Project Remedium Review

You might think swimming around in someone’s artery is disgusting, but it’s actually kind of fun. Project Remedium is essentially the videogame version of Fantastic Voyage, where shrinking down to the nanoscale and entering the human body is the only way to save it from some impending doom. In the case of Project Remedium, you play as a nanobot, whose mission is to save a little girl’s life after a deadly disease strikes. Exterminating every last germ and ridding the body of dangerous toxins is the only way to go in this microscopic title.

The concept and atmosphere of Project Remedium is truly compelling. After floating through a blood vessel for a bit, I was immediately in awe of the level of commitment that was put into crafting an almost open-world environment based on someone’s stomach. Unlike the cartoony Osmosis Jones, this game is quite realistic-looking and plays like Doom, as blood cells aren’t going to walk up to you for a conversation and aggressive pathogens are going straight for the kill. Your only true allies are the various maintenance bots that roam the body and act like Claptrap from Borderlands. Walking around in Project Remedium and looking at all the different organisms is definitely a key feature here, aside from the linear story missions.

The entire game is played from a first-person perspective that’s close to the ground in order to simulate you being a short nanobot. This was disorienting at first though, especially coupled with motion blur being a mandatory effect. I have to admit I felt nauseous multiple times within the first hour of this game, but I eventually got my nano legs. To give you some frame of reference, the same happened to me during the first hour of DOOM. Well, maybe it was just a plethora of gore in that case.

Equipped with a handy grappling hook, moving around the human body has never been easier in Project Remedium. In fact, getting around feels open-world since there aren’t any invisible walls forcing you to travel in a certain direction. I enjoyed having few limitations in regards to exploration, and this is a game where your first instinct is to look around, enjoy the view, and think about where to go. Now, there are indeed missions to be completed and a girl’s life to be saved. All of your objectives in the first half of the game are given to you by this annoying robot called the Foreman. Most of what he says doesn’t make much sense, and it makes me wonder if there were some issues in writing Project Remedium’s dialogue. In addition, you will need to travel back to the Foreman every time you complete a mission in order to receive the next one. Such a system is inconvenient since the Foreman is usually a ways away from the task locations. There is little purpose in having to talk to him every time, as he never rewards you with items and could have easily provided a communications device instead.

More gameplay clunkiness arises in the missions themselves. Most of them are just tedious fetch quests or chores for the Foreman, and it’s outright boring. “Kill a certain number of enemies” is the most exciting you’re going to get here, and even weapon mechanics themselves aren’t sleek at all. Powerups are unnecessarily complicated, skill upgrades don’t have much of an impact, and weapon upgrades just make your guns fire differently. None of these extra features contribute to gameplay and could be easily stripped down or completely removed without any consequence. It’s all quite a disappointment for a game that looks so visually stunning.

I found Project Remedium’s aura to be its highlight, and gameplay its downfall. It claims to be story-driven, but there isn’t much of a story other than a few static images showing the ailing girl you’re trying to save. Missions are utterly generic without much to enhance the experience in terms of skill trees or equipment. I have to admit combat is fast-paced when it should be, and there is some pressure to stay alive and complete your missions. However, that’s only meeting the bare minimum when it comes to a multi-layered shooter. I definitely recommend Project Remedium based on its concept alone, but the gameplay itself is no better than average.