Latest Routine Review

Scary monsters, beautiful locations, and a story that's sadly lost in space.

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You know it's going to be a bad day when the automated company machine spits my ID badge straight into a forgotten gap under the printer and I have to not just crouch, but really get down amongst the dust and dirt to pick it up.

What is it? Imagine Alien: Isolation and Dead Space had a creepy lunar babyRelease date: Dec 4, 2025Expect to pay: $25/£20Developer: Lunar SoftwarePublisher: Raw FuryReviewed on: Intel Core i7-7700HQ, GTX 1070, 16GB RAMSteam Deck: PlayableLink: Official site

I'm soon wishing ID cards were my biggest problem on this vast, empty moonbase. I'm all alone, the security system seems to take my continued existence as a personal insult, and every screeching skeletal T5 robot in sight will happily relieve my skull of its contents if they catch me.

These Type-05s manage to shred my nerves before they've gone anywhere near my skin. I'm usually alerted to their presence by the distinctive heavy thud of their feet stomping around as they search for me, or the sight of their lasers scanning a dark corridor. They're smart enough to check around corners and open locked doors. The good news (as good as it gets with killer robots) is that only one can be activated by the security system at any time, although this does leave metal husks standing in corridors, waiting for me to dare myself to sneak past, praying this one on standby won't suddenly judder and shake up to its full height.

Routine handles unscripted chases and constant pressure very well, but it's also a smart enough horror game to know when to back off too. Being chased is scary. Classic nightmare fuel. But being constantly chased is actually really annoying. Here I'm always given just enough space to breathe, to get puzzles solved and notes read, to let my guard down enough to incorrectly assume the shape ahead is just a harmless shadow.

Just as I'm never sure how much danger I'm in, I can't ever be sure of how much health I've got either. There's no readout or red haze creeping in around the edge of the screen—I just have to hope I'm going to get grabbed and thrown, rather than grabbed and used to redecorate the nearest wall. In this context, I love this lack of information. My only states are "not dead" an

Source: PC Gamer