A dystopian planet, ravaged by waves of deadly
radiation, and one lone survivor attempting to restore the land. Will they succeed, or become just another
memory of the life that once thrived here? My name is Graeldon, and I'm reviewing Steam
games in Alphabetical order to find the hidden gems among the piles of garbage, and today’s
game is: 0xFF Let’s begin. Released on the 28th of March 2023, you would
be forgiven for thinking otherwise, as 0xFF has been stylized to look like a game that
wouldn't be out of place on the Playstation 1, with one notable exception: they've added
Ray Tracing. Yeah. You know, that technology that is used to
simulate light and reflections? Yeah they added that to a game with PS1 graphics. It’s an impressive feat, although I’m
not sure it actually adds that much to the game, because they’ve had to also stylize
the reflections themselves. Gotta keep that aesthetic, y’know? It is very thematic though, because a large
portion of the game has to do with reflections. More on that later. For now, let’s look at the starting experience. I say “starting experience” instead of
“Main menu”, because, well, there isn’t one. At the start of the game you’re shown a
simplified overlay that displays the basic controls. The lack of text makes this a little confusing
for anyone not familiar with PC games, but most experienced players will know exactly
what is going on here. You can also adjust mouse sensitivity, and
the ray tracing quality here by opening this menu with Escape once you’re in the actual
game. Speaking of, only a couple of seconds later,
we’re in. Welcome to the Home Base. There’s a chair, a table with an old-school
monitor, a strange briefcase on the ground, as well as a few shelves. Heading outside you’ll see a helicopter,
a vast, bleak, empty expanse and pain. A lot of pain. That’s the radiation, and roughly every
30 seconds it will shave off approximately a quarter of your health. The only way to heal is to cower inside one
of the few bunkers scattered across the landscape. It’s a shame they didn’t think of a better
way to balance this mechanic, because the only way to progress is to go outside and
be hurt by the radiation, and healing basically involves not playing the game. And healing from low health can take around
a minute or two, which is just long enough to make you wish you were playing something
actually fun. At the end of the day, the goal here is to
find and fix the source of the radiation and make the world habitable again. To do this you’ll need to venture from one
safe location to another until you eventually reach the end goal. You’ll also need to collect and manage resources
as you complete your journey, because arriving at the final destination without the necessary
tools will almost certainly spell doom. Which begs the question, what happens if you
die? Well, welcome to the reason that I almost
gave up on this game: There are no checkpoints or save files. If you die, you’re reset all the way back
to the beginning. Doesn’t matter if you were 10 minutes in,
or an hour in. In some ways, I think this is true to the
PlayStation 1 gaming experience. If you haven’t lived through the anxiety
riddled trauma of trying to complete a game like Crash Bandicoot in a single sitting because
your memory card was full and you couldn’t save, can you really call yourself a gamer? Well, yes, because that’s called gate-keeping
and we don’t do that ‘round here. Those were dark times. Anyway, the moral of the story is that 0xFF
has no saves or checkpoints and it sucks. Like really, really sucks. In terms of gameplay and mechanics, there
honestly isn’t much to do other than to move, and to pick things up. As it turns out, the briefcase thing we saw
earlier is actually a battery which can be used to power the nearby helicopter. So with a method of transport available, the
question is: Where the heck are we going? If you head back inside, there’s actually
a small cartridge on the table that when inserted into the monitor plays a small piece of looping
footage, showing a white, almost invisible streak shooting through the sky. Say hello to MEGARADIATION. This flashes through the sky every 30 seconds
and is responsible for the general radiation you’ll be suffering. Normal radiation will hit you wherever you
are, and actually does scaling damage based on how close to the line of megaradiation
you are. If you happen to be too close, or heaven forbid,
directly in the path of the megaradiation, you’ll instantly die. So that’s fun. Circling back to the question of where we’re
going, well, this is our clue. So we’re going to be following that bad
boy back towards the source. Thankfully the megaradiation follows roughly
the same path every time, but it’ll still kill you if you’re even a pixel too close. So, let’s climb into the helicopter and
head off! Before too long you’ll encounter a shelter,
and it’s here you’ll find a radiation suit, and an extra battery, plus a diagram
showing the nearby panels reflecting the radiation. This is a clue that will help us later. Carrying on further you’ll encounter a river. Better make sure you have enough fuel, because
trying to swim in the water is a death sentence. Trust me on that one, okay? I had a few attempts where I didn’t quite
make it across, and this allowed me to witness the joyous scene of the helicopter slowly
sinking beneath the waves. Should you actually make it to the other side
though, you’ll find a shelter with a few more batteries. If your pathing was perfect and you still
have your helicopter, heading further from here will see you arrive at an abandoned train
station where another radiation suit, a battery, and the first mirror await. At this point, we’re actually into the endgame
section, weirdly enough. So far, it might not actually have sounded
so bad, but the amount of trial and error it took to reach this point is actually wild. So, you can load the mirror and battery onto
the train and then set off. Along the path is a pool of radiation, but
as long as you’re wearing a suit, you’ll survive, but the suit will be destroyed. If you don’t have a suit… well, see you back at Home Base I guess. Up ahead, past a second helicopter that’s
just chilling by the side of the tracks, the path splits in two. Going to the right takes us to another shelter,
and another mirror. It’s here that you’ll also find the mirror
array, clearly broken, with 3 panels missing. Fixing this is the final goal of the game,
but we’re currently still down a mirror. So by heading backwards to the intersection,
you’ll spot another shelter off in the distance. Over there is another battery, and a suit
with half strength remaining. Heading back to the train once again, we can
head over the bridge and into a radiation zone. While inside this area you’ll take constant
damage, so getting in and out again quickly is critical. At the far end lies the final mirror. You’ll need to load this into the train
and get back out before you succumb to the gradual radiation damage. However, you won’t make it. No matter what you do, you’ll die here. Every. Damn. Time. It takes about 30 to 40 minutes of playtime
to reach this point, so dying here is a huge loss of time and energy, and it was honestly
super disheartening. My morale was at an all time low, and it was
after several attempts that all ended in failure at this point that I started questioning if
it were even possible. So after a bit of digging, I did find a video
of someone completing the game. But they only managed to do it by abusing
the hell out of bugs that had been patched. But they linked a second video of an actual
legitimate run, so maybe there was a chance after all. Without spoiling too much just yet, I tried
to copy their method, but it ended in failure every single time. So what the heck was going wrong? Well, a few days after this particular video
was published, the dev released a patch, increasing the damage from the radiation, and hence the
difficulty. So the methods no longer worked. I was on my own. But, I was armed with new knowledge. So maybe it was possible after all. I was so close that I could almost taste the
victory - all I needed was one good run, with no mistakes, and to put into practice everything
I had learned. So, if you don’t want to be spoiled with
the solution, skip ahead to the timecode on screen. On the other hand, if you’re curious or
looking for a guide, then watch on, my friend. Alright, here’s the step-by-step of actions
you need to take to beat the game. As far as I can tell, this is the only viable
method. Firstly, from the Home Base, you need to go
backwards. On foot. Yep. Turns out, there’s a hidden base that can
be reached by following the megaradiation. You’ll need to carefully time crossing over
the no-man’s land underneath it, but awaiting in the bunker on the other end is a battery
with green charge. You’ll need to bring this all the way back
to Home Base, and then load it into the helicopter. Load in the other two batteries like normal
and then fly towards Base 2. Keep flying past it until the batteries run
out, and then land. Discard the two depleted batteries and then
sprint to the shelter. Grab the suit and the spare battery, heal
up, and then sprint back to the chopper. You’ll now have enough fuel to fly directly
to the train station, avoiding the river base completely. Carefully time your flight to pass through
the mountain pass and you’re good to go. At the train station, load up per normal,
but, and I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT TAKE THE SUIT. This suit is needed in order to survive the
radiation zone later. Instead, climb aboard the loaded train and
drive right up to the edge of the radiation on the tracks. Hop out, and then make a mad sprint for the
lakeside shelter. Grab the suit and the battery from here, and
then start the sprint back to the train, dropping the battery off at the helicopter on the way. You should make it to the train with enough
suit health left to be able to pass through the radiation safely. You may need to head to the lake shelter again
to heal first, but the next step is to take the helicopter, now charged with both batteries,
and fly back to the train station. Now you can grab the suit that we left behind
earlier, and fly back to the train. Well, most of the way back. You will run out of fuel, but that’s fine. Jump back into the train and head straight
forwards into the radiation zone. Grab the mirror off the stand at the far end
and throw it into the train carriage, and then head out as quickly as you can. Your suit will get shredded, but with a mad
dash back to the lake shelter, you should survive. Now all that’s left to do is change the
tracks and head to the mountain shelter to begin repairs. You’ll want to work swiftly, but carefully
here, as you need to not be anywhere near the mirror array when the megaradiation passes
through. So you have a 30 second window at most to
get anything done. Firstly, grab the two ladders one at a time
and get them into position. The shorter ladder will get you up onto the
platform, and the longer one will reach up high enough for the repairs. Next, one by one, carry the mirrors all the
way up and they will snap into place. This is possibly the most awkward mechanic
I’ve ever experienced, as while carrying the mirror you can’t see where you’re
going. Add on top of this the fact that climbing
the ladders normally doesn’t work as intended, and the very real risk of somehow picking
up the ladder that you’re standing on instead of the mirror and you’re probably going
to be here for a while. That said, you’ll want to be cautious, as
one wrong move now means having to repeat the entire run. Slowly and carefully, you’ll get the mirrors
into place, and with the array fixed and turned on, the array is activated. It rotates into position, deflecting a megaradiation
beam back to the source, destroying it. After a few moments, the sky clears and the
world returns to normal. And of course, as one final slap in the face:
There’s not even an ending. No credits, no fade to black, no thank you
for playing message. So take a moment to go and wander the wasteland
for a while and contemplate what the heck you’re doing with your life. It seems to be that for Sandstrom, the dev
of 0xFF, with PS1 graphics comes PS1 levels of brutal difficulty. To which I ask: Why? Why forgo literal decades of improvements
of game design and mechanics. And no, I don’t mean microtransactions,
those can bugger right off. I guess what really bothers me the most about
this game is the lack of checkpoints or save mechanics. Their addition would transform this game from
a slog-fest filled with hours of literal back-tracking, to an enjoyable puzzle-exploration experience,
albeit a slightly convoluted one, given the final solution. Complexity isn’t bad, but unrewarded repetition
most definitely is, and that’s the biggest sin that 0xFF has committed. That and the lack of any kind of real closure
after beating the game. When combined with other annoyances like an
inability to lower the helicopter (you have to wait for it to gradually fall), playing
through the game simply becomes an exercise in frustration. One of my favorite things that tells you quite
a bit about how the game intentionally tries to lead you astray and obfuscate the correct
path, is the presence of boats. Yes, this is the first time I’ve mentioned
them. There’s one near a pond at the very start
of the game. Every boat in this game is useless. Utterly useless. The first one goes nowhere remotely useful
as it’s confined to a small body of water, the second is on the river but you can’t
reach it without either attempting to swim and dying, or jumping into it from the helicopter. There’s a third one by the lake at the end,
that also goes nowhere useful whatsoever. So yay for intentionally misleading game mechanics. They even put it into the trailer and screenshots
for the game to make it look like it has an actual use. As one of the few people who have actually
finished this game and are therefore something of an authority on the topic: Boats are useless. That said, I would be super appreciative if
someone could tell me what the heck 0xFF is a reference to. As far as I can tell, it’s a hexadecimal
code that represents a bunch of ones, or possibly used to refer to either a white or transparent
colour, which may have a link to either the art style or radiation theme of the game respectively. Having only done a bit of research, that’s
the best I’ve got - so if you have a better answer, please let me know. The last thing to mention is the music and
sound effects. There are barely any sound effects, and there
is one piece of ambient sci-fi music that plays on repeat. All of the music you’ve been hearing has
come from Epidemic sound, which thankfully has a great library of fitting music. I’ve used them in many of my videos, and
I’ve always been able to find something that has the right tone and feel to match
the gameplay and review. Also, #not-an-ad, but they are honestly one
of the few companies that I would take as a sponsor because I love their platform. Anyway, with all of that in mind, my final
rating for 0xFF is: Carrying a mirror up a ladder, out of ten. What should be an easy task is actually incredibly
frustrating and rage inducing. Thanks for Watching. These wonderful channel members on screen
are literally keeping the channel alive, and I’d especially like to thank our two Knights
of the Holy Grael, Freaky Feline and LoveHeartGonzy. Supporting the Crusade is only a dollar per
month, and your soul for eternity, but let’s not worry about the fine print. Lastly, I want to thank you for joining me
on this weird gaming adventure through the depths of Steam. If you made it this far, here’s a sneak
peek of the next game. Until next time, take care!
