INFRA (PC)

INFRA is a different type of game – a first-person exploratory puzzler. No guns – the only things you'll be shooting are pictures; minimal inventory – just your camera, flashlight, batteries for both, and whatever random bit of the environment you're lugging around at the moment, whether that be a fuse that belongs in a fusebox somewhere, a crate you'll need to cross a pool of electrified water, or an empty beer bottle that's just lying around, waiting to be smashed.

Infrastructure Isn’t Sexy

You play an engineer who works for a fictional Baltic country's infrastructure inspection service (in case you're wondering, the developers are based in Finland). Your job is to go out to inspect dams, highways, bridges – all the little things that make life easier, but could cause disasters if they break. And boy, do they ever break.

In a nice nod to just how things work in the real world (channeling John Oliver here), the nation's infrastructure – and the agency itself – is pretty blatantly underfunded. Even your starting office area is badly in need of repair, and only sparsely staffed. The workers hanging around complain about unsafe – but heavily used – tunnels that they refuse to drive through because they know just how bad they are.

The plot of the game kicks off with a typical, monotone office meeting (which, mercifully, you can skip), explaining where to go (a local abandoned dam system) so that you can gather photographic evidence of the repairs that need to be done, as well as doing patch jobs on whatever you can. Using your camera (or flashlight) drains batteries like crazy, but you can find plenty of them as you go along. The only downside is that there is no real way to tell how many batteries of each type you have left, aside from your character's comments when picking up fresh packs or installing a new set. The digital camera – which helpfully adjusts its viewfinder whenever you point it at something you need to photograph, has a battery meter; the flashlight just grows dimmer and dimmer to the point of uselessness, as its way of saying “Feed me!” The whole short battery lifespan thing is par for the course for a video game – but, obviously, they only drain when they are active (this includes looking around with the camera out).

Your secondary purpose, along the way, is to figure out why the place was abandoned in the first place – and you can even find some evidence pointing to this in your home office if you explore it thoroughly enough. It looks like a profound lack of funding might not be the only problem with this country.

Dam It

INFRA uses standard WASD for movement controls, E to interact, R to reload batteries, F to toggle the flashlight; jump, crouch, pickup/drop/throw – you know the drill. All fairly standard FPS-type controls. Spinning the mouse wheel toggles the camera, and clicking it zooms in or out. For better or for worse, there’s no HUD, and no inventory screen.

If you don't quite make a jump, you just get kicked back a few seconds of gameplay. They want you to play the game, not re-do ten minutes of running around every time you miss a jump by a few pixels. There are no enemies save for the environment itself – a few feet of water, most falls, etc. will one-shot kill you if you're not careful, along with the more obvious deathtraps such as the aforementioned electrified pools of water. For certain scripted, survivable falls, your character will have something to say about that, complete with some colorful language.

Graphics and Sound

The game is simply gorgeous at maxed visuals, even on a mid-range graphics card (GeForce 660). Old crumbling bricks and concrete, rust-covered metal, faded glass, and flowing water all contribute nicely to the atmosphere of the game, while providing an effective contrast to the relative sterility of your equally-in-need-of-repair home office. The dam and its environs feel abandoned and empty, even if most of the vehicles you find look brand new, and have been polished to a mirror shine!

The ambient noises that comprise much of the soundtrack accompany the visuals well – birds chirping out in the wilderness, winds rushing down deserted corridors, water dripping off of rusty pipes, etc.