear little bits about the abnormalities around the outpost by poking around, but when you start encountering oddities it still stands as a stark contrast to the grounded world around you. A strong sense of wrongness exudes from the eerie red abnormalities that appear around the base, a suited astronaut figure’s image reappearing ominously as the plot takes a measured pace in piecing together the purpose behind the strange hallucinations. The game never dives fully into horror, but the game moves from the lonely exploration of an abandoned base to the unnerving concern that it might not be so barren after all, and you can’t help but begin to wonder what exactly the data you were sent to retrieve is actually tied to. There is no combat although there is a bit of peril, but thanks to the unraveling narrative found in the notes of the absent crew and the efforts made to personalize them, you are able to piece together a meaningful narrative that properly places the unusual sights into a strong story that makes good use of elements from its premise like the Soviet societal tropes.
Red Matter is also very smart about how it utilizes its VR controls for its exploration and interactions. Rather than leaning into a fairly standard VR control method of teleporting where you want to stand, Red Matter takes the extra step of explaining quick movement around a space by having your spacesuit instead have the ability to hover over to a destination you point to. Not only does a helpful grid indicating where you can land appear when holding a button, but you can speed up or slow down the hover as needed and it’s always clear where you can or can’t go. What’s more, since you will be standing in front of computer consoles and pressing buttons within the game world at times, Red Matter also allows you to hold down a button to slowly walk in the direction you point the wand held in your right hand. If you need a bit of adjustment to engage with an object, you can take those tiny necessary steps instead of fiddling with the hover too much. Unfortunately, it seems that little adjustment can cause some issues; if you rotate in place sometimes you’ll enter an object, the game breaking immersion for a bit to teleport you to safety, and at one point I somehow ended up outside the level entirely and had to start from the last checkpoint. In a nice touch though, the pause menu is a bit immersive itself. When paused you’ll still be in control of yourself as you’re sitting at something akin to a desk, all the information you’ve scanned contributing to two information boards that help you keep track of important plot details and character relationships. The story isn’t overly long, maybe taking 4 hours to complete, so it’s not like such a thing feels necessary for following along, but it can help if you need to put the game down for a while or otherwise want to review things after receiving new revelations.
One reason I’ve elected to call Red Matter a narrative exploration game is because there are many moments in engaging with devices on the moon base that don’t really require problem solving but do better steep you in the Volgravian way of doing things. There are times you decipher a set of instructions with your scanner and then look at a large console with labeled buttons to input the proper sequence, or you’ll disassemble a device and do things like manually spin a wheel to rotate a device. These aren’t challenges really, but they nail in the no frills approach to design that Volgravia utilizes both in its technology and its broader culture. The people are cogs in the greater Volgravian society, personality and individualism a defect in its eyes. A device then only needs its functional components, and its operation, while not totally straightforward due to sometimes complex demands, is in turn tailored solely for its purpose. Red Matter doesn’t make you dwell too long on the these interactions that serve to set a mood rather than test your mind, and there are a good deal of puzzles to be found, Red Matter able to be a bit more clever when it’s actually having you figure things out.
Most of your interactions are executed with the two wands tipped with claws you hold, each hand able to grab things in the world and yet Red Matter can get more mileage out of that than merely operating cranks and levers. Oftentimes, when you come across something blocking your progress or its unclear how to progress, you are left to observe your surroundings and start connecting the dots yourself with little in the way of hints. That spartan design approach of Volgravia definitely assists here as there are not a huge number of variables in play and puzzles are often self-contained within a small space, so naturally you begin to notice possible correlations between objects. As you experiment with devices and learn what interactions are available, you start piecing together what is likely expected of you, the environmental hints not feeling the need to be too flagrant but even when you finally make the connections there is still at least a bit more thinking to be done on how to combine the clues into one proper solution. There are puzzles here or there that aren’t as clever, one involving managing pipe pressure feeling like the kind you can solve by randomly opening and closing valves until the puzzle’s complete, but other moments like redirecting lasers mix in the right level of necessary understanding and eureka moments to make solving them satisfying.
THE VERDICT: Red Matter realizes its setting well not only through cohesive decisions in terms of visual design and theming but through the actions you undertake during your increasingly unnerving exploration of the abandoned moon base. Immersive activities like operating the utilitarian tech around the facility help nail in the Volgravian ethos more while some real puzzles that involve clever environmental clues ensure there are deeper tasks to perform that aren’t just there for story importance. A proper balance of humanizing the absent human crew and injecting eerie elements through abnormal phenomena works towards justifying a more personal story in this cold impersonal world while a smart approach to PSVR control means you’re able to properly focus on it rather than getting tripped up by any limitations.
And so, I give Red Matter for PlayStation 4…
A GOOD rating. If you take a proper investigative approach and embrace your handheld scanner, Red Matter’s tale is excellently paced to introduce intriguing questions and strange mysteries that it knows how to cultivate well across this short but rich PSVR story. The moments dedicated to establishing atmosphere through interaction shine brightly without feeling tedious, especially since the game won’t go too long without sprinkling in some problem solving between them so it’s not just a narrative exploration game. It would work excellently as one though and some of the less inspired puzzles wouldn’t be missed, but Red Matter also pieces together some clever environmental clues for its puzzles that would be a shame to leave out purely for the sake of an atmospheric experience. The important part of Red Matter’s design is it does not sacrifice either its world-building or the substance of its puzzles for the other, and while you might need to take some time to piece together clues for the problem solving sections, Red Matter does keep moving at a strong pace with its story so it reels you in more and more without being oblique or giving too much away early.
Rather than the Cold War aesthetic applied to a sci-fi space story being used for some sort of “us vs. them” shorthand, Red Matter has a smart handle on connecting its themes and statements on collectivist ideals to the different elements of its gameplay and story. From the harsh concrete structures to the ways the unusual red substance ties to the broader mysteries of the plot, Red Matter keeps your thoughts rooted in its world as something beyond a host for puzzles, the VR slipping in well for an experience that definitely benefits from actually being the one looking around and reaching out to interact with an interesting twist on the fairly common PSVR setting of outer space.