I was really hyped for Signalis, as someone who grew up playing the classic Resident Evil games and a bit of Silent Hill this looked like a return to form for old school survival horror and... I guess it is, but it's also got a lot of annoying stuff.
Getting the good out of the way first, the atmosphere is pitch perfect, it has this really cool cyberpunk look to it but also with pretty clear Silent Hill influences. The constant darkness, the top down view and the cool 32 bit look also help set the mood. The enemies could be more imaginative but the sound design for them makes you dread every encounter with them, and the implementation of the crimson head system from the RE1 remake is also a pretty welcomed addition, even if they give you really few items to deal with them. Last but not least, the puzzles are perfect, they have a perfect difficulty and the use of the radio for some of them is pretty fun.
That being said, this game has some huge problems, at least for me because everyone seems to love it. First and foremost, the inventory. Only having six item slots is a pain in the ass, you're already going to be carrying at least four essential items all the time, so when you pick puzzle items or ammo for another gun you're probably going to have to go to the nearest chest to leave something and then go back. It's really annoying and completely breaks the pacing for me, and it could have been easily solved by having eight slots and making the secondary items like the flashlight go into its own separate slot. The shooting is also really bad, I guess that it's pretty responsive in PC but in consoles the right joystick moves your character in 180 degrees with a light push, so when you are finally aiming at your target it has already taken a quarter of your health. Also some of the latter locations don't have a map, which isn't really a problem for the first one but the second one is labyrinthic as hell. I guess that they made it that way to make you feel lost and subsequently scared but it just annoys me to no end. Also I'm not a fan of the story being told in this impossibly cryptic way, I'm ok with reading files to expand the lore but even then I couldn't understand barely anything here.
So yeah, Signalis is definitely not for me, but if you are a fan of survival horror and don't think you'll have a problem with this game, by all means play it. I may sound like I didn't like it at all but there's a lot of talent put here, and who knows maybe it will make this great genre have a comeback with new IPs, which I really hope for.
Getting the good out of the way first, the atmosphere is pitch perfect, it has this really cool cyberpunk look to it but also with pretty clear Silent Hill influences. The constant darkness, the top down view and the cool 32 bit look also help set the mood. The enemies could be more imaginative but the sound design for them makes you dread every encounter with them, and the implementation of the crimson head system from the RE1 remake is also a pretty welcomed addition, even if they give you really few items to deal with them. Last but not least, the puzzles are perfect, they have a perfect difficulty and the use of the radio for some of them is pretty fun.
That being said, this game has some huge problems, at least for me because everyone seems to love it. First and foremost, the inventory. Only having six item slots is a pain in the ass, you're already going to be carrying at least four essential items all the time, so when you pick puzzle items or ammo for another gun you're probably going to have to go to the nearest chest to leave something and then go back. It's really annoying and completely breaks the pacing for me, and it could have been easily solved by having eight slots and making the secondary items like the flashlight go into its own separate slot. The shooting is also really bad, I guess that it's pretty responsive in PC but in consoles the right joystick moves your character in 180 degrees with a light push, so when you are finally aiming at your target it has already taken a quarter of your health. Also some of the latter locations don't have a map, which isn't really a problem for the first one but the second one is labyrinthic as hell. I guess that they made it that way to make you feel lost and subsequently scared but it just annoys me to no end. Also I'm not a fan of the story being told in this impossibly cryptic way, I'm ok with reading files to expand the lore but even then I couldn't understand barely anything here.
So yeah, Signalis is definitely not for me, but if you are a fan of survival horror and don't think you'll have a problem with this game, by all means play it. I may sound like I didn't like it at all but there's a lot of talent put here, and who knows maybe it will make this great genre have a comeback with new IPs, which I really hope for.