The Signal from Tölva......
A harsh world that’s three parts wandering to one part shooting: yes, Chris Schilling’s commute often makes him late getting to LinuxFormat Towers.
Management demands results! So we’ve all been replaced by robots and sent to the off-world mining colonies, where we dig all day like little pixies on Content Mountain.
Following on from Big Robot’s interestingly flawed Sir,Youare BeingHunted, TheSignalfrom Tölva is a game about adapting to and managing your limitations. You explore the planet Tölva remotely, hijacking a surveyor robot to investigate the signal in question.
The game follows a familiar sandbox structure. Bring up your map and you have a handful of objectives to choose between at any given time: as you complete them, you gain access to better gear, and rank up after every three missions you report in. It feels open-world in the sense that you’ve usually got plenty of options for your next destination, but it’s never totally free. There’s some subtle gating in the form of corrosive elements, which require you to obtain the right hazard protection, and the environment design means you’re often funnelled down relatively narrow routes.
To judge it on its fundamentals is to risk making it sound boring. In terms of the activities available to you, it’s undeniably limited. You’ll tag map markers to set waypoints, yomp towards them, and take out pockets of enemies in mid-to-long-range combat when you get there. You’ll capture bases and beacons as fasttravel points. You’ll scan the odd alien artefact, and dabble in a bit of resourcegathering, vacuuming up every item you can within a narrow search zone. In practice, there’s rarely a dull moment, and it’s all in the details. Exploration is enjoyable partly thanks to the sheer physicality of it. You don’t walk: you stomp, the camera gently jogging in a way that conveys a sense of weight without making you queasy.
Sometimes your view is a little bland, but you rarely have far to travel before finding something to marvel at. Remains of abandoned ships tempt you over to sift through the wreckage; elsewhere, enormous craft hover ominously overhead. There are fascinating hints at Tölva’s history.
The slow-burn exploration is punctuated by bursts of crisp, satisfying combat. It pays to scout first with your scanner, which lets you tag enemies so you can pick them out more easily – particularly useful when it’s dark and you don’t want to risk revealing yourself by switching your torch on. When it’s time to engage, it’s the sound design that stands out most: laser bolts whoosh, and energy beams snap and fizz as they scythe through a bandit’s outer shell, before your target explodes with a thunderous boom.
Naturally, the noise of combat can easily alert other patrols. At times, you’ll finish one fight only to find yourself immediately embroiled in another. These are among the game’s most tense and exciting moments, particularly when you’re on the cusp of activating a new fast-travel point with your plasma shields down and only a sliver of energy left, as you cower behind a rock, praying for your areaof‑effect attack to finish recharging.
With only two weapon slots besides your trusty sidearm, you need to pick your loadout carefully. The enemy AI is pretty good: they’ll crouch to aim more accurately, put their shields up under fire, and scuttle for cover when their barrier is depleted. It’s not long before you get your hands on a command module, which, as you rank up, lets you recruit more (and more powerful) surveyor allies.
While you’ll acclimatise to the consciously slow pace, towards the end, it can feel like Signal’s dragging its heels. With bunkers spread farther apart, you’ll face a long, slow trudge to the last couple of critical missions; but these are minor blemishes.