Can you solve the mystery of Industria?
Berlin, 9th November 1989: The streets are full of people. After four decades of division, thousands of cars are rolling across the inner-German border. The Wall is finally open! At the same time a man disappears in a secret research facility near East Berlin. His goodbye message reaches you too late. You drive back to the office, where the State Security has already destroyed all records of the research project. The complex is deserted and empty.
The search for Walter takes you deep into the center of the facility – right into the heart of the universe, where time seems to stand still. The dark secret lurks – well hidden – behind the curtain. In the end, it is horrible insights and the questions of responsibility that make you dive deeper and deeper into a strange, surreal yet familiar world.
Industria is a 4–5-hour FPS with a great story and a nice price tag, but it isn’t without its issues. The game has some decent puzzles, but it ultimately comes undone with its combat which feels dated and dull. It doesn’t help that you are working against the game’s controls with movement and there’s no toggle for sprint, which isn’t ideal if you are trying to sprint past enemies or just to speed through areas.
It’s ultimately frustrating because underneath it all, there’s a decent game to be found here. The story itself is engaging and the setting is great. There’s also a number of technical issues with performance, bugs and a save system that can be punishing at times. I will give the team credit for some clever puzzles, though some definitely are better than others. I’d say the first half has the better of them, that’s for sure.
For a game that runs on Xbox Series X/S, I was expecting at least a game that ran at 60FPS, but it seems that Industria struggles with this and even though I can’t accurately tell what it runs at, I’d say somewhere from 30-45 at the most. While it has a nice visual style to it, the game does look dated compared to other shooters on the market. I will say that the voice-acting and soundtrack are decent though.
The Verdict
Industria is a brief FPS outing that has a number of technical issues that hold it back from being a great game. It does have a decent plot and a nice setting, but the problems the game has outweigh the good and that’s a shame because there’s a good game here, it just feels like it needed more time in development to shine.