Recent reviews by ethics

Looked forward to this game and was mostly disappointed. A giant puzzle right at the start, which is probably the most extensive one in the game, absolutely no handholding on the game's part. You're thrown into the world, not knowing what the f*ck to do, and you have to figure it out yourself.

Later, you actually have to fight enemies, and maybe it is just me, but the enemies are tedious to deal with. Combat is very slow, reloading your main gun fully takes like 5 seconds. Most enemies also take 2 shots to kill, and you have movement inaccuracy, while the enemies (mostly the chickens) hit you almost everytime. Aiming is very slow, switching weapons is also slow. Maybe I just suck, but I massively struggled, always low on health. You can avoid combat, but I really could not be bothered to run away every encounter and then wait for like 20 seconds for the enemy to go away.

The puzzles are too hard for me, as I tend to not be a logical thinker, and I always do 10 different things at the same time. First puzzle took me like 2 hours to solve. I actually rejoiced when I solved the first rotary puzzle by myself, only to falter on the second one, looking up a guide after trying on it for like 30 minutes.

The gameplay experience can be summed up by me always being unsure if I'm even doing the correct thing, if I missed anything, and for what purpose, all in all: High uncertainty.
Also, nothing about the world and extended, the story is told to you, you have to figure it out yourself and make up theories by looking at the world and how it behaves around you.

The greatest feat of this game (and what kept me coming back) is definitely the artstyle/art-direction. This game is truly stunning, not just sometimes, but all the times. it looks fantastic. Sound design was crisp and satisfying aswell. Loved the music, the distant, droning drum hits of the first area for example made the game feel oppressive, mighty and also inconceivable, it added to the mystery and the imposing level design.

I'll still recommend this game, but only for the artstyle and the mystery surrounding it all. Gameplay was lackluster/not for me.

SPOILERS

Like many other reviewers, I am torn on this game.

First of all, I think it was a fun experience, I liked the setting, how it looked, movement was alright, enemies were freaky. Boss battles were fairly unique and very doable.

The story is pretty generic, a man has mental health issues because of the death of a loved one and in the process, screws up his son who also grows up with mental problems, yada, yada, yada. Not really that innovative or new to be honest.

A lot of this game reminded me of Grey, a mod for HL2 Ep.2 that was released in 2012 (I think). Some of the puzzles, some assets, the grungy feeling with all of these black webs hung about the rooms.
However, I don't think this holds up to Grey.
Some points I want to compare:

Music: Probably the biggest itch for me, the soundtrack in Grey was downright terrifying at times with these unnerving, oppressive, industrial tracks that (in connection with the rundown environment) always kept you on edge. Remorse: The List had some creepy tracks aswell, but often, it was rather chill music that did not convey a proper horror atmosphere. Also, the backtracking aspect did not help.

Environment: This game looks great and has some interesting design choices in the environmental aspect. However, I felt like the mutilated, bloody enemies kind of didn't fit into the game. Having been made on the Unreal engine, a lot of textures have the fake, reflective look that gives the game an almost too "clean" vibe, which the enemies just did not really match to. I much prefered the Source engine dirty, grungy look of Grey, where everything was rotting, rusting, falling apart or was infested with mildew.

Combat: The combat is not good. I do not like how slow the fire rate of all of the weapons is, and that the character does not reload the guns automatically when you run out of bullets. Some enemies take an entire Revolver magazine to kill, and while they clearly stagger, it just feels like they aren't affected by the bullets. If you want to keep the fire rate low, atleast lower the time to kill, so the guns feel more impactful and heavy. Some enemies survive three close-range shotgun blasts to the face, ffs. I get this is supposed to be a survival horror game, but still. Grey felt ten times better, especially the pistol you had in that game. Here, I just ditched the pistol almost immediatly after I found the revolver.

Scares: Some scares were really good, I jumped a few times during the playthrough. Sadly, most of the enemies were just a hindrance to you on the way to the next objective, haphazardly being placed in the area you needed to pass through. I wasn't a big fan of this in Cry of Fear, and I am not a big fan of it in this game aswell. The enemies worked best when placed around corners or in rooms where you could get startled by them.
And another issue I have: What was the point of the red paper-like enemy? For how scary of a noise it made, it was almost useless and just a nuisance in an area you needed to be in. Atleast the other enemies could hurt me.
Also, some of the melee ranges of the enemies is messed up, they could hit me from like 2 metres away.

Puzzles: Some creative and well-thought out puzzles. Sadly, I had to look half of them up.
Case in point: The crown puzzle. What is the point of talking about how many crowns were lost in the race to the castle when you have to calculate how many soldiers were left?
The antlers-statue puzzle also did not make sense to me. The only hint for the solution is the shadow of the antlers and you are somehow to deduct from this that you have to select every tree on the piece of paper?
Last puzzle for the coat was also senseless to me, since I apparently miscounted the paper with FOUR holes on it. Suddenly though, you are supposed to select 5.

The scene with the biggest wasted potential is the light-scene just after you get the coat item. There could have been incredibly creepy occurances when you switched off the light. Maybe some unnerving sounds in the darkness or a type of enemy that only moves towards you when the light was out? I'm sad that it wasn't longer, cause that's when I felt the most unnerved in the entire game.

Other than that, I enjoyed my 7 hours i spent with the game. I'll recommend it for some fun when this game goes on sale. 6,5/10

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