ELEX is an interesting game. It's set on Magalan, a planet that is similar to Earth... but not Earth, with similar technological advancement as what we have achieved. Then most of the world's technology and civilization is reduced to ruin when a large comet collides with the planet, releasing a new crystalline element, Elex, which corrupts and poisons nature, but can be used to advance technology. The end result is a strange world littered with the ruins of modern technology and inhabited by diverse factions, including: the Berserkers - a primitive people who eschew all technology as evil, but have learned to use Elex to repair nature and to gain magical abilities; the Clerics - a faction that has built a religion on regaining the lost technological knowledge; the Albs - a Borg-like faction that applies Elex-borne technology into their very being, becoming cold, calculating and machine-like enhanced "hybrids"; and the "Outlaws" - a faction of scavengers without laws that will do anything to get ahead. And those are just the factions you can join. There's also Reavers, marauding bandits who can't be reasoned with, and the mutants who have been changed by the poisons from the comet, leaving zombie-like monsters who, again, can't be reasoned with. Of course, there are some pretty nasty creatures running around, as well: weird, glowing amphibian creatures the size of large dogs, mammal-esque things that look like something between a bear and a cat and varieties of dinosaur-ish creatures, to boot.

The environment is richly-detailed, with destroyed cars and tanks, wooden forts and future-tech fortresses, a variety of flora and fauna and various factions that, mostly, want to kill you. The map is large (okay, not Skyrim large, but still...), giving you a lot to explore, which is cool. The music is okay and the voicework is wooden, in places, but generally pretty good. Sadly, the sound balancing is just messed up. There are times that you'll be in a conversation with a character and the music will ramp up really loud or the voice will drop really quiet, leaving you reading the closed captions onscreen. You can make it a bit better by turning the music down some in the settings, but it's still a problem.

There are a couple of graphical glitches that I noticed that, once seen, could not be ignored. If you would rather not read about them in the hopes that you won't notice them, feel free to skip to Gameplay now. Seriously. This isn't a "spoiler," per se, but it's some annoyances you might not want to know about. If you're still reading, the two things that annoyed me the most were the facial shading caused by helmets, which has lag in its movement, so as the warrior moves his head around, the shading effect slides around the guy's face very unrealistically, and one female shopkeeper in Goliet has some sort of bug with the physics of her right breast (so on the left as you face her), which, instead of simply swaying a bit if she shifts around a bit, seems to have a mind of its own and, at times, seems to be browsing about the store while you talk to her. More than a little unnerving. And, again, these things are impossible to "unsee." Still, the graphics, overall, are acceptable and when staring out across the vista from a great height, can be quite beautiful.

Playing the game, I found myself thinking of Skyrim and Fallout, with third-person free-exploration in a post-apocalyptic world. Unlike Skyrim, however, there doesn't appear to be a limit to how much you can carry. I roamed around the countryside picking up anything that wasn't nailed down (well, forbidden, anyway) and gathering all the plants I could and I never had any adverse effects from my attempted over-encumbrance. While this might not be realistic, it's one of the unrealistic simplifications I prefer to have in games I play; if you're going to put me in a game that might require me to make use of a broken bottle and a bent wrench at some point, don't make me have to choose between carrying those and another weapon. ELEX's approach of "sure, you can carry that, too" allows me to attempt to collect them all, while keeping me in the dark as to the possible value of things I encounter.

In addition to trying to pick up everything you encounter and sticking it in your pocket, there are mission givers, as you might expect, from which you can take on quests and complete them to earn XP and level up, raising the stats you feel add to your character build in progress. Oh, on that... as soon as you get your hands on a weapon that you might want to use, check and see what its stat requirements are and keep that in mind as you level up your character. I found myself walking around with a weapon that required a 45 Constitution score. When I had an 18. So, um, yeah, I'm glad I can carry everything at the same time...

Instead of creating a character, ELEX puts you in the role of Jax, an Alb on a mission in the faction war, but you find yourself shot down by your own brother, Kallax, and left for dead. When you wake, your armor is gone and you're left with nothing but a metal pipe as a weapon and the Elex has drained from your system. For the first time in your life, you experience emotions and have the ability to make your own decisions. And, for the first time, you experience the other factions in the vastness of the world, with the opportunity to evaluate them for yourself and choose which faction you want to join - or whether you want to go it alone.

Okay, no. Don't go it alone. You need weapons. And armor. And companions with weapons and armor. The beginning of the game is really difficult. Luckily, you do get your jet pack back very early on in the game, which can be used to access hard-to-reach areas and can keep you from dying on unexpectedly long drops. A couple of firings of your (rapidly replenishing) jet pack can make the difference between no damage and an untimely death. I would advise working toward getting Duras to join you at least to start.

Okay, so about death... It's not that permanent in ELEX. Yes, your story comes to an abrupt end, but it's not an MMO and the autosave feature is pretty decent. Additionally, there is a "Quick Save" feature that can save your game to your currently active Game Save and then let you get back into the game in a short amount of time; it only takes three keystrokes to Quick Save and return to your game. If you're not overly frustrated by dying (a lot) and you're fine with simply reloading the game and trying something new, that drops the difficulty in the overall view, I suppose. No matter how badly you foul things up, you can load one of your many saves and pick it back up.

Two bits of advice I would give to prospective players would be to get really proficient with the jet pack and use the fact that creatures in the environment will attack each other. It's difficult to get your hands on good armor, but it makes things much easier if you can get your enemies to fight each other.

With difficulty in obtaining good armor, a diverse variety of weapons and armor to choose from, seriously vicious creatures and neighbors, and decision trees that have lasting effects on your gameplay, ELEX is definitely a creep-and-save sort of game. If you don't like that sort of gameplay, you're likely going to take issue with at least one of these aspects of the game. If you're not adverse to saving your game at a few pivotal points and then reloading a few times to see what outcome you prefer, or to try something again if it didn't turn out as you hoped, then ELEX offers hours of fun.

If you get to the point that you have an A.I. companion fighting by your side, things get much easier and, as I mentioned above, it can be rewarding to learn to introduce your enemies to each other and let them whittle each other down. In fact, I greatly enjoyed long stints of doing exactly that... trying over and over until I got some creatures I couldn't hope to stand up against to wipe out an entire settlement of enemies, then go loot the bodies after the smoke had cleared. Fun times.

If that sounds like fun to you, I highly recommend ELEX. It's not for everyone, but for those who find this intriguing, there are hours and hours of interesting gameplay to be had.