Man, 16 hours sure feels a lot, especially for a horror game that for the first half keeps dropping more and more mystery on top of more mystery. It’s no wonder that I finished several other games in between starting and finishing this (including R&C: Rift Apart and Gravity Rush Remastered)
There are enough reasons for the game to deserve some attention though. From the very first moment, it looks great, with darkly graded atmospheric asylums, cityscapes, and the periphery of a broken city. Even the sewer level is noteworthy for its gooey dark malaise.
The action feels nicely heavy, especially when Sebastian, the player character, tries throwing anything, moving his whole body forward with the inertia, making handling grenades a tricky affair and bottles for stealth perhaps even trickier (though once I managed to figure out the timing and placement of the body, stealth became something I looked forward to).
The shooting has a similar weight to it, which I found to be enjoyable. The weapon selection is limited and mostly ordinary (you’ve got your pistol, your shotgun, your sniper rifle, and, if you’re replaying it, even some assault rifle), with the exception of the crossbow that you can craft different arrows for, but unlike some of the more boring shooters I’ve recently tried, the way the weapons handle here and the natural threat the game instils in every action sequence make up for what they might lack in originality. Perhaps regular weapons even add to the verisimilitude that helps a horror game to be more effective.
They have also managed to strike a good balance in how much ammunition they provide you with, managing to make it always feel as if you have just a bit too little and yet always enough. The ability to craft arrows helps, though considering how difficult and dangerous it is to get the crafting components (often gotten from disarmed traps that sometimes blow up in your face if you disarmed them badly) you always feel like you have to be careful about not wasting them.
The story, concerning mental hospitals and impossible events, made me fear at first the most that it would become another boring “oh, it was all in his mind!”, and while it ultimately certainly has touches of it, it’s done in a way that is somewhat unique and more interesting for it. What’s more, there are no real twists in the narrative, just the slow reveal of the true nature of this nightmarish world. I even became genuinely interested in the story, once the game started providing some answers. Even Sebastian’s backstory which I had scoffed at with the lightly-sexist first note, had me running with glee whenever I saw the tell-tale reddish aura of another note about his past. There were entries in it that as a parent really touched me and made me care more for this one-note character.
Another reason I had to take breaks from the game though is how thoroughly unnerving it can be. It doesn’t spend much time scaring the viewer through disgusting sights or jumpscares (though there are certainly both, especially the first, with some truly impeccable body horror), but there’s a constant sense of dread drenching the whole game. Part of it is due to how vulnerable Sebastian feels. Sure, he’s a strong-bodied hard-jawed macho man who’s pretty damn good with a gun, and yet that’s nothing compared to the army of weird creatures, the way danger can come from anywhere, the simple oppressive atmosphere of the game, or his almost utter impotence when confronted with the uncontrollable nature of his world, even further emphasising his emasculated role. The few times that you feel powerful or safe, for example the mounted gun sequences, are all the more enjoyable for how rare they are.
My biggest problem with the game though is its infatuation with one-hit deaths. Many sequences filled with traps or monsters require you to execute them to near perfection or be sent back to the beginning with an instant death, however much health you might have had. While I might understand the aim (though I’m not sure I do), moments like this quickly become infuriating and, what’s more, they eat away at the sense of dread. If you’re repeating the same moment over and over again, whatever horror you might have felt at first evaporates and it just becomes a mechanical exercise in patterns. A horror sequence repeated is rarely a horror sequence that is effective.
And it’s made even worse by the trial-and-error nature of these moments. The simplest example is not knowing when you’re supposed to fight and when you’re supposed to run, ending with moments where I tried fighting when I was supposed to run (and died a few times, before I understood that this time the insta-death was supposed to be a lesson and not just part of the fight) or spent a long time looking for a way out that didn’t exist. But it’s even more aggravating during puzzles (or boss fights that act as puzzles) where every time you try something new, you might be punished by instant death and the need to repeat everything up to this point in order to try something new.
Oh, and the game has some awful film-style black bars beneath and above the image that I instantly turned off and never regretted.
If there wasn’t as much of insta-death, this could be up there amongst my favourite games. But I was as often annoyed with the game as I was enjoying it (though the idea of enjoying this consistently intentionally dreadful experience made me wonder why it is that we do this to ourselves, those of us who love horror). Perhaps time will be kinder to it as the negative aspects slowly fade from memory and in a year I might be updating my favourites list with what I consider fondly as one of the best horror game experiences I’ve had.
Or perhaps the sequel will help me make a decision. Because whatever my annoyance, as soon as I was done with this game, I put the next one on download. How about that for a recommendation.
There are enough reasons for the game to deserve some attention though. From the very first moment, it looks great, with darkly graded atmospheric asylums, cityscapes, and the periphery of a broken city. Even the sewer level is noteworthy for its gooey dark malaise.
The action feels nicely heavy, especially when Sebastian, the player character, tries throwing anything, moving his whole body forward with the inertia, making handling grenades a tricky affair and bottles for stealth perhaps even trickier (though once I managed to figure out the timing and placement of the body, stealth became something I looked forward to).
The shooting has a similar weight to it, which I found to be enjoyable. The weapon selection is limited and mostly ordinary (you’ve got your pistol, your shotgun, your sniper rifle, and, if you’re replaying it, even some assault rifle), with the exception of the crossbow that you can craft different arrows for, but unlike some of the more boring shooters I’ve recently tried, the way the weapons handle here and the natural threat the game instils in every action sequence make up for what they might lack in originality. Perhaps regular weapons even add to the verisimilitude that helps a horror game to be more effective.
They have also managed to strike a good balance in how much ammunition they provide you with, managing to make it always feel as if you have just a bit too little and yet always enough. The ability to craft arrows helps, though considering how difficult and dangerous it is to get the crafting components (often gotten from disarmed traps that sometimes blow up in your face if you disarmed them badly) you always feel like you have to be careful about not wasting them.
The story, concerning mental hospitals and impossible events, made me fear at first the most that it would become another boring “oh, it was all in his mind!”, and while it ultimately certainly has touches of it, it’s done in a way that is somewhat unique and more interesting for it. What’s more, there are no real twists in the narrative, just the slow reveal of the true nature of this nightmarish world. I even became genuinely interested in the story, once the game started providing some answers. Even Sebastian’s backstory which I had scoffed at with the lightly-sexist first note, had me running with glee whenever I saw the tell-tale reddish aura of another note about his past. There were entries in it that as a parent really touched me and made me care more for this one-note character.
Another reason I had to take breaks from the game though is how thoroughly unnerving it can be. It doesn’t spend much time scaring the viewer through disgusting sights or jumpscares (though there are certainly both, especially the first, with some truly impeccable body horror), but there’s a constant sense of dread drenching the whole game. Part of it is due to how vulnerable Sebastian feels. Sure, he’s a strong-bodied hard-jawed macho man who’s pretty damn good with a gun, and yet that’s nothing compared to the army of weird creatures, the way danger can come from anywhere, the simple oppressive atmosphere of the game, or his almost utter impotence when confronted with the uncontrollable nature of his world, even further emphasising his emasculated role. The few times that you feel powerful or safe, for example the mounted gun sequences, are all the more enjoyable for how rare they are.
My biggest problem with the game though is its infatuation with one-hit deaths. Many sequences filled with traps or monsters require you to execute them to near perfection or be sent back to the beginning with an instant death, however much health you might have had. While I might understand the aim (though I’m not sure I do), moments like this quickly become infuriating and, what’s more, they eat away at the sense of dread. If you’re repeating the same moment over and over again, whatever horror you might have felt at first evaporates and it just becomes a mechanical exercise in patterns. A horror sequence repeated is rarely a horror sequence that is effective.
And it’s made even worse by the trial-and-error nature of these moments. The simplest example is not knowing when you’re supposed to fight and when you’re supposed to run, ending with moments where I tried fighting when I was supposed to run (and died a few times, before I understood that this time the insta-death was supposed to be a lesson and not just part of the fight) or spent a long time looking for a way out that didn’t exist. But it’s even more aggravating during puzzles (or boss fights that act as puzzles) where every time you try something new, you might be punished by instant death and the need to repeat everything up to this point in order to try something new.
Oh, and the game has some awful film-style black bars beneath and above the image that I instantly turned off and never regretted.
If there wasn’t as much of insta-death, this could be up there amongst my favourite games. But I was as often annoyed with the game as I was enjoying it (though the idea of enjoying this consistently intentionally dreadful experience made me wonder why it is that we do this to ourselves, those of us who love horror). Perhaps time will be kinder to it as the negative aspects slowly fade from memory and in a year I might be updating my favourites list with what I consider fondly as one of the best horror game experiences I’ve had.
Or perhaps the sequel will help me make a decision. Because whatever my annoyance, as soon as I was done with this game, I put the next one on download. How about that for a recommendation.