maaaan i really wanted to get into this but its mostly another nah from me. Little Hope still on top, I'm afraid, and its not a high peak! i feel like a lot of people are going to prefer this to the prior episodes bc it doesnt klutzily trauma metaphorize/bad tripify most of its horror away, but it kinda replaces that genre-disinterested sloppiness with several sins i might find even less tolerable. REALLY hated the sanctimonious and frankly gross both sidesy iraq war enemy of my enemy shit starring a truly heinous and visually indistinct cast that's not even fun to root against. sadly the legitimately fun stunt-casting of Ashley Tisdale is mostly wasted, as her role feels pretty joyless and minor and whatever happened with her wonky bobblehead character model animation is deeply rude to her tbh!! still some camp value to be derived from her wannabe The Descent cosplay bits but eh). The creature design is a huge step down from Little Hope in terms of conceptual inventiveness and setpiece choreo imo, and all the relationship/personality stat mechanics are back to feeling mostly pointless and unintegrated into anything structurally valuable. The pacing might also be the worst in the series... after a splattery and fun enough second act closer, the game totally flatlines during its pre-finale with some awful and overlong attempts at relationship building/EXPLORATION OF "THEMES", and the plodding infodumpery is just a mess. Pretty sure the overall playtime is comparable to the rest of the series at around 4-5 hrs, but the group i was playing with all got so fatigued at this point that any atmosphere completely deflated and things really began to feel bloated and tiresome. The whole escape/epilogue is an enormous whatever.
Idk, at this point it feels fair to say that doing a one year production cycle for these wildly ambitious, modular, and asset intensive games is unrealistic and borderline harmful to the team--I am rooting for this corny lil studio and think theres a lot of talent here but its clear they're not being given the time to script, sequence, and execute any of these potentially fun ideas with the care they deserve. Cant imagine the stress Covid placed on top of this already untenable work pipeline! Its just awful to think about and I feel bad even critizing something that so clearly suffers from being a product of directorial ignorance and project management bordering on abuse. I still value this series as enjoyable enough little spectator-friendly B games to get drunk and play through with friends--its still a rather untapped niche and this team does have an undeniable signature I find charming despite it all--and I might be being especially hard on this one bc the character i played literally did almost nothing aside from that snoozeville "breathe slowly and dont get detected" button press minigame for the entire story! Still leagues better than man of medan even so. I really recommend that anyone with brain worms like me who still inexplicably wants to endure each installment of this series check out Supermassive's way less visible murder mystery side game Hidden Agenda because, while still a mess in many ways, its absolutely superior to any of these!
Idk, at this point it feels fair to say that doing a one year production cycle for these wildly ambitious, modular, and asset intensive games is unrealistic and borderline harmful to the team--I am rooting for this corny lil studio and think theres a lot of talent here but its clear they're not being given the time to script, sequence, and execute any of these potentially fun ideas with the care they deserve. Cant imagine the stress Covid placed on top of this already untenable work pipeline! Its just awful to think about and I feel bad even critizing something that so clearly suffers from being a product of directorial ignorance and project management bordering on abuse. I still value this series as enjoyable enough little spectator-friendly B games to get drunk and play through with friends--its still a rather untapped niche and this team does have an undeniable signature I find charming despite it all--and I might be being especially hard on this one bc the character i played literally did almost nothing aside from that snoozeville "breathe slowly and dont get detected" button press minigame for the entire story! Still leagues better than man of medan even so. I really recommend that anyone with brain worms like me who still inexplicably wants to endure each installment of this series check out Supermassive's way less visible murder mystery side game Hidden Agenda because, while still a mess in many ways, its absolutely superior to any of these!