Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/10/03/magrunner-dark-pulse-pc-ps3-360-review/

The Lovecraft mythos aren’t a highly represented concept in video games. Sure, there have been plenty of video games heavily influenced by the works of Lovecraft, but not a lot taken from Lovecraft’s work itself. While it’s not a direct adaptation of any of Lovecraft’s work, it’s still nice seeing the iconic creatures in video game form.

Magrunner: Dark Pulse is a first person puzzle game developed by Frogwares and published by Focus Home Interactive, and was released for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in 2013.

The game takes place a couple of decades into the future, when the Gruckezber Corporation has risen to a position of world dominance. By 2035, their LifeNET Total Existence Network has connected billions of people across the world, and is big enough to have influence over both public and private services, as well as social, environmental, and governmental areas. By 2050, the company had built a training facility for deep space exploration, with a selection process for their astronouts using the LifeNET service.

You play as Dax C. Ward, one of the finalists to get to go through the training facilities along with several others, along with the help of his lifelong family friend Gamaji. But soon, a major malfunction takes the facility offline, locking the whole place down, all while the facility starts to change in appearance to something more creepy and inhuman.

Right off the bat, it’s pretty obvious that the game took it’s presentation and gameplay influence from the Portal franchise, but instead of robots and portals, it has Cthulhu and magnets. Once you get past the obvious initial comparison, Magrunner does do enough to differentiate itself from the Portal games, going for horror instead of comedy. The game isn’t all that scary, since it does still go with the cheesy science experiments gone wrong, but you’re definitely not going to get the two games confused.

In between puzzle solving chambers, there are elevators that take you from one puzzle room to the next. The whole point of these elevator rides is get exposition out through interviews and conversations between the main character and other characters. These kinda kill any momentum the game might have if it went from one puzzle straight to another, and the conversations could have easily been trimmed slightly and been had during puzzle sections.

Plus the game has quite a few loading screens, which is only compounded by the fact that you need to load both the elevator ride when you get on and off it, making the game a touch tedious to play, making the idea of replaying the game a tad unappealing. If the game used this time with the elevators to load each level as it gave you exposition, it wouldn’t be as bad, but you’re stuck looking at loading screens. Levels are often so short that often times it feels like there are more loading screens than there are.

Magrunner uses the whole magnet concept fairly well. Your character has a glove that lets you control an objects magnetism. Left click can make object attract and right click makes them repel. Levels come with several things that use magnets, such as small platforms that are used to get to different parts of each level, and both small and large cubes that are used several ways, such as to help power some of the platforms throughout a level, put on buttons, and are used to smash through breakable glass. Although the cube doesn’t come with as much of a personality as the Companion Cube from Portal.

Later in the game, you do get an add-on for your glove in the form of Newton, a robotic dog made by the protagonist, and he’s used to help with attracting objects that are just out reach from other means. Puzzles do get to the point where you can get stuck for ~30-45 minutes in a room, but none of them feel completely unfair. There are a few puzzles that don’t quite communicate what you need to do immediately, but it’s never gets to be a problem.

However, the game does come with the option in the menu to see how far an objects magnetic reach can go, making the puzzles a bit more manageable, not leaving you to guess how far away something is from a magnets reach.

Probably the most frustrating part of the game is that in later levels, there are creatures that you have to either kill or avoid, which is definitely the biggest difference between Magrunner and Portal. To kill them, you have to fire off explosive cubes from a cube ‘launcher’. If you miss, you have to get the enemy to circle around to a position the be able to hit them, all while get another explosive cube to hit them with.

If the game was a bit smarter, it would have tried skipping combat at all and figured out a way to let you either outrun every encounter with a creature, or let you get rid of it in another manner, such as trapping them, distracting them, or fooling them to run off of a platform and killing themselves. While you’re faster than them, there isn’t a sprint button.

Graphically, the game is a bit of a mixed bag at times. Early on, the game looks quite nice, with levels and character models looking polished. But when it gets to later parts of the game where you come across underground puzzle chambers that are falling apart, some of the caverns featured in puzzle rooms that are falling apart look a little rough around the edges (in more ways than one). Nothing terrible, but a bit of a dip in quality.

Magrunner: Dark Pulse might not be to everyone’s taste, but for those who loved the puzzle solving of at least the first Portal game, and are OK with Magrunner’s lesser parts, it might be worth checking out for anyone looking for more first person puzzle solving.

A for the most part enjoyable if mostly unremarkable game. The idea of using magnets is neat in theory, in practice it lead to moments where I wasn't sure if the solution I came up with didn't work because I was wrong or because the physics went haywire and while it usually turned out to be my fault, sometimes it simply worked after 2-3 tries, which is not ideal for a game like this. As it turns out I also don't know how "fucking magnets" work. Also while it is absolutely necessary to show the player the radius of the "magnet field" in the more busy levels later on this can often lead to a mess of colors everywhere where it's hard to decipher what's actually going on. This can be solved by simply demagnetizing every object you don't need but I'm lazy!
As far as the story goes, listen. I'm not a huge Lovecraft fan, right? But even I feel like the setting deserves more than your character going "AH! A big fish!!" or some random side characters you really, really have no reason to care about going "ajksdjalkf I'm going crazy!" every couple of levels. At least the ending, where it turned out that all old Cthulhu ever wanted was friend was a nice surprise.
At the end of the day, there are better Cthulhu games out there (some even made by Frogware themselves!) and there are better puzzle games out there. If you have already played the Portals and Talos Principles and Antichambers of the world sure, give this a go. Just don't expect too much.