1. As per the Game Reviewer Grand Constitution and Bylaws, I am required by statute to claim all first person puzzle games are just like Portal even if they don't have, you know, portals. SolarGun is just like Portal even though it also doesn't have other essential Portal elements like its sense of humor or the impression of some overarching back story.
2. The mechanics here actually most resemble The Turing Test, which was released about a year earlier, the main one being the ability to shoot and collect balls of energy that unlock doors. The energy balls in this can also be used to make platforms, which I haven't seen before, so I say there's enough new here to justify calling SolarGun its own thing.
3. It is set in a very blue and grey world that is low-poly but very clean looking. Imagine the facility in GoldenEye w/ good anti-aliasing and you are just about there. It seems to be set in some sort of place where scientists do science but there is no way to know for sure.
4. As far as puzzle solving, the set of tools you have here is fairly simplified. You have the glove that lets you shoot energy balls that open doors and create platforms and you can place blocks on switches to open doors. That's about it. What makes SolarGun a bit unique is there's a pretty heavy emphasis on platforming on some levels, esp. towards the end of the game.
5. I dunno about you nerds but first person platforming is kind of not my thing. Here, it's just tough enough to be frustrating here. Meh.
6. The puzzles, I suppose, are fine. Nothing was too tough and I don't
think many folks are going to be needing much help to get through them
but there is just enough to them to give you a quick sense of
satisfaction after completing each one.
7. This said, SolarGun is not devoid of frustrating moments. For starters, there's that first person platforming; If you miss a jump, you are forced to redo the whole puzzle. Then there are a few puzzles where you flip switches to open an unseen door and have to do a pretty considerable amount of clomping around to try to figure out what switch does what. It's not horrible but does seem a little excessive at points. It's a little cheap to use obfuscation of a puzzle's elements to create difficulty.
7. There are lots of PCs scattered throughout the facility you are
in, all of which are showing a Windows 10 blue screen w/ a frowning emoticon.
You run into a Macintosh 128K at one point and that is working
perfectly.
9. Instead of a gun to shoot the energy balls, you shoot them from a fancy pants super glove. As you progress through levels, your super glove will have more or less energy balls. Oddly, you do not get an increasing amount of energy balls as the game progresses like you'd expect. You are just assigned however many energy balls you need for the next set of puzzles. This works really well because it prevents the developers from creating additional challenge by making increasingly complex puzzles of the same type.
10. When you die, your fancy pants super gloved arm gets suspended from the ceiling at the spot of death on your next trip through the level. This looks cool but it gets in your way and can trip you up. It is a small effort to shoot it out of the way and you are good to go. This feels like a missed opportunity to me. It'd be kinda cool if it somehow made some of the platforming sections a bit easier but instead it's a slight annoyance.
11. This is a single serving game. You will likely pick it up once and put it down either when you finish it or when you are sick of it and never pick it up again. Either way, this will probably not occupy more than a few hours of your time and, you know what, SolarGun is worth a couple hours of your time.
12. I suppose there maybe some potential in speedrunning the thing but there is relatively little in the way of Easter eggs or secrets that I could tell and pretty much no story to dig into deeper or even revisit.
13. There are a few puzzles toward the end of the game that are much more complex and well developed than the rest, which makes me think the developers learned a lot during the process of making this SolarGun. I will definitely check out a sequel or new IP in the same genre if they every make one.
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