Eclipse: Edge of Light Critic Reviews

While it isn’t winning any graphics awards (not that it's terrible), Eclipse: Edge of Light still manages to achieve VR greatness. With a few simple mechanics, Eclipse allows the player to experience its eerie, lonely world in ways that feel tactile and rewarding. Highly recommended for fans of trippy sci-fi, Eclipse stands out from the crowd in all the right ways.

At the end of the day, Eclipse: Edge of Light is a fun exploration game that will certainly keep you in awe at times without pulling you away with overcomplicated controls or a messy narrative. It simply asks you to traverse the alien landscape, discover a small narrative along the way, and be there. It doesn’t do more than that, nor does it do less than that, which is acceptable for a VR experience.

It’s hard to imagine wanting to quickly replay its two-hour campaign upon completion, but Eclipse: Edge of Light’s simplicity and focus makes it the perfect title to push on all your non-VR playing friends.

Were Eclipse: Edge of Light released prior to the PlayStation VR and even the HTC Vive, it might have been a good showpiece for virtual reality gaming. By bringing it to the PlayStation 4 after the platform has gathered a fine collection of similar, and better, sci-fi experiences, Eclipse feels ancient, an artifact from the first generation of VR. There are better games available on the platform - Farpoint, Obduction, hell even Skyrim VR - that make great use of the technology to create compelling and mysterious adventures despite the system’s limitations. VR-enabled or not, I came away feeling that Eclipse: Edge of Light was very middle of the road. It’s not terrible but it won’t leave a lasting impression.

As an experiential piece of software, and one with a fantastic sense of place, Eclipse ticks a lot of PSVR boxes, but don’t be surprised to come away wanting for a bit more.

Eclipse: Edge of Light offers a passable VR experience, especially for the affordable price, but its 2 to 3 hour adventure isn’t something I would want to replay after finishing it. I like the game’s narrative message and easy going nature, but in gameplay and visuals I was left bored. Despite a few tepid attempts at adding complexity, this is mostly a mild puzzler with a lot of walking through 2D polygonal environments. I recently reviewed Doctor Who: The Edge of Time, which in addition to the oddly similar names also had a similar gameplay style of forgettable puzzle solving. But in Eclipse: Edge of Time, there’s not even the Doctor Who name to spice things up.

Eclipse: Edge of Light has a few neat ideas, but nothing that isn’t done better anywhere else.

Unravel the mysterious history of a dead planet in a brief, overly simplistic first person walking simulator.