ShylockSimmonz's Review of P-O-L-L-E-N

Clunky Game Play and Poor Performance Ruin it

User Rating: 4 | P-O-L-L-E-N PC

By shylocksimmonz | Review Date: October 14, 2020

I had waited a while to play P.O.L.L.E.N. Just after the intro scene when you first get to the base the game would only run in the 40’s for frame rate using my RX 580 at the time. Well I can now play it much better with my RX 5700XT so I gave it a go. The wait was not worth it. The game’s store page talks about how interactive the game is but all that really means is you can pick up pretty much any object but there is no reason to do so for much of it. The game’s puzzles are decent for the most part but a lot of it is made worse by the handling of objects. Picking them up and inserting them into spaces is very clunky. There is also very little idea of where you must go next or what to do there. I’m not asking for a giant arrow pointing the way but some more work could have been done to make subtle hints. One part I loved though was the alternate history background story. There was a lot of detail that went into it and it is represented well in the game in terms of explaining why certain tech is more advanced and some is worse than what we had at that time period in our timeline. The story itself was interesting as well and I was trying to enjoy it but the clunky game play and constant searching for what to do next was getting in the way. Lastly the graphics were no better than decent. Object detail; lighting; shadows; all of it was alright but nowhere near as good as it should have been for needing such horsepower to run the game well maxed out.

I played P.O.L.L.E.N. on Linux using Wine. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any glitches or bugs. The performance and optimization was atrocious though. As I said the frame rate was in the 40’s on my RX 580 and it needed an RX 5700XT to run well. Even then I still had the odd dip here and there for a second or two. I can list countless games that look better on lower hardware. I can also find lots of Windows users complaining about poor optimization. The game uses the Unity engine. Alt-Tab doesn’t work. The game uses an auto save system that overwrites it’s save slot. The game has 8 graphics options; 2 AO options; 3 AA options and an FOV slider than goes from 60-120. I played version 1.01 of P.O.L.L.E.N.

Game Engine: Unity

Save System: Auto

Settings Used: Highest; TSMAA; HBAO+

Game Version: 1.01

Disk Space Used: 7.4GB

GPU Usage: 1-99 %

VRAM Usage: 6896-7714 MB

CPU Usage: 18-48 %

RAM Usage: 5-5.5 GB

Frame Rate: 39-135 FPS

P.O.L.L.E.N. was just not enjoyable at all for me. I was sucked in by their story and alternate history but the game play and performance ruined it for me. P.O.L.L.E.N. is a short game at around 2 hours but even then it’s short run time is a blessing as I just wanted it to end. It retails for $10.99 CAD right now and I can’t even recommend it at that price.

My Score: 4/10

My System: