Luna Abyss Review (PS5)

When I first started playing Luna Abyss, I really wasn’t sure about it. Admittedly, I can be a bit of a snob when it comes to shiny graphics and gameplay feel, and from my first moment with the game, I could tell that Luna Abyss was firmly AA.

However, across my 10+ hours with the game, I was steadily won over by a shooter that impresses not just with its bullet hell gameplay, but its harrowing sci-fi world.

Set on the mysterious Red Moon above Earth, you are Fawkes, a prisoner on Luna with a hefty sentence ahead of them. However, after being selected as a Scout, you are given the opportunity to reduce your sentence by exploring the labyrinth below the Red Moon’s surface, known as The Abyss.

Exploring the Abyss was the first point at which developer Kwalee Labs impressed me. Luna Abyss is far from the best-looking game on PS5, but the way it plays with scale and light will quickly draw you into its sombre sci-fi world.

Enormous chasms fade away into darkness, massive pipes weave their way around like roots, and you fall from unbelievable heights. I was stopped in my tracks several times by haunting vistas, creepy discarded bodies, and harsh lighting.

If you get up close and personal with it all, sure, it’s a little muddy, but I was genuinely impressed by the vibes Kwalee Labs was able to capture. It’s spooky and teeters on the brink of cosmic horror, with disproportionately large spaces.

Then there’s the gameplay, which does start out quite slow. With a squeeze of L2, weapons auto aim, and with very little in the way of evasive manoeuvres, combat feels stale to start.

But then the game introduces a shotgun, which can break blue shields; then there’s a speedy dash and a double jump; a rifle specifically used to break purple shields; and so on. On top of that, every time you face an enemy in some kind of boss-like stage, that enemy is then just thrown into regular combat encounters.

There are various upgrades to health and weapons hidden across its levels that tap into the feeling of escalating power. My primary Scout Rifle was a beast by the end of the playthrough, whereas my Shield Breaker shotgun remained at its base level throughout the whole campaign.

The small nooks and crannies containing these upgrades are easy to miss, so it had me scouring the levels more vigilantly come the end of my time with the game.

As I worked my way into the mid-game, Luna Abyss was playing entirely different from those opening minutes. And as I fought the final boss, it was entirely different again.

There's not a huge selection of weapons or a massive RPG-like skill tree, but Kwalee smartly introduces the new weapons, skills, and enemies that it does have to give Luna Abyss a fantastic, streamlined sense of progression. The whole experience, at least from a gameplay perspective, feels very focused and deliberate because of it.

What started as a somewhat dull shooter experience ended up being as “lock-in” as DOOM. I was grappling around, switching weapons on the fly, while dodging glowing projectiles like in Returnal.

Would I say that it feels quite as nice as games like DOOM: The Dark Ages? No. But the fact that it’s even a question to be asked proves to me that Kwalee has done an excellent job here. It's punching above its weight.

Of course, you aren’t just shooting constantly throughout its campaign. Luna Abyss is speckled with fun little platforming sections, which again expand as you progress. In the latter hours, it starts to play around with everything you’ve learned, and while I never felt that it was too challenging, I had fun jumping, dashing, grappling, possessing, and activating platforms. It actually reminded me of some of the platforming found in Destiny 2.

The main point at which I became a little disenfranchised with the game is its story. Luna Abyss does actually do a decent job of padding out a mysterious, centuries-spanning lore. And the esoteric vibe that it’s going for helps boost that unknowable element of The Abyss as a setting.

You’ll come across various characters in your travels, and here you get to play around with different dialogue choices – although it should be noted that it makes no difference to the outcome of the narrative, from what I could tell.

There are decent enough vocal performances to be found, but the occult nature of the world around you means I never really latched onto any one character, least of all Fawkes or the ominous Aylin that directs your quests. And the conclusion to the narrative I could see coming from a million miles away.

There are also some little weird bits to Luna Abyss. Like Fawkes’ prison cell, which you go back to at the end of each chapter. Here you can go to sleep and read through text logs in the library – despite the fact that these are accessible at any time through your menu anyway.

It came across like these cell segments were supposed to have another aspect to them, but were cut somewhere in the development process. Each time you say to Aylin that you want to go back into The Abyss, she’ll ask if you’re sure, but there’s literally nothing else to do here if you’re all read up in the text logs. It may be nitpicky, but these segments always felt super clunky to me.

I spent my time with Luna Abyss on both the base PS5 and PS5 Pro, with no discernible difference between the two. Basic vibrations leave the DualSense controller under-utilised, but steady performance across both consoles lets that hectic gameplay sing.

Again, by no means is it the best-looking game, and there are moments where it almost looks last-gen, but every now and again, it’ll catch your breath with its ominous sense of scale.