The very young studio Massive Work Studio arrives on the front of the stage with a very ambitious Souls-like, Dolmen. A bit too ambitious perhaps, since by dint of wanting to titillate the sun, the title burns its wings.
Massive Work Studio is a new development studio of Brazilian origin created in 2016. After a first small title passed in the shadows, the studio directly moved on to something heavier and more ambitious with Dolmen. Kind of Souls-like taking place in a futuristic universe in space, the title is similar to a real super-production, the means of a Ubisoft or Microsoft less.
You will probably have noticed that the current fashion is Souls-like. This genre, whose gameplay and combat mechanics are greatly inspired, has been enormously popular lately, with Elden Ring in particular. Only small downside: except exception like Sekiro, all take place in fantasy universes. Dolmen is light years away from this type of environment. Head for the stars and the lunar mines in this title whose universe is largely inspired by a certain Dead Space.
And for good reason, the scenario of Dolmen, although very anecdotal during the adventure, seems very inspired by the famous space adventure game. In this title, you are sent to an alien mining station called Revlon Prime with the aim of recovering fragments of a rare and ultra-coveted crystal, the Dolmen. The radiations of this crystal “have interdimensional properties”, allowing them alone to revolutionize space exploration. Suffice to say that everyone tears off this stone, and that you will dive right in the middle of this intergalactic struggle. Clearly, the story has something to dream regarding. It is also magnified by a sublime artistic direction plunging us into a very successful universe, inspired by the Dead Space saga in particular. If we don’t find the survival horror aspect of the Electronic Arts series, the space adventure side in the shallows of a mining moon really makes us shiver, just like the construction of the levels.
Throughout the adventure, however, the scenario seems to pass under our noses and be completely unnoticed. If we have the right to a few cutscenes from time to time, the scriptwriters of the title have not sufficiently exploited this very interesting universe that we are served. Indeed, we wander through the levels, face the many bad guys who stand in our way and come back to our ship a few times to improve our soldier or modify his equipment.
As stated above, Dolmen is pure Souls-like. Everything in its gameplay, or almost, brings us back to the titles developed by FromSoftware, so much so that the comparison is simply inevitable with Elden Ring, Demon’s Souls and other Bloodborne. The interface is the same, the gameplay mechanics are literally copied and the difficulty just as important.
Indeed, playing Dolmen, it really feels like touching a Demon’s Souls. The attacks are slow, we can avoid enemy attacks with a roll and gauges of endurance, magic and life condition our adventure. Gameplay elements that have proven themselves and that will most likely divide players as it is a particular type of game. But what confuses us more is how dated the title feels and looks more like 2009’s Demon’s Souls on PS3 than its 2020 remake on PS5.
From a visual point of view first (we will come back to this), but also and above all from a playability point of view. The fights are extremely heavy and unintuitive. If you press the attack key three times with a heavy weapon, the three attacks will chain together without you being able to do anything or adapt. The enemies are also rather fast, where your soldier is very slow and really heavy, which really does not make it easy. Boss fights are rather tedious, with attacks not always matching enemy movement. It is also impossible to jump to reach a plot a few centimeters high when it may seem so easy.
However, reading these few lines, you may think that Dolmen is just a nanar for which you have to quickly claim a refund. Rest assured, we are still far from it, especially because the game is full of good intentions. At the level of its universe on the one hand, as indicated above, but also in its gameplay. All weapons and armor can be upgraded with the many materials and accessories found throughout the levels. It is also possible to modify the weapons with powers of fire, acid, or even ice, radically modifying the gameplay. The character progresses and improves throughout the adventure, thanks, above all, to a return to the ship where resources are spent to acquire more power.
Finally, the shooting phases are, unlike the melee, rather successful, with a charged attack and a fast attack inflicting damage and penalties on enemies. Finally, you will have to carefully select the weapon you will use, whether it is two-handed or one-handed, at the risk of suffering from it throughout your game. Death being punitive, it is clearly not a choice to be taken lightly.
Content level, if the equipment available is rather numerous and the possibilities of making also, we regret that the title is not closed too quickly. Allow regarding ten hours to complete the game in a straight line, and almost double to complete it 100%. This is relatively little for a title sold for €40, where a FromSoftware title lasts around thirty hours.
We were telling you that Dolmen looked like 2009’s Demon’s Souls, that’s clearly not a way of speaking, and once more, we’re nice. The textures on the walls are very coarse and take a long time to load (even in Quality mode), the animations are ultra dated and sluggish, and the effects of weapons and other environment elements are seriously unrefined. The cutscenes are even worse and clearly don’t make us feel like we’re playing a game on a next-gen console. Indeed, we had the impression of playing on PS5 a port of a PS3 game from the end of the 2000s.
Conclusion
Despite some good ideas, Dolmen misses the mark. This Souls-like is inspired (a little too much) by Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls and other Bloodborne, but with gameplay that is far too dated and very little topical. The interface is copied and pasted from the Souls, but it is too messy and no explanation comes to enlighten the average player. The attacks are heavy and the character much too slow. Good mention on the side of the gunfights, one of the rare elements of successful and more nervous gameplay. The atmosphere and the artistic direction inspired by Dead Space hit the mark, but the graphics, which might have sublimated the environment, are also far too ugly and from a now bygone era. The same goes for the script, which might have been skilfully exploited, but which the screenwriters too quickly relegated to the background. Some good ideas come, fortunately, to garnish Dolmen. The character progression system or the crafting of weapons and equipment are the two main elements. We feel that the character really improves over time, which is rather practical to face the power, sometimes disproportionate, of certain enemies. Finally, we regret that Dolmen only completes in regarding ten hours, which is not much considering its price. If it had been released 15 years earlier, Dolmen would certainly have marked the players. In 2022, it’s hard to be surprised.
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Dolmen
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WE love :
A pleasant universe à la Dead Space
The progression system
More successful shooting phases
An interesting crafting system
We like less:
Only ten hours of play
Really dated graphics
Very heavy and slow gameplay
A confusing interface
A scenario that quickly fades into the background