Before we get into the expansion Given Time, let me share my thoughts on the base game first, since they're obviously connected. The Far Shore is one of my favorite games in the year it came out. Its story of interstellar travel to flee a dying planet is certainly not a new idea, but the way it approaches this premise with a heavy dose of surrealist religious perspective, while still having a strong, rational scientific presence is remarkable. As the story driven campaign goes on, I grew attached to the smart characters who are trying their best to coexist peacefully within the new world they're in, even when a mysterious force forces the scout crew to adapt, or risk taking humanity's last hope with them to the grave. The game has a lot of small annoyances and rough edges, especially concerning how to progress the story at certain parts, as the game doesn't hold your hand often, but overall its unique qualities makes it a very worthwhile experience.

Jett's gameplay centers on driving the titular futuristic hover-glider vehicle, as you master its throttle overheating tendencies, the ability to postpone said mechanic by collecting and using vapors at the right time, and learning the art of handling it in order to tackle objectives or outrun hostiles. I'm playing this on the PS5, and I consider the Dualsense implementation to be essential to the experience, as the haptics and adaptive triggers and such contribute to a deeper understanding and connection with your vehicle. For example, the triggers will rattle when you're close to overheating. It's important to add that the vehicle has a learning curve, and it may take some time to fully understand how the game wants you to use it, which is not going full throttle each time, and not brute forcing your way through obstacles. Once you do, it truly feels like no other video game vehicle. Personally, the Jett is one of my favorite video game vehicles ever.

Now, with Given Time, the game capitalizes on the potential that TFS left on table. Like TFS, it is also a open world vehicular based experience, but this time around the story is much lighter, and you'll get to tackle the game's objective with much more freedom. After a short story-driven opening, you're set free to find and solve various obstacles in order to collect Brine Wisps, which are basically sentient flying orbs. These obstacles follow a couple main templates, which includes keeping up with a fast creature flying across the land, baiting certain creatures to activate a mysterious local flora, and blowing up rocks with heavy bombs. The game does not overstay its welcome, and although the variation of these objectives may seem limited, the way it tests your knowledge of how various objects in the world interact and the mastery of handling your titular glider makes it very engrossing. It reminds me of something like Skyrim or BOTW, where your solution to one of the puzzles may feel like you're cheating the game's mechanic, and it's quite satisfying because of it. If you have mastered the game's mechanics in TFS, then GT will be much more fun, in pure gameplay terms.

GT also seems to fix one of my slight complaints with TFS, which is the usage of its music. The soundtrack is pretty great, but a lot of the best tracks in TFS felt underused. In GT, they seem to use these tracks more liberally. I will post a video highlighting one of these tracks at the very bottom of this review, which I really recommend you to check out.

Are there still rough edges here? Absolutely. In fact, I think this expansion is slightly buggier than TFS. The framerate gets sluggish when you're going between the large sections of the map, the sun seems to be violently shaking at times, and the ending glitched out on me a few times (which was saved by a very timely patch). But I do not think that these are close to be dealbreakers.

TFW is a unique sci-fi game that pushed it self to be as unique as possible, while maintaining a coherent but somewhat limiting structure. GT lets go of that structure, and instead pushes the game to be the very best version of itself, without losing its identity. With this expansion, Jett has become one of my favorite games of all time.

Here's the video I talked about earlier, highlighting one my favorite tracks!
https://youtu.be/OadANTTiUJA