Exo One Review – Meditative Interplanetary Journey (PS5)

Exo One is, as it turns out, a game that’s come to represent moments in my life that have been uncertain or shaky in a sense. When it first showed up on my radar back in 2021 when it came out for PC and Xbox, I was drawn to it by the visuals and I was partly curious if the laptop I was gaming on at the time was even going to be able to handle it, so I jumped at the chance. It turned out to be one of the gaming highlights of the year for me.

At the time I considered that there weren’t many titles that you could just play for the sake of playing them, and not necessarily because of a set goal or something more like an objective to it, and that that feel was probably why I was regarding it so highly. And while I still believe that for the most part, in hindsight, I probably failed to realize how the whole Exo One experience draws you inward while you are playing it and how it just creates an environment in which your thoughts start thriving and evolving. Playing it this time around for their PS5 release have put a lot of things into perspective, and I found myself immersed once again in the interplanetary search for meaning, feeling I was greeting one of those friends you knew for a day years and years ago and they are just as cool this time around.

Exo One is now available for PS4 and PS5 for USD $16.99.

Story – Not Your Focus

I’ll get this out of the way right away: Story is not why you play Exo One. Not that there isn’t one, but the storytelling is minimal and minimalist both in presentation and in structure. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you are the type of player that absolutely must have a reason or a justification to shoot your enemies or to go from point A to point B and would rather not have to fill in huge blanks left in there intentionally, then this one is going to be a hard sale for you. 

There is a story, in the sense of a background to the exploration and the flying around you are doing, which is the meat of the game. It is related to a certain incident referred to as the “Jupiter Disaster” in which an alien signal sent the blueprints for a spacecraft that humanity then built. But this is just a backdrop, and did it happen within the last decade or the last century or the last millennia? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Very light exposition to the background story

You take control of this ship in a non-descript window of time where it’s flying from planet to planet. While navigating these alien landscapes, using gravity to your advantage and to build momentum, there will be some pieces of exposition delivered in these kind of flashbacks in a non-language, so you’ll have to rely on the subtitles to know what was said. 

I still get the feeling that this language is lost in the game, and you can’t really make up any actual words, making everything sound like muffled moans and grumps, because you are somehow hearing the words as the ship itself heard them, so because it didn’t know the language, the words are lost, but the meaning remained. If this is the case, could this ship, this Exo One, be sentient to an extent?

Gameplay – Sweet and Improved

Back in 2021 I referred to the gameplay portion of my review as “Carrying the Game”. This is still pretty much spot on. I would not dare to say that I know what Exbleative had in mind when setting out to make this title, but I would feel confident in betting they wanted a heavily Journey inspired sci-fi game that was indeed all about the gameplay and the movement core loop. 

Breaking the sound barrier on a dip

And if that was the case, I’d have to say they definitely hit the mark. While you are navigating through this worlds, it’s all about movement and gravity. You can use the joystick to move forward or in any direction, but the star of the show is the gravity control you get with the gravity button. Press it to increase gravity’s effect on you and drop down slopes, to then release the button at the right moment so you can sore above the ground. Then use the glider button to morph into a disc and glide and gain more distance for as long as you can before energy runs out and you start falling down again. 

In time, you’ll learn to time the effects to make you fly higher and longer, or to make you fall harder and faster, all in order to build momentum and reach the mysterious beam of light in the distance that will turn out to be a cannon, ready to launch you to the next planet. ¿What kind of terrain and effects will this one have?

Reaching the launch cannon

The main difference in this new version of the game has to be the DualSense controller and its implementation. I’d be lying if I said I remember specifically if the controller I used back in my original review ever rumbled, but I don’t think it did. With the DualSense, you can almost feel every crevice and crack on the ground as you roll in it. You can feel the gravity pushing back in the trigger and you can hear the sound barrier being broken in the integrated speaker in the controller. All of which helps immerse you even more into the experience.

The only caveat or gripe I have with the PS5 version is that there were very few occasions where the game would jitter awkwardly when hitting the ground hard or when breaking the sound barrier or when something sudden and violent like that happened on screen. And these were not on purpose like other “glitching” effects you can see as you move on in the world. These were very real and jarring to the experience, but I did only encounter something like that 3 or 4 times.

Graphics and Sound – Slightly Improved

the graphics and sounds were also a high light of my original experience back in 2021. And that was even playing on a small laptop screen at the time, with some fairly decent headphones. Exo One continues to be, to this day, a marvelous audiovisual delight that I wasn’t expecting them to improve upon. 

However, when I was in the game, it did seem like there was likely a certain polish to some of the textures, which I noticed initially in the Exo One itself when I was gliding in disc form, how it looked a lot more texturized than I remembered it being. 

Always something to look at

Paying some more attention after this, I started to notice some other areas where they likely did some light improving, that went a long long way. For instance the water in the aquatic planet, and how it looked so life-like at the distance or while you are skipping on it like a thrown rock in a river, but also how the big drops looked up close when they erupted like a geyser, almost cartoonish, creating a curious juxtaposition that works incredibly well. 

The sound department does not fall behind. A masterfully crafted audio experience awaits you in Exo One if you are one to be patient and let it come to you. The sound effects of the ball hitting against or rolling on different surfaces or the gliding in different gravities, or the sound of the different worlds shifting and suffering cataclysms while you are on them, it all works in sync with the long silences and the soulful sci-fi electric guitar tones to deliver a rather unique experience. As I did in 2021, I recommend a good pair of headphones and a good screen to squeeze everything Exo One has to offer.

Beautifully crafter alien worlds

All in all, this game is a must if you want an experience that will draw you in so deeply and so seamlessly that you’ll soon be completely alone with your thoughts while you are navigating these beautiful worlds. Maybe you are someone that wants to meditate but can’t stay put and do nothing? Give this title a go. Or maybe you played Journey back in the day and have been looking for something similar? Definitely give it a try. If you need your games to be hyper active and action-oriented (which is also great) then this one’s probably not for you.

Exo One was reviewed on PS5, with a key provided by All in! Games.