Video Game Review: Tacoma by Fullbright (Second Opinion)

Walk, don't run (because you can't).

As Amy Ferrier’s ship pulls into dock on the Tacoma, various ideas run through my head. What kind of story will this game have? What kind of environments will the transfer station hold? Will there be some mystery to unveil, like in Fullbright’s previous indie darling Gone Home? With developers from the Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den DLC on board, surely a creepy and/or rewarding sci-fi adventure awaits? No?

Tacoma is, as the trolls on the internet would call it, a “walking simulator.” Oh, how I wish there were a run button instead of a useless crouch button. There’s no combat to speak of, no real challenge, just a story to uncover over a short period. The studio nailed this with their last game, Gone Home. Essentially an interactive movie, Tacoma follows Amy Ferrier as she unveils the last hours of the Tacoma crew after the station takes severe damage to the oxygen supply. The crew has to deal with existential dilemmas, and lucky for Amy, it’s all been recorded. It’s up to the player to help her dig into this crew’s most vulnerable final moments and deliver them, and the station AI, Odin, to the multi-trillion dollar corp that owns the spacecraft.

The interpersonal transactions are the meat of the game, so I won’t share much on the relationships other than to say that some moments feel genuine, while other feel stilted and staged. Overall, the story is conveyed well, but there is no true impact. I wasn’t hit emotionally at any point in the game by the writing. A few sweet moments don’t make a well-written game.

Alongside the writing, Tacoma has weirdly uneven visuals. Considering this is a short game (it can be completed in under two hours) with very few assets, you would think more polish would go into making the game feel real, inhabited. But no. It feels almost plastic in some places, the surrounding environments not quite lived in, as anticipated, but more… contrived. I could feel the developer’s hand in the entire experience from the assets to the storytelling. One would think that this since the game is so short without much interactivity, this would mean the game runs flawlessly, right? Right?

Again, no. The game crashed on me three times during my short stint. I also had massive frame rate drops numerous times (especially when taking the elevator), and kept waiting for my screen to go black. For the record, I was playing on a PS5 Pro, so these performance issues should be nonexistent with the hardware boost (the game was originally developed for PS4).

The voice recordings are an advanced take on audio logs. Instead of simple audio, the player must follow the hologram of each person to unveil more about their story, their thoughts, and their interactions with others. Some environmental storytelling helps with this (letters, dartboards with someone’s face on them, etc.). These are the best-implemented aspects of the storytelling. Through these means, and through a bit of snooping through personal computers and drawers, the player can find little hidden goodies, like more story in locked drawers, key code rooms, and lockers. The soundtrack is simple yet effective, and complements the voice-recorded holograms. I always enjoyed the little jingle that played every time I rode the elevator (though sometimes it would warble and I would become worried the game would crash again).

Tacoma concludes in a way that attempts to recapture the magic of Gone Home, and honestly, it doesn’t wow me. It’s cohesive and coherent and gets the job done, but it will not have a lasting impact like Fullbright’s predecessor. The characters have some conviviality and believability and I found some of their stories worthwhile. I applaud the developer’s inclusion of LGBT and disabled persons, and am glad to see a developer embrace all of their audience. I do feel like a bigger focus should have been placed on the game’s performance and on trying to make the game more memorable, from the environment to the story instead of just trying to replicate it's previous title (but in a space setting). As it stands, Tacoma is a serviceable narrative-based game, though not a highly recommended one. Perhaps my view would be different had I played it at launch. As it stands, I'd say grab it on a big sale if you’re curious.

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The Math

Objective Assessment: 6/10

Bonus: +1 for some sweet character moments. +1 for quality VOs.

Penalties: -1 for performance issues. -1 for lack of memorable depth. -.5 for no run button.

Nerd Coefficient: 5.5/10

Posted by: Joe DelFranco - Fiction writer and lover of most things video games. On most days you can find him writing at his favorite spot in the little state of Rhode Island.