Dolmen review – Star Bores

Dead Space meets Dark Souls. That’s it, that’s the pitch right there, which sounds like an honestly terrific mash-up for the basis of Dolmen. Take survival-horror elements, blend them with uncompromising enemies, and sprinkle in those rare moments of triumph where you power through cosmic horror, and you’ve got a recipe for success.

Right?

Right! But not for Dolmen. Where this little slice of sci-fi Soulslike fails isn’t in the idea, but the execution of it. Dolmen is also a pitch-perfect example of when not to launch a Soulslike, as anything in a post-Elden Ring era is just asking for unfair comparisons to what is shaping up to be the best game of 2022 according to critical and audience consensus.

It’s a pity because, at the bare minum, Dolmen, from Brazilian devs Massive Work Studio, certainly ticks the right boxes for a Soulslike… circa 2014. You’ve got your faceless goon, sent in to explore a mining colony that has fallen afoul of some sort of primordial evil brought on by reckless exploration, and you’re equipped with energy shields and melee weapons to help you hack through the mess. There’s even a neat ranged option that lets you pick foes off when you strategically factor in elemental weaknesses to certain high-velocity rounds, setting up the vermin from the void for a finishing blow.

Cycle in some big bastard monsters looking to give your health bar a bigger deficit than the US economy and that should be enough… but it’s not. Dolmen sadly feels clunky with its ideas and mechanics, as the Eurojank stylings make your space warrior throw out swipes and parries that have almost zero feedback. That lack of tactile response–even with the PS5 DualSense proving that it could easily provide it–is made even worse by frequent frame-rate drops and gameplay that chugs along at a glacial pace whenever the screen becomes cluttered.

Another major annoyance is how the game treats its best mechanic as a last resort. Using your gun requires energy from a canister–probably designed by Estus Corp if you get my drift–but you also need energy for everything else, from health to power-ups. With the game being absolutely stingy in giving you energy options and with the frequent consumption of that fuel, you’ll often find yourself frustrated at how useless your sidearm is when facing monsters. This as you desperately hold onto what little energy you have. That quid pro quo mechanic wouldn’t be too bad if the melee options felt rewarding, but a temperamental lock-on camera just makes matters worse.

Smooth gameplay is a prerequisite for any Soulslike when pattern recognition, quick timing, and dodges form the core of the gameplay, and Dolmen falls harder than Steven Seagal’s career in this department. It’s baffling as well because the game isn’t much to look at either. While you could forgive mechanical dips and half-baked gameplay, Dolmen’s presentation is that of a cookie-cutter Soulslike that could hail from the PS3 era.

It’s bland and boring in every sense of the word, a comparison that I haven’t made since I placed Pacific Rim next to its Uprising sequel. In an age where you can get your “Soulslike with a sci-fi twist” kick from the likes of Returnal, or a pair of The Surge games, Dolmen falls tragically short of the mark.

Dolmen is available now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4.