CN: Mild references to Suicide
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Amazing gunplay, great environments. One thing that I don't think is brought up when talking about this game is that, at least for me, its sort of the perfect modernization of arcade games. You spend every level surviving and picking up tapes that you have to listen through, and if you get shot once you get demoted to the last level, but with the random generation of rooms, tape, guns, and enemy spawns it's not guaranteed you'll get to where you were before, backsliding is completely possible. The dressing to disguise the more arcadey nature of this is a serious discussion of guns, suicidality, and a very thinly spread out narrative of people being trapped in a virtual system told slowly through notes and pickups, which you can only piece together after 100s of attempts.
The reality is that you'll probably hear the tapes dozens of times over which is one of the reasons why it makes out that its trying to hypnotize you, with really crisp audio in comparison to the first game. This is no accident, in fact there's a moment where if you explore the main area for long enough you can find an arcade cabinet for Receiver 1, its aware of its game design relationship here. In fact each level threshold takes around the amount of time, 15 minutes or so, that you would probably expect the average person to spend invested at an arcade. For 4 tapes it can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes depending on how soon they spawn, eventually you'll know the spawn placements of them but never whether they are actually in a building or not. This fact is further intensified by the fact that you can replay the game with a larger narrative surrounding it, 'beating' the game doesn't mean never playing it again.
While some people may see the tone as hamfisted in places, with how dramatic many of the audio logs are and how a few of them are cries of the suicidal, I think the fact it can juggle a more haunting tone with how breezy gameplay can be is no easy feat and contrary to that opinion I think it works well as a sort of unique insidious tone. You can run fast in this game, REALLY FAST, but it requires tapping the button forward over and over again. You can snipe enemies as soon as you see them out of the sky, and they make a really cathartic crunchy crash sound when the flying drones fall. The gun preparation and tension of leaning around walls leads up to moments where you can shoot as if you're playing 1 of those carnival shooting games. Still the pace is also methodical, theres more fear here than in most horror games. The jumpscare of being gunned by the turrets or chased by the flying drones is unparalleled and it somehow keeps that intensity after many hours of play. On the flip side the arcadey nature allows you to get into its 'flow state' more which fits the nature of what the game is trying to convey about how guns in media have become normalized.
Reciever 2 specifically utilizes RNG and a fail state to great effect, transforming it into a game that you can play for hours or plug and play once or twice a night. Really have to give it to the sound design team because every noise in this thing, the hums the shots the cracks the running all sound incredible. The lighting is great to but if it wasn't for that incredible sound design this wouldn't be half the game this is. High recommend for audiophiles.
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Amazing gunplay, great environments. One thing that I don't think is brought up when talking about this game is that, at least for me, its sort of the perfect modernization of arcade games. You spend every level surviving and picking up tapes that you have to listen through, and if you get shot once you get demoted to the last level, but with the random generation of rooms, tape, guns, and enemy spawns it's not guaranteed you'll get to where you were before, backsliding is completely possible. The dressing to disguise the more arcadey nature of this is a serious discussion of guns, suicidality, and a very thinly spread out narrative of people being trapped in a virtual system told slowly through notes and pickups, which you can only piece together after 100s of attempts.
The reality is that you'll probably hear the tapes dozens of times over which is one of the reasons why it makes out that its trying to hypnotize you, with really crisp audio in comparison to the first game. This is no accident, in fact there's a moment where if you explore the main area for long enough you can find an arcade cabinet for Receiver 1, its aware of its game design relationship here. In fact each level threshold takes around the amount of time, 15 minutes or so, that you would probably expect the average person to spend invested at an arcade. For 4 tapes it can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes depending on how soon they spawn, eventually you'll know the spawn placements of them but never whether they are actually in a building or not. This fact is further intensified by the fact that you can replay the game with a larger narrative surrounding it, 'beating' the game doesn't mean never playing it again.
While some people may see the tone as hamfisted in places, with how dramatic many of the audio logs are and how a few of them are cries of the suicidal, I think the fact it can juggle a more haunting tone with how breezy gameplay can be is no easy feat and contrary to that opinion I think it works well as a sort of unique insidious tone. You can run fast in this game, REALLY FAST, but it requires tapping the button forward over and over again. You can snipe enemies as soon as you see them out of the sky, and they make a really cathartic crunchy crash sound when the flying drones fall. The gun preparation and tension of leaning around walls leads up to moments where you can shoot as if you're playing 1 of those carnival shooting games. Still the pace is also methodical, theres more fear here than in most horror games. The jumpscare of being gunned by the turrets or chased by the flying drones is unparalleled and it somehow keeps that intensity after many hours of play. On the flip side the arcadey nature allows you to get into its 'flow state' more which fits the nature of what the game is trying to convey about how guns in media have become normalized.
Reciever 2 specifically utilizes RNG and a fail state to great effect, transforming it into a game that you can play for hours or plug and play once or twice a night. Really have to give it to the sound design team because every noise in this thing, the hums the shots the cracks the running all sound incredible. The lighting is great to but if it wasn't for that incredible sound design this wouldn't be half the game this is. High recommend for audiophiles.