This game could go down as one of the all-time greats of the survival horror genre. I absolutely adored its general visual style (though the pretty anime eyes of the characters sometimes detracted from certain scenes), the music, the worldbuilding, and the story.
However, while I think the gameplay is, from a purely mechanical standpoint, solid and a great translation of the oldschool RE formula to the modern day, I think the game is just too damn janky in execution. Full disclosure; I played this game on a Dualshock 4 on PC with Xbox Gamepass. For all I know some of these issues come from that, but I don't know for sure. I would be entirely unsurprised if these issues stemmed from Xbox's absolute dogshit app. If it turns out these issues are caused by my setup or the launcher I'm using, then I hope this review can at least serve as a showcase of how much Xbox Gamepass can absolutely butcher the experience of otherwise great games.
The amount of damage I took in this game because of glitches, weird item interactions and aiming bugginess is like, way too much for me to ignore. The game seems to be super finicky in terms of what angle and distance you need to be from an item/door to interact with it. Many times, I ended up taking a bunch of damage because I wasn't facing a door at the exact right angle to go through it, or because I was fighting the controls to pick up the key item I needed in a room. Other glitches included enemies disappearing completely as I shot at them, sub-items such as the stunprod not activating when I hit the button, enemies attacking me mid-reload animation and leaving me unsure if the weapon actually reloaded, and missing shots despite being locked on, or sometimes failing to lock-on at all despite the gun being pointed at the enemy.
On the non-technical side of things I really only have one flaw; I think the inventory management crosses a line in this game. The amount of items being handed out to you is WAY too many for only 6 inventory slots, especially considering some puzzles require up to 6 puzzle components to be solved. I don't think anything would've been lost bumping the inventory limit to 8, and also making items like the eye camera and flashlight permanent upgrades rather than physical items in your inventory. I'm all for item management, and think it's an integral part to the experience of games like this, but I think for Signalis, it became more of an annoyance rather than a tense, strategic part of the core gameplay.
I REALLY hope these issues are exclusive to my machine or the Gamepass app because if they are I will go buy some other version and replay it immediately. It could be one of the best horror games I've ever played, but as it stands now it's an enjoyable, but deeply flawed game.
However, while I think the gameplay is, from a purely mechanical standpoint, solid and a great translation of the oldschool RE formula to the modern day, I think the game is just too damn janky in execution. Full disclosure; I played this game on a Dualshock 4 on PC with Xbox Gamepass. For all I know some of these issues come from that, but I don't know for sure. I would be entirely unsurprised if these issues stemmed from Xbox's absolute dogshit app. If it turns out these issues are caused by my setup or the launcher I'm using, then I hope this review can at least serve as a showcase of how much Xbox Gamepass can absolutely butcher the experience of otherwise great games.
The amount of damage I took in this game because of glitches, weird item interactions and aiming bugginess is like, way too much for me to ignore. The game seems to be super finicky in terms of what angle and distance you need to be from an item/door to interact with it. Many times, I ended up taking a bunch of damage because I wasn't facing a door at the exact right angle to go through it, or because I was fighting the controls to pick up the key item I needed in a room. Other glitches included enemies disappearing completely as I shot at them, sub-items such as the stunprod not activating when I hit the button, enemies attacking me mid-reload animation and leaving me unsure if the weapon actually reloaded, and missing shots despite being locked on, or sometimes failing to lock-on at all despite the gun being pointed at the enemy.
On the non-technical side of things I really only have one flaw; I think the inventory management crosses a line in this game. The amount of items being handed out to you is WAY too many for only 6 inventory slots, especially considering some puzzles require up to 6 puzzle components to be solved. I don't think anything would've been lost bumping the inventory limit to 8, and also making items like the eye camera and flashlight permanent upgrades rather than physical items in your inventory. I'm all for item management, and think it's an integral part to the experience of games like this, but I think for Signalis, it became more of an annoyance rather than a tense, strategic part of the core gameplay.
I REALLY hope these issues are exclusive to my machine or the Gamepass app because if they are I will go buy some other version and replay it immediately. It could be one of the best horror games I've ever played, but as it stands now it's an enjoyable, but deeply flawed game.
Reviewed on Jan 07, 2023
smhomg
1 year ago