this one seems to have garnered a fair bit of praise from indie horror fans upon its release in 2019, but after spending a few hours playing it, I'm honestly not sure why. Sure, a sci-fi take on Norse mythology is novel territory for a horror game (though not for gaming in general, though surely nobody likes to be reminded of Too Human), but otherwise, it's just dull all around: from the level design, to the exposition dumps, to the enemy design, to the unenjoyable stealth mechanics, to the "shoot green energy" mechanic for environmental interaction. Save points can be fairly far apart too, which is frustrating when enemies kill you quickly (even on easy difficulty) or you accidentally stumble into into a bottomless pit. Recommend playing these devs' previous horror game, Unforgiving: A Northern Hymn, instead.
fun story and setting with an though open but still rewarding ending
Great sound design & soundtracks.
Good Gameplay.
The horror was really good.
The final boss fight was underwhelming.
7/10.
Good Gameplay.
The horror was really good.
The final boss fight was underwhelming.
7/10.
This review contains spoilers
Let's say that this game is pretty competent in what it wants to do. Looking at steam tags I expected a bit more of horrory shooty pew pew fun but instead got some kind of adventure game that delves into Nordic mythos to tell its story.
Gameplay-wise we run, we jump, we sometimes shoot and we get exploded by every single enemy who manages to touch you like they got a bubonic plague (only highest difficulty). Which actually got silly after I found out that spooky scary spider monsters cant get you if you stand on a railing ten centimeters above ground level. Oh, we also sometimes play dodge the chilling eye-spotlight with giant dudes. Other than that we mainly walk through ventilation shafts and metal corridors soaking that amazing level design.
The setting is pretty cool though. Humanity opened portals to eight other worlds and everything gone to shit because people started looting other worlds and kill its inhabitants because fuck'em, we want that shiny thing they are holding.
Design-wise all living things are pretty good. Skin-flayed husks, chestbursting-spider-demon ridden sinners, biomass doggy are cool. Was that Jormungand worm? Too bad we didn't see more. Level design though is shit. Considering almost all the time we are in the dark, only thing we see is metal corridors of different sizes. Sometimes it's ice corridors. And sometimes it's just pitch black like you fell into someone's asshole. It's just uninspiring and tiring.
Can't say anything about music. It was there, but I remember nothing of it.
Note: I noticed that I forget a lot of stories some time later so I will kind of start retelling the plot from this note on. It will always be in cursive at the end so you can easily skip it. Obviously it will contain spoilers.
So we wake up on an operating table with angry looking light bulb telling us to open boxes and rotate some cubes as an IQ test. After that we get viking vision and start to see in the dark and glyphs. We then go through a lot of maintenance shafts to arrive in Niflheim and die like a bitch we are. But we got saved by a CEO of burp corp who tells us there is an apocalypse going on outside because Yggdrasil is spreading its roots all over the world and we need to find three keys to insert them into an Apsulov tablet to stop it all. During that we find out that the angry light bulb is a "Ghost in the Machine" who appeared after humanity opened the portal to world other than Midgard. We also find out that when we die we travel to Ether where this Ghost resides and then revive. CEO tells us he suspects this Ghost is actually Loki and after inserting last key this confirms, he also suspects that we could be incarnation of Hel, Loki's daughter. Turned out, inserting the keys into the tablet only made things worse and actually freed Loki and opened all doors for nine worlds to merge. Loki then proceeds to kill us and we wake up in Niflheim. But little did he know that we were attending Kratos' school of not dying and just went back into Midgard. We found CEO man lying on the floor in two parts who we then transfer into a magic ball and move on to find something that could kill Loki. We get back into Niflheim, walk the pass and arrive before the corpse of Hel, ruler of the underworld. We then consume her power and reawake Niflheim, which was lying dormant all those eons. And that power could kill Loki. After last boss fight with our father we choose the ending.
Ending 1: we kill Loki and start ruling underworld again preparing for worlds merging.
Ending 2: we side with Loki and he becomes ruler of all worlds. Then we happily travel all around with dad.
Gameplay-wise we run, we jump, we sometimes shoot and we get exploded by every single enemy who manages to touch you like they got a bubonic plague (only highest difficulty). Which actually got silly after I found out that spooky scary spider monsters cant get you if you stand on a railing ten centimeters above ground level. Oh, we also sometimes play dodge the chilling eye-spotlight with giant dudes. Other than that we mainly walk through ventilation shafts and metal corridors soaking that amazing level design.
The setting is pretty cool though. Humanity opened portals to eight other worlds and everything gone to shit because people started looting other worlds and kill its inhabitants because fuck'em, we want that shiny thing they are holding.
Design-wise all living things are pretty good. Skin-flayed husks, chestbursting-spider-demon ridden sinners, biomass doggy are cool. Was that Jormungand worm? Too bad we didn't see more. Level design though is shit. Considering almost all the time we are in the dark, only thing we see is metal corridors of different sizes. Sometimes it's ice corridors. And sometimes it's just pitch black like you fell into someone's asshole. It's just uninspiring and tiring.
Can't say anything about music. It was there, but I remember nothing of it.
Note: I noticed that I forget a lot of stories some time later so I will kind of start retelling the plot from this note on. It will always be in cursive at the end so you can easily skip it. Obviously it will contain spoilers.
So we wake up on an operating table with angry looking light bulb telling us to open boxes and rotate some cubes as an IQ test. After that we get viking vision and start to see in the dark and glyphs. We then go through a lot of maintenance shafts to arrive in Niflheim and die like a bitch we are. But we got saved by a CEO of burp corp who tells us there is an apocalypse going on outside because Yggdrasil is spreading its roots all over the world and we need to find three keys to insert them into an Apsulov tablet to stop it all. During that we find out that the angry light bulb is a "Ghost in the Machine" who appeared after humanity opened the portal to world other than Midgard. We also find out that when we die we travel to Ether where this Ghost resides and then revive. CEO tells us he suspects this Ghost is actually Loki and after inserting last key this confirms, he also suspects that we could be incarnation of Hel, Loki's daughter. Turned out, inserting the keys into the tablet only made things worse and actually freed Loki and opened all doors for nine worlds to merge. Loki then proceeds to kill us and we wake up in Niflheim. But little did he know that we were attending Kratos' school of not dying and just went back into Midgard. We found CEO man lying on the floor in two parts who we then transfer into a magic ball and move on to find something that could kill Loki. We get back into Niflheim, walk the pass and arrive before the corpse of Hel, ruler of the underworld. We then consume her power and reawake Niflheim, which was lying dormant all those eons. And that power could kill Loki. After last boss fight with our father we choose the ending.
Ending 1: we kill Loki and start ruling underworld again preparing for worlds merging.
Ending 2: we side with Loki and he becomes ruler of all worlds. Then we happily travel all around with dad.
Really good Viking horror game, if you love Silent Hill 3 especially. I recommend playing this game a ton.
Only negative I have is some bad voice acting but horror games not having bad vc is extremely rare to find.
Only negative I have is some bad voice acting but horror games not having bad vc is extremely rare to find.
a fun linear sci-fi experience with a norse twist! i really cant say anything about it, it was a good game and I'm glad I gave it a few hours of my time to play
An alright, at some time freaky, walking simulator. Was better than expected! Ambience and music was awesome!
I’m starting to see more and more games use Norse mythology and ditching Greek mythology. With games like God of War, Greek mythology was pretty much beaten to death in gaming, and ironically, with the new God of War Norse mythology has made a comeback, and I also believe this has a lot to do with the Marvel Avengers movies. You play as a person who belongs in this Norse realm resurrected by a scientist and you end up running around finding RFID keys, skulls, and upgrades for your arm.
Apsulov is a first-person horror adventure with a little bit of first-person action tossed in. This scientific base created around The World Tree is your main area and all you know is that you’re supposed to gather these things for a scientist named Henrick. The RFID keys allow you to access new areas of the base and sometimes you will travel through the roots of the tree to other realms. These few levels consist of mostly action as you run around avoiding ice giants to gather the keys to lock the gate to Helheim. Some areas require stealth as you have to avoid creepy enemies, and then when you get your arm you can shoot them with a charged shot, but upgrades are needed to add more charge. This isn’t very useful at first, but later in the game is becomes essential and then part of the actual story.
The atmosphere in Apsulov is pretty intense and scary with fantastically done ambient sounds of people screaming, squishing, torture, and creature sound designs. I wasn’t so much creeped out, but incredibly tense through most sequences. The base does become a bit disorienting after a while as you actually do a lot of backtracking after the first half of the game is over and you will need to enter areas multiple times. Towards the end, this gets really annoying as you know you just went through this area and it’s either slightly altered or you have to creep past the same enemies again. I also didn’t like that when you die you are brought to some room where you must insert two orbs into a socket to open a portal. The problem is that Loki is running around here ready to get you and once you pick up and orb you can’t run. You have to sneak around trying to get these things and if Loki gets you it’s back to the last save point. If you get both orbs in than you can pick up right where you died. A really strange system for sure, and I didn’t like it at all. Most of the time I just opted to restart from the save.
There aren’t any boss fights except for the final boss which is actually pretty fun and makes good use of the arm. I did feel more powerful toward the end of the game and it made the ending pretty satisfying with an obvious hint at a possible sequel. I also didn’t quite understand the story until the last 30 minutes when everything comes together. The game is really bad at delivering pieces of the story until this point and it makes playing seem somewhat pointless as audio logs tell you what’s happening around you, but not what your purpose is. I wish this could have been spread about more as the game only lasts 4-5 hours. I also felt the arm upgrades were useless as the ending changes the way your arm is used and all the upgrades are meaningless. Even if you got all the upgrades (I was short 2) it only allows one extra charged shot and you still can’t take down more than that as you must find a charging station or charging pods to refill your arm.
Outside of these minor issues, Apsulov is an interesting adventure game that really uses the Norse mythology well. I just wish it didn’t only matter in the final moments of the game as the previous 4 hours felt pointless. I also never connected to any of the characters as they just weren’t written very well, especially myself. The dialog is just a little sterile and when the game ended I knew I would quickly forget about this game in a few days. The story isn’t even all that great despite making sense towards the end. With constant backtracking, a shooting mechanic that just doesn’t ever feel right, Apsulov falls a bit short from becoming a sleeper hit or even game of the year material, but adventure game fans will love this.
Apsulov is a first-person horror adventure with a little bit of first-person action tossed in. This scientific base created around The World Tree is your main area and all you know is that you’re supposed to gather these things for a scientist named Henrick. The RFID keys allow you to access new areas of the base and sometimes you will travel through the roots of the tree to other realms. These few levels consist of mostly action as you run around avoiding ice giants to gather the keys to lock the gate to Helheim. Some areas require stealth as you have to avoid creepy enemies, and then when you get your arm you can shoot them with a charged shot, but upgrades are needed to add more charge. This isn’t very useful at first, but later in the game is becomes essential and then part of the actual story.
The atmosphere in Apsulov is pretty intense and scary with fantastically done ambient sounds of people screaming, squishing, torture, and creature sound designs. I wasn’t so much creeped out, but incredibly tense through most sequences. The base does become a bit disorienting after a while as you actually do a lot of backtracking after the first half of the game is over and you will need to enter areas multiple times. Towards the end, this gets really annoying as you know you just went through this area and it’s either slightly altered or you have to creep past the same enemies again. I also didn’t like that when you die you are brought to some room where you must insert two orbs into a socket to open a portal. The problem is that Loki is running around here ready to get you and once you pick up and orb you can’t run. You have to sneak around trying to get these things and if Loki gets you it’s back to the last save point. If you get both orbs in than you can pick up right where you died. A really strange system for sure, and I didn’t like it at all. Most of the time I just opted to restart from the save.
There aren’t any boss fights except for the final boss which is actually pretty fun and makes good use of the arm. I did feel more powerful toward the end of the game and it made the ending pretty satisfying with an obvious hint at a possible sequel. I also didn’t quite understand the story until the last 30 minutes when everything comes together. The game is really bad at delivering pieces of the story until this point and it makes playing seem somewhat pointless as audio logs tell you what’s happening around you, but not what your purpose is. I wish this could have been spread about more as the game only lasts 4-5 hours. I also felt the arm upgrades were useless as the ending changes the way your arm is used and all the upgrades are meaningless. Even if you got all the upgrades (I was short 2) it only allows one extra charged shot and you still can’t take down more than that as you must find a charging station or charging pods to refill your arm.
Outside of these minor issues, Apsulov is an interesting adventure game that really uses the Norse mythology well. I just wish it didn’t only matter in the final moments of the game as the previous 4 hours felt pointless. I also never connected to any of the characters as they just weren’t written very well, especially myself. The dialog is just a little sterile and when the game ended I knew I would quickly forget about this game in a few days. The story isn’t even all that great despite making sense towards the end. With constant backtracking, a shooting mechanic that just doesn’t ever feel right, Apsulov falls a bit short from becoming a sleeper hit or even game of the year material, but adventure game fans will love this.
Atmospheric futuristic Norse mythology horror with interesting story and great music? Count me in.
The game is also well-paced and actually lets you move at your own pace and doesn't hinder you with stamina gauges or other annoyances.
There is one bigger fault with the game and that is the enemy AI. Maybe higher difficulties fix it but at normal they are too slow so you can most of the time run past them without much of a problem and this has the side-effect of making them non-scary.
The game is also well-paced and actually lets you move at your own pace and doesn't hinder you with stamina gauges or other annoyances.
There is one bigger fault with the game and that is the enemy AI. Maybe higher difficulties fix it but at normal they are too slow so you can most of the time run past them without much of a problem and this has the side-effect of making them non-scary.