ICARUS

Icarus Console Edition is a difficult game to crack, but if you're willing to stick with it the rewards help to keep you pressing forward.

Icarus is a truly beautiful experience. The environments – with all their glamor and dangers – are immersive and engaging. Its method of teaching the game may be too thin for those with no survival game experience, but if you stick with it, play the first few missions, and give Icarus a chance, it becomes something more. It’s a quiet period of respite. It’s survival on your terms. Solitude and freedom. Icarus, and especially its Open World mode, can become a cozy game with a few extra challenges if you let it. With an unfortunately lacking tutorial and mildly unfriendly UI, Icarus is surprisingly a great way to unwind after a long day. I’m not much of a survival gamer, but Icarus is quickly becoming a second home.

Icarus: Console Edition isn’t the best console port you’ll come across, but if you’re willing to overlook the technical shortcomings, you’ll find a massive survival game that’s a bit different and eye-catching, and which holds its own against the genre’s top titles.

Icarus arrives on consoles offering a challenging and immersive extraction survival experience, delivering on its promise of a hostile alien world. The deep progression system and varied game modes, including missions, open world, and outposts, provide substantial content. However, the console adaptation suffers from a frustratingly poor interface with a slow cursor and tiny icons, hindering inventory management and crafting. Graphical fidelity is reduced compared to PC, with frame rate drops and texture pop-ins. Cooperative play is highly recommended to mitigate the difficulty.

Icarus has an interesting premise and probably works best on PC, since it was developed with that focus. On consoles, it works, but it may not be ideal for those seeking a faster and more accessible experience. On the other hand, if you want a game that challenges you at every turn and encourages you to constantly improve, Icarus: Console Edition might be exactly what you're looking for.

Icarus arrives on consoles and sets the tone straight away: forget about relaxing strolls; this is a survival game from Dean Hall featuring a magnetic yet ruthless gameplay loop, where devastating storms and ferocious predators will keep you constantly on your toes. Planning every move to survive the relentless environmental physics will give you an unrivalled adrenaline rush. However, be prepared to battle against a technical side that’s still a bit shaky: noticeable frame drops, clunky menus and a truly slow early-game farming phase risk melting your wax wings before their time. Despite these flaws and a bestiary that is at times inconsistent, Icarus remains a fascinating hardcore experience, recommended without reservation to veterans of the genre; novices, however, are warned: the fall could be disastrous.

ICARUS is a good survival game that is held back by the way technology is effectively time-gated behind levelling up. The actual experience of playing is good, provided you can ignore a handful of bugs, deal with the UI, and don't mind burning time for the sake of earning XP.