I spent the last week playing the Respiratory Pathogen DLC for Meatspace. I thought I should share some notes.
The good: Out of all the actions in the base moveset, sneezing is one of the most fun to execute and yet the most overlooked. In most levels you'll find yourself using it a grand total of zero times. The DLC finally gives you an opportunity to use sneeze more often.
You'd think that doing slow, constant AoE damage to nearby allies would be a bad thing, and on net I think it still is, but having to go a full week turning down anything that involved being indoors with others forced me to tackle a bunch of side quests around the house that I've been neglecting. On Sunday I finally got around to finishing the infamous "Clean Out the Fridge" quest. Nobody ever has time for that.
The bad: SO MUCH. It feels like the DLC was rushed out without nearly enough time for playtesting. The "runny nose" mechanic is especially half-baked. I think it was meant to make it harder to keep others safe if you choose to attempt any social interactions, but if you're self-isolating it just makes it hard to sleep. Disabling the mechanic when you're lying down would have been such an obvious QoL improvement. I don't know how nobody thought of it before release.
The elephant in the room is that, though the ultimate goal of the quest is to build out enough cells in your adaptive immune system that they kill viruses faster than they can spawn, there is absolutely ZERO user interface for controlling or even showing the process. It's like playing an idle game where you can't see the progress bar. Theoretically actions like "get enough sleep" are supposed to help, but it's really unsatisfying when I don't get feedback on their effects.
Overall: I'd rate Respiratory Pathogen at about 3/10. It's by far not the worst DLC that Meatspace has put out, but it's only really worth playing if you've already completed all the main quests and have literally nothing else to do. Do not recommend.
Published 2024-12-13