Directive 8020 Review (PS5)
Push Square • • technology
Key Points:
- Directive 8020 is a narrative-driven game inspired by Ridley Scott’s Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing, focusing on crew members facing an alien impostor aboard the spaceship Cassiopeia.
- The game offers numerous choices affecting character survival and story outcomes, with a new "destiny" system unlocking character progression and narrative branches, though the characters themselves feel underdeveloped.
- The setting aboard the Cassiopeia is criticized for being dull and lacking atmosphere, failing to evoke the tension and identity seen in other sci-fi horror games like Alien Isolation or Dead Space.
- The narrative improves in the latter half with engaging twists and horror elements, including tense moments of deciding who is human or alien, delivering pockets of the desired suspense.
- A rewind system allows players to revisit key decisions to explore different outcomes, but its implementation can feel counterintuitive and may lessen the impact of choices, with replaying large sections still required to see changes.