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I don't think I would have believed you if you would have told me that the animated Star Treks: Lower Decks would be one of all-time favorite Star Trek shows–but its ensemble cast managed to endear themselves to me, and it doesn’t hurt that Lower Decks expands on the TNG era of Trek. Star Trek: Lower Decks episode six, “Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place” once again does what Picard and Discovery didn’t by giving us a peak at our beloved TNG-era characters to see where they’ve ended up. In this episode, the USS Cerritos is on Ferenginar overseeing their entrance into the Federation. Yeah, that’s crazy right? The Ferengi went from scene chewing, energy whip wielding, (inferior) Klingon replacements to being a race that is being considered entrance into the Federation. That’s a hell of a character arc. And we get to catch up with Rom (Max Grodenchek) and Leeta (Chase Masterson) to see into the life of the now baseball obsessed Grand Nagus. At first, I thought they did Rom’s character a little dirty. While Rom’s character on Deep Space 9 always seemed a tad infantile and stupid, he was actually a brilliant engineer. I was surprised that the Lower Decks writers didn’t understand his character–and how wrong I was. This part of the plot mainly revolves Captain Freeman as she navigates this diplomatic hurdle, in a similar way we saw in "In the Cradle of Vexilon," but this time Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) comes off as much more competent. “Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place” does a lot to expand on Trek lore in meaningful ways–something some of the other modern Trek shows tended to fumble more often than get correct. It manages to do this while also managing a “big bad” style season-long threat. It also manages to stay a show that uses its ensemble cast to great effect. While Captain Freeman is wrestling with Ferengi-style diplomacy, the rest of the Lower Decks crew is on Ferenginar on a special assignment: they have to assess the validity of the Federation travel guide to Ferenginar by experiencing the sights and sounds of the always-wet Ferengi homeworld. Mariner (Tawny Newsome) meets up with an old friend–a familiar face from Season 1– and hashes out her issues in the only way Mariner can. Meanwhile, Boimler (Jack Quaid) discovers Ferengi television and his extremely ambitious plans get washed away by trash television. And Tendi (Noël Wells) and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) are stuck pretending to be a romantic couple. Strangely, nothing really feels like the B plot here, even when a lot of the attention is spent on Tendi and Rutherford’s fake (and extremely awkward) romance. The Lower Decks writers are experts at shoving two or more plots into each episode. And while that’s something that was pretty common in the TNG era of Trek, it’s impressively done here within half the runtime. Beyond a little “will they or won't they?” during the first season, Tendi and Rutherford’s relationship has been depicted as a close friendship. However, I get the impression that the writers are coming back to lean in on the Tendi and Rutherford ship–and I’m here for it. It’s also great watching them having to navigate the Ferengi culture’s idea of romance–and it’s obviously heavily commercialized and exploitative. No surprises there. While we got to see another crew get obliterated by the mystery ship, we don’t get much more information about it. While I do like the lead up, I feel like the mystery ship story isn’t progressing any further. I get it: it blows up ships with no problem. Maybe I’m missing some clues that would make it more compelling, but I’d almost rather the episodes start giving us a little more information than “ship that easily blows up other ships.” The season is quickly (and sadly) coming to a close, so I’m sure I’ll get my answers sooner than later. I know that Lower Decks is renewed for a fifth season, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the answers are withheld cliffhanger-style. But unlike other shows that rely heavily on their season-long arc, if this season’s Lower Decks big bad is a dud, the entire rest of the season has been a delight.

I’m terrified of the open ocean–as you would probably guess by seeing Subnautica on this 31 Days of Horror series. If Subnautica doesn’t register as your typical horror game, Iron Lung fixes that problem. Sure, it doesn’t have any of the base building or very many bells and whistles. But it distills the parts that were terrifying about Subnautica into a tight little game that is absolutely brimming with atmosphere. There’s just something about low fidelity horror games that scare me more often than games using cutting edge graphics. Perhaps the fuzzy, low poly graphics force my brain to fill in the horrifying details—or maybe it’s something about how games with PlayStation One era graphics somehow feel cursed. Iron Lung uses that aesthetic well, resulting in a masterpiece of tension on the part of developer David Szymanski. You might know Szymanski for his work with New Blood Interactive, and games like Dusk that utilize similar, “old school” style graphics. But while Dusk empowers you with speed and an arsenal of weapons, you’re as helpless as can be in Iron Lung. Iron Lung is a first person, vehicular-based game. In it, you play as a hapless prisoner, forced to explore an alien ocean. While at first it might sound a bit like Subnautica, Iron Lung takes the thalassophobic horror of diving into an alien ocean even further by adding an extreme horror element to it: the entire ocean is made of blood. If that isn’t scary enough, you’re lowered into this bloody ocean in a rusty submarine that feels ready to fall apart at any moment. Your goal is to photograph several points of interest as you navigate the ocean floor—blindly. You don’t have a porthole to see out of, either — instead, you have a map of the ocean floor and its obstructions. You can navigate only by sonar and number coordinates, with the only view of the outside world a slow-to-process camera that you use to take snapshots. Essentially, the entire gameplay consists of you piloting a rusty sub that is barely holding together, as you try to navigate blindly with all sorts of unseen creatures lurking around you. The ocean of blood is full of them — and you’re teased with what these creatures may be like when you come across an early photo site, and discover the remains of a large sea creature. If that isn’t bad enough, your submarine begins to fall apart, too. Tense moments are often punctuated by a gas line springing a leak, giving out a terrifying hiss when you least expect it. If you’re not a fan of jump scares, Iron Lung doesn’t rely solely on them for its horror, but it certainly uses them—and effectively, for the most part. Iron Lung is a masterclass in atmosphere and suspense. David Szymanski expertly builds dread by using sound effects, and constant teasing of the unknown. The game’s original soundtrack, also composed by Szymanski, is perfect for its environment, too. As much as I absolutely love the atmosphere of Iron Lung, its gameplay was a bit frustrating at times. While I really liked having to blindly navigate the sub—it reminded me of something out of The Hunt for Red October—any mistakes could cost a significant amount of play time. The entire game only takes about an hour to play through, but most of that time is spend navigating from place to place. If you ram into an obstruction, it’s game over, and you have to restart from the previous checkpoint—and sometimes those checkpoints are frustratingly spread apart. The long stretches of blind navigation do a ton to add to the tension, but can feel tedious if you make a mistake and have to replay chunks of the game—even if it is incredibly short. Iron Lung is one of the most unique and effective horror games I’ve played in a while. Not only did it succeed in being tense, but it also invoked my sense of discovery. I wanted to know what was in that bloody ocean, despite the hidden horrors. If you have an hour and a few bucks, you should definitely check out Iron Lung. Iron Lung is available now on Steam. This review was originally published on 3/14/2022 at this location.

I’ve always been a fan of the developer Frictional Games. They have some scary stuff that plays with your mind more often than it relies on jump scares. And I mean, real existential dread, not the pseudo psychology related torment on display with other schlocky horror games that claim the same. Amnesia: Rebirth is a strange departure from their regular fare, and ended up being the closest to AAA that Frictional has gotten. Still, some of the magic of the Amnesia series was lost in the transition to bigger, but it still has some great moments. Perhaps they pulled the curtain back a little too far, but it’s still a fantastic game to play if you want to be spooked this season. Minor spoilers for Amnesia: Rebirth follow: Developer Frictional Games has become one of my favorite developers. I first ran across Penumbra: Overture about twelve or so years ago, and I was enthralled with the atmosphere and cryptic story telling. But Frictional didn’t really gain widespread popularity until the excellent Amnesia: The Dark Descent in 2010. And 2015’s Soma is probably one of my favorite games ever. I was excited, to say the least, for the opportunity to cover Amnesia: Rebirth. I’m happy to say that Rebirth manages to take the Amnesia series into an exciting, more spectacular direction. Amnesia: Rebirth is a first person horror survival game. In it, you play as Tasi Trianon, a woman who’s suffering from memory loss after a plane crash. You wake up in the plane, which has crashed in the desert—but you discover that time has passed, and you have no recollection of the last few days. It turns out that something has happened to the survivors of the crash—and it wasn’t the desert that got to them. Tasi has to survive a host of horrors while retracing her steps in search of answers—and to save her unborn child. If you’ve played an Amnesia game before, you’ll know that, when facing unimaginable horror, the best thing to do is run and hide. You can’t fight back against the creatures that stalk you in Amnesia: Rebirth, either. Many times Tasi will have to traverse darkened areas, and to do so, all she’ll have is a gas lantern and matches. You can use matches to light other light sources—but moving too much makes the matches go out more quickly. This can lead to some tense moments if you’re running low on fuel or matches, but some of the tension dissolves with Tasi’s amazing night vision. Being able to see almost perfectly in the dark (even with the gamma set to the recommended level) makes the dark less scary—even if it does mean that Tasi’s fear is going up. Amnesia: Rebirth utilizes a sort of fear mechanic that acts a little bit like The Dark Descent’s sanity. Except, instead of a meter, you get a screen effect showing the influence of some dark entity overtaking you. If it takes you completely, you run as a wild creature—waking up later back at an earlier location. It’s a way to resolve player failure while keeping the narrative going forward, and it’s clever—though I think it leans a little bit too much towards player forgiveness. If you’re caught by certain creatures, instead of being killed, you are brought to an earlier point—and those creatures are sometimes even missing. I can’t say this is the case for every encounter, but I failed a couple of encounters—and in both cases, the monster that caused me to fail wasn’t even there anymore when I returned. There is some excellent world building in Amnesia: Rebirth, and the entire game is quite a spectacle. Frictional Games really outdid themselves with the settings and locations. The Algerian desert, despite its bright sun, is a horrifying desolate wasteland that only emphasizes Tasi’s desperation. The other world– that of the portal builders–is a horrific glimpse into a society that is literally powered by torture, and its architecture and iconography is appropriately horrifying. But it’s almost too much information, and ruins the sense of the unknown. There are plenty of tense moments in Amnesia: Rebirth—and even a few outright scary ones—but the overwhelming sense of dread I found in other Frictional games just never manifested. I’m not sure if that’s because too much of the veil was taken away for this story, too soon. A lot of the horror of Amnesia: The Dark Descent was in not knowing exactly what was happening. In Rebirth, it’s almost spelled out in painstaking detail. This is true for Soma, too—but Soma’s revelations heightened the horror, while Rebirth’s dampened it. Soma left me with lingering existential dread while Amnesia: Rebirth’s exploration of “the other world” left me more with a “huh, that’s interesting” impression than a horrified one. It’s almost like playing a game based on Lovecraft mythos, and reading the Old Gods’ discarded diary pages—it takes away some of the unimaginable horror aspect. When I finished Soma, I was left with lingering existential dread—while at the end of Amnesia: Rebirth, I felt a little underwhelmed. Tasi’s struggle ends with a few unanswered questions, but it doesn’t feel like those answers are necessary. It leaves room for a sequel, perhaps, but now that the veil has been lifted what new direction can it take? It’s really a shame, too, because Amnesia: Rebirth’s setting and story is so much grander than that of Amnesia: The Dark Descent that Dark Descent’s events are almost relegated to being Easter eggs than narrative beats. That’s not inherently a bad thing; it just shows how much bigger Frictional went for Amnesia: Rebirth, but I think Rebirth suffered slightly for it. Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Soma had a good amount of areas to explore, but Amnesia: Rebirth just has so much more. Each of these areas has their own mysteries to uncover—but the narrative is constantly pushing you forward to the next area, with only a puzzle or two in each section. The puzzles themselves were pretty simple, and felt more like finding the right items than deciphering complicated mechanics. They also overuse transitional subterfuge—and what I mean by that is this: you think you’re going to exit out of one area, just to be put somewhere else, sometimes more dangerous and scarier than the place you wanted to be. It’s used so often it degrades its effectiveness towards shock. Don’t get me wrong: Amnesia: Rebirth is a great survival horror game. Its story is a little underwhelming, and it would have benefitted from more detailed areas instead of just more areas—but it has several tense moments, and an outstanding production value. It really feels like Amnesia: Rebirth is a blockbuster sequel compared to the indie gem that was Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It lifts the veil behind the mysteries of the previous games so much that I wonder if Frictional is finished with the Amnesia series—or just plans on taking it in an entirely new direction. Amnesia: Rebirth is available now on GOG, Epic Games Store, Steam and PlayStation 4. This article was originally published on 10/28/2020 at this location: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2020/10/28/review-amnesia-rebirth/#:~:text=It's%20story%20is%20a%20little,was%20Amnesia%3A%20The%20Dark%20Descent.

While The Texas Chainsaw Massacre might be the new hotness for Gun Media (formerly Gun) I still have a place in my heart for Illfonic's Friday the 13th. Jason Voorhees is the perfect stalking killer and Camp Crystal Lake is the perfect setting for a DBD clone. It's too bad legalities got in the way of a great slasher game. Developed by Gun Media and Illfonic, Friday the 13th: The Game looked to be the definitive horror game, and where it succeeds in some aspects such as atmosphere, music, and tension – it fails handily in others. Bugs, early server issues and some wonky animations detract from a surprisingly fun horror survival game. Friday the 13th: The Game started as a Kickstarter project in October of 2015 and quickly garnered a lot of attention. To keep the look and feel of the films they brought in Friday the 13th alums such as FX artist Tom Savini as the game’s producer, Harry Manfredini (who scored many of the previous films) as composer, and popular Jason actor Kane Hodder to do motion capture. While Hodder and Savini’s presence might not be as noticeable, Manfredini’s score is pitch perfect, retaining all of the Psycho-like accents while keeping a classic 80s slasher-horror sound. The developers set out to create a game world exactly as you remember it from the 80s, and they succeeded. Then they marketed it to those born in the 90s – rather successfully. There are 3 maps at launch, each based on locations from the Friday the 13th films. You can play as Jason Voorhees for the first time ever, or as one of 7 camp counselors trying to evade certain death at the hands of the hockey masked killer. There are 10 counselors to choose from, with only a few available initially. As you level up customization options, counselors, and even different versions of Jason unlock. You can eventually play as 6 different versions of Jason, with a seventh variant only available to Kickstarter backers. XP is gained as you play no matter if you’re killing counselors or playing as one. Playing as a camp counselor can be tense, exciting, and thrilling – but it also tends to be frustrating, and sometimes dull. As a counselor, much of your time is spent quietly moving around the camp and gathering supplies to repair your means of escape. Each map has different, yet similar objectives: repair a boat or car to escape, or call the police to help you out. Making the repairs doesn’t guarantee your win though, as you must still make it out alive. There is an amount of skill required to stay alive as a counselor, but a lot of luck is involved, too. Parts needed to make repairs are randomly scattered around the map, as are weapons and other items. You can’t memorize an efficient route to the items you want, and it changes up the game every round. Each of the 10 counselors you can eventually choose from has their own strengths and weaknesses – some are better at stealth, others are faster at repair, etc. This is enhanced by being able to equip perks you purchase with points you accumulate as you play. As a counselor you aren’t totally helpless, though it isn’t necessarily a good idea to go toe-to-toe with the killer. Some weapons allow you to stun or even knock Jason down, forcing a slow and inevitable return from his latest mortal wound. Sometimes no matter how well you do, you can still get unlucky, singled out, and murdered early on. This can be frustrating as you’re stuck looking at the round timer until Jason kills all of the counselors, the surviving counselors escape, or you return as Tommy Jarvis if he was called. Dying very early on can leave you stuck waiting over 10 minutes or longer for the round to end. Practice will help, but it also pays to work together as a team, though other counselors can betray or even kill you. Direct communication with other counselors is possible, but only when you are in proximity to each other, or if you have found a radio, though Jason can hear you too. Fellow counselors can also be used as a distraction if you’re being chased, or as a means of pinpointing Jason’s location via death screams. The main draw for many will be playing as Jason Voorhees. Each Jason has their own appearance, strengths, weaknesses, and weapons. Playing as Jason can feel like you’re playing with cheat codes on, but he is not invincible. You can stagger him, hide from him or even kill him. Jason also has multiple supernatural abilities available that make it easier for him to move around Crystal Lake and spot the hiding counselors. Morph allows him to teleport to most major locations in each area, while shift allows him to travel invisibly faster. This allows you to literally appear in front of a counselor, despite having just been behind them. This may seem unfair, but it lends itself directly to the type of experience a Friday the 13th game should have if it were to stay true to the films. Friday the 13th: The Game has a lot going for it – but it feels like an early access release, despite being sold as a full-fledged retail product. Single-player was a widely touted component, but is absent at release. You are also unable to rebind keys on PC, and many players are having problems with earned achievements unlocking. The game also suffers from janky animations, character clipping, and random bugs that detract from the experience. My earliest experiences with the game were negative – I felt like I was fighting the game itself more so than Jason. Some of that was the bugs and animations, but a lot of that was the learning curve. Learning how the game works can be a barrier to entry, with little guidance in the game itself. The players I encountered online ranged from downright creepy or toxic to incredibly helpful and fun. This is normal for almost any online community, but something about playing as Jason Voorhees brings out the extra weird in people. Still, the more I learned the game, the more others were willing to help. I had some matches where I was intentionally left for dead by counselors I was just helping, but others where someone miraculously came back to save me in the car after I decided to try and fight Jason. At the same time, in matches where I played as Jason against counselors who did everything right, I just happened to run into them one at a time, a la’ the films, and finish them off. This is where Friday the 13th: The Game really shines and each encounter feels unique. If you are playing Friday the 13th: The Game to just play as Jason, prepare to play as a counselor more often than not, even if you selected Jason as your preferred character. Despite my initial frustrations with Friday the 13th: The Game I eventually started to like it and now I’m trying to convince my friends to play. It feels like what it’s trying to emulate: a low budget gory experience that is unintentionally campy. But with only 3 maps at release, no single-player promised for months, and a high price tag, you might want to wait for more content or a sale to visit camp Crystal Lake. Friday the 13th: The Game is out now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows. This post was originally published on May 31, 2017 at this location: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2017/05/31/game-review-friday-the-13th/

Subnautica has been in development for over four years, and has been in Steam’s Early Access program for nearly as long. With it, Unknown Worlds Entertainment, best known for their Natural Selection series, has moved away from team-based shooters and into the survival genre. Released into early access when a glut of open-world survival games were flooding the market, I dismissed it as “just another” survival game with a water gimmick. I usually despise “water levels” and a game that forces you to be aquatic didn’t seem the most appealing. How wrong I was. Unlike most other games in the genre, Subnautica has no multiplayer. Instead Subnautica focuses on solo survival, base building and braving the deep – which holds many terrors. You are the sole surviving member of the Aurora, a 22nd century corporation’s spaceship sent out into the furthest corners of controlled space only to be hit by an energy pulse, crash landing on a planet that is almost entirely covered in water. This fact is made clear when you emerge from your escape pod to see nothing but the wreckage of the Aurora and open water. You are forced from the very beginning to dive in and brave an ocean teeming with life, and rife with danger. Subnautica takes a lot from the survival genre, but puts you in an environment which no other survival games capitalized on: open water. Luckily, your 22nd technology makes converting surrounding matter into useable resources in a way that feels reminiscent of Star Trek. In fact, the sci-fi technology in the game helps to remove the suspension of disbelief most survival games require when combining items, or constructing buildings. The array of tools you have at your fingertips is also impressive, but not always useful. I found myself skipping over some early game items entirely for their more useful counterparts. The base building in Subnautica is fully realized, and can be a massively fun part of the game. I challenged myself to build a huge, underwater dwelling that could provide fresh water and renewable food for myself. The base building features are extremely robust, and allow for you to build in almost any environment – even the most hostile. I found a challenge in building habitats in the most inhospitable locations I could find – just to see if I could. Sometimes base building can have its frustrating moments – pieces not connecting easily, and some inconvenience with having to (very rarely) deconstruct entire buildings if you misplace a foundation or wall fixture. But these problems were few and far between, and I found much joy in just building these habitats and taming the most inhospitable undersea biomes. Oxygen is ever a concern in Subnautica, as your initial O2 tank holds less than a minute of oxygen. Soon, you’ll find that you’ll need to leave the shallows and dive deeper and for longer periods to explore the real depths of your environment. Luckily, in addition to o2 Tank upgrades, you can construct vehicles to help you get around. You’ll probably start off by building a handheld device to help glide through the water, eventually graduating to a fully-fledged 178 foot submarine that you can dock smaller vehicles in. And while you have some tools that can also be used as weapons, your role is mostly that of a passive observer. Even with a submarine at your disposal you’re still at the mercy of the larger, “leviathan-class” creatures that inhabit deeper waters. The amount of creatures in Subnautica is impressive, and makes the ocean feel like it’s absolutely teeming with life. Some creatures are passive, but others definitely want to eat you. Some can be fought and killed, but most can only be scared away or avoided at best. This definitely makes you feel like you are low on the food chain, and makes diving into Subnautica’s depths a terrifying experience. Even with my now extensive playtime, I tense up when diving into dark, murky waters – especially if I can hear the bellows of a Reaper Leviathan nearby. There are multiple different biomes you’ll find yourself in : kelp forests, sandy dunes, grassy plains, deep underwater caverns lit by bioluminescent flora and fauna – among many other marine environments. Once you outfit yourself with a Cyclops submarine or the mechanized Prawn suit, you can upgrade your maximum crush depths to see the extent of Subnautica’s underwater world. There is a lot of verticality in Subnautica, with a good amount of this alien world to explore both in shallower depths, and in the very deepest parts of the part of the ocean you inhabit. There are multiple different play modes to experience Subnautica. While in all modes but creative you have to manage health and oxygen, “survival” mode is perhaps the “default mode,” adding in hunger and thirst. There's also a hardcore mode which makes player death permanent. “Freedom” mode removes the need for food and water, and a “creative mode” eliminates the story, hunger, thirst, etc. and just lets you build and explore as you wish. There is no conventional “sand box” mode, as the story is woven throughout the experience (except for creative mode). You can pay as little or as much attention to the story as you’d like, but you’d be absolutely remiss to ignore it. It is one of Subnautica’s best features. A lot of survival games force you to find your own fun, or make your own objectives. Subnautica’s story goes hand-in-hand with your need for progression and exploration making it the absolutely best-paced, well told, and amazing story I’ve experienced in a survival game. It really is that good. I’m intentionally not spoiling any aspect of Subnautica’s story – I went in totally blind, and I feel like it really is best experienced that way. This speaks to another of Subnautica’s strengths: everything felt so intuitive, I never really needed to look anything up. During some survival games, I’ll find myself looking up recipes, or how to obtain a certain item, but Subnautica’s in-game database is so comprehensive, it’s hard to completely miss out on information – especially with the dry, sometimes funny AI apprising you of unique or new situations you may encounter. The pacing of the story is nearly flawless, and it’s always pushing you to the next thing and out of your comfort zone. The excellent pacing of Subnautica’s story, and the story itself, makes it feel like an absolutely complete game – something that most games leaving “early access” struggle with. Unlike more cinematic story-telling, Subnautica’s story is given as short audio/text snippets, or through exploration. The pacing is excellent, ensuring you’re never really stuck. It’s true that you may not know exactly what to do next, but there are always clues being left to guide you (sometimes subtly, sometimes not) to the next point of interest in the story. Of course, you can always ignore this and work towards survival in your own way –but the clever part is: you often find that working towards your own survival happens to move the plot forward on its own. If a game has a story I will complete it to review a game. Sometimes with open world survival games, the story is something that grounds the player and adds context. Subnautica’s plot was an obsession. I didn’t want to find out what happened for completion’s sake: I was absolutely compelled to finish it, even at a detriment to my own health. Subnautica became an obsession. There is some of Subnautica that doesn’t always feel completely finished. I’ve run into a few bugs that, while not game breaking, were certainly annoying. Some of the most obvious lack of polish also happens towards the end of the game, but by that time I was so invested in it that I was able to forgive these small issues. Subnautica is a surprise, and easily the best game I’ve played so far this year. Go into it blind if you can, but even with spoilers there is a ton to experience for yourself. Developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment has poured lots of love into this game and it shows, with its polished gameplay and great story told in an amazingly minimalist way. The Steam version is full release, with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions destined to reach full release eventually, with no dates set. Either way, Subnautica is available to play now on Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is also compatible with HTC Vive and Oculus Rift VR headsets for immersive, submarine terror. This article was originally published on 02/01/2018 at this location: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2018/02/01/game-review-subnautica/

I know that Sons of the Forest is out right now in Early Access. But there’s still a place in my heart for the original, The Forest. My first experience with it was one of the most memorable horror game experiences–and I talk about that a bit in my review. It balances survival horror with storytelling that is all held together by a mystery and the impetus to find your son. But don’t let your child’s fate stop you from building a multi-story dwelling. Minor spoilers follow: Developer Endnight describes The Forest as a “terrifying first person survival horror simulator” and it is certainly all of those things. In development for four years, The Forest originally started life when open world survival was the next big thing. Now that everyone has moved on to the battle royale genre, many of these survival games are finally hitting version 1.0. Those with patience, and a love for the genre may find this to be a pretty exciting time, as games like The Forest and Subnautica are taking the open world survival genre and successfully adding a compelling story to discover along with the challenge of day to day survival. The Forest fully embraces its horror nature, and also like Subnautica, can be pretty scary. I vividly remember my first experience with the The Forest: I thought it was visually impressive at the time, and the premise was extremely exciting. You are flying in a commercial jet with your son, only to crash land in a forest. You wake up as a survivor only to see a creepy, primitive looking person taking your son away. Not only did I have to survive, I needed to get answers and to find my son. And there is, of course, the immediate danger of another visit from creepy tribal guy. Later, I found myself hanging and bound in their cave and discovered that creepy tribal guy belongs to a group of cannibal mutants pulled straight from the 2005 film The Descent. I somehow freed myself and fought my way out of the cave, killing cannibal creatures indiscriminately with my axe until I emerged, covered in blood, knowing I had something special on my hands. I put it down to wait for its “official release,” and four years later, I’m not disappointed with the results. Like recently released survival game Subnautica, The Forest has a story with a beginning and end, featuring narrative bread crumbs that help to move the plot along. Unfortunately, The Forest is not as well paced as Subnautica, and its breadcrumbs, by the game’s design, are harder to find. There are no waypoints on your HUD in The Forest holding your hand to the next major plot point, so you may find yourself searching repeatedly for the way to proceed. The answers that you find in The Forest are actually pretty compelling, I think, and worth the long searches through dark caves—though don’t feel too guilty if you resort to a guide, for time and sanity’s sake. The Forest, at its core, is an open world survival game. That means worrying about things like hunger and thirst, as well as building shelter to save your progress and for safety. In survival games, making a safe place to rest is a matter of luxury, and a source of fun. Don’t get me wrong: building in The Forest can be fun, but most of the time I didn’t build for fun, but out of necessity. While nighttime can be dangerous, hunting parties, monstrosities and other horrible things prowl the daytime as well. Since you will be beset upon day and night, the best defense is a sturdy wall, but you have a bunch of options at your disposal. You can build shelters big and small (which also serves as a place to save your game) as well as custom buildings, and tree houses that would suit a Wookiee. Amusingly, you can also build rafts to paddle around the peninsula on which you’re stranded, as well as a house boat—a floating home away from home. The way surviving works in The Forest relies heavily on shameless video game logic—with improbably fast building and an inventory that is impossibly large. While building a structure requires nothing more than placing its blueprint and adding materials to it, gathering those materials can take a really long time. Building in The Forest can be fun, but it can also be exceedingly tedious. Chopping down trees with most of the in-game axes can take a little bit of effort. Crafted items are also often more powerful than some of their commercially manufactured counterparts, you may discover. How a skull on a stick is a better weapon than forged steel is beyond me, but skulls on sticks are pretty fuckin’ metal, so I’ll let that slide. Hunting is simple. Often chasing down deer and clobbering them on the head suffices. Some animals (and creatures) are skinnable, and yield crafting supplies or, in some cases, you can wear their skin directly for a bit of armor. Crafting tools and other items isn’t the most intuitive at first, and can be a bit unwieldy. But once I got used to the system, I was able to use it with ease. Inventory management is interesting, as what you carry isn’t determined on the max load you can carry, but how many of any single item you can. You can only ever carry five sticks dynamite, for instance, and that’s completely independent of how much of whatever else you’re carrying. Exploring the island is a treat, and can be simultaneously awesome and terrifying. Horror movie tropes abound as you come across camp sites whose inhabitants have come to grisly ends, and you stumble across the splayed and mutilated corpses of the other passengers and other unfortunate people that came before you. Not only are the scenes, settings and clues horrifying for their own reasons, the cannibal mutants themselves are both simultaneously horrible and amusing to fight. It’s strange to admit, but there’s something satisfying with the extremely gory, visceral combat: to fight these barely human, horror-movie cannibal creatures was quite cathartic for me—almost therapeutic. Instead of feeling bad for killing them, I reveled in hacking away at these laughing, screeching, barely human abominations as they climbed trees to leap over my walls or surrounded me as I was out hunting. It was like “Facing my Fears of Mutant Cannibals: The Game.” (I mean, who doesn’t have a healthy fear of being cannibalized?) You can eat them for sustenance, hack off their limbs to create effigies, or use their bones to make all sorts of tools, armor and other stuff. “Throw another body on the fire” and “bones for the bone basket” became oft repeated phrases between my partner and I, which brings me to one of The Forests’ most compelling features: multiplayer. The Forest has extremely fun, yet extremely buggy co-op. You can play with up to eight players on a server, paying as much or as little attention to other players as you’d like. Most of my experience was playing cooperatively with my fiancée, and sometimes managing to survive together presented its own challenges. Whether an item will be persistent, existent, shared (or not) within a play session is sometimes baffling to me. Items will inexplicably respawn, despawn, or just not work correctly while in multiplayer. But as buggy as the experience seemed to be, it was never broken, and often hassle-free. It was definitely my preferred experience with The Forest, and I’m curious how a small group working together would fare. Alas, I didn’t have a chance to try that for this review. The Forest is a sometimes horrifying, sometimes tedious, but mostly fun survival game held together by a compelling story. Its sometimes buggy nature and janky systems didn’t dampen my time with it, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to those who either aren’t sick of the open world survival genre, or just want a different spin on it. This article was originally published on May 14, 2018 at this location: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2018/05/14/game-review-the-forest/

There are so many things I wish GTFO was that it isn’t. Somehow, that might make it a better game: it’s sticking to its original vision. Which, apparently, is super bleak sci-fi horror with a huge difficulty curve. It’s also one of the first successful group stealth games I’ve ever played besides Payday 2–and that game allowed you to “go loud.” You can’t really do that in GTFO without lots of planning or lots of luck. I’ve played a lot of GTFO, just not recently. When GTFO went into early access, my group of friends and I played the hell out of it. We really loved sneaking around its vast underground facility, planning our next move, and watching it all go wrong as we scrambled to survive. Also, sneaking and bopping mutants as a group had never looked better or been more fun. But then, one day, we just stopped playing and never looked back. When GTFO was surprise released last week or so, I figured it was the perfect time for my group and I to get back into GTFO’s enigmatic and terrifying Complex—and while it definitely is, losing the novelty certainly made GTFO lose some of its luster—but its 1.0 release brought some interesting new reasons to keep going deeper. GTFO is a first person cooperative horror survival game. In it, you play as one of four hapless people, forced by the enigmatic warden to go deep into an underground complex to complete various tasks, sometimes retrieving an item to bring back. The only problem is, the complex is overrun with horrible mutants. Most of mutants are sleeping, but waking them up can cause a horrible day for you and your crew—so stealth is important. Also, resources are scarce, so those teams that go in guns blazing might find themselves out of ammo before long. While a lot of cooperative games offer various degrees of difficulty levels, GTFO is meant to be difficult—with things getting harder the deeper you go. Saying GTFO doesn’t have difficulty levels isn’t entirely correct. Instead, each level deeper you progress, the harder things get. Enemies become more abundant, and new, harder threats start to replace familiar enemies. Security doors you pass through start to become harder, too—with more potential waves of enemies coming to meet your team. And while I can appreciate a good challenge, I find GFTO’s form of difficulty to be incredibly tedious. If you die near the end of a level, that often means lots of gameplay that has to be retread. There have been checkpoints added for the full release—but even with checkpoints, going back over parts of the facility you’ve already cleared can be mind-numbing, and sometimes for our group that led to even more mistakes. While I appreciate the hardcore nature of the game, my group just doesn’t have the time required to dedicate to replaying long missions multiple times—no matter how fun they are. Besides its punishing difficulty, GTFO is a blast. I’ve never played a game quite like it. It’s simultaneously scary and exhilaratingly exciting. Seeing something new is always a treat—but that’s partially because so much of GTFO’s complex looks similar. While that sounds bad, that’s okay, because it lends to the labyrinthine feeling. Also, fighting enemies in GTFO feel great. Weapons feel fun to shoot, and bopping enemies on the head (or dispatching them with the new melee weapons) is one of the most satisfying stealth mechanics I’ve experienced. GTFO is just damn fun to play—and it also manages to be great to look at, too. GTFO does have a story, but it’s not told through cutscenes or long lines of exposition (outside of terminal audio logs, that is). Instead, lots of GTFO’s story is told through environmental clues, terminal logs, and witnessing the horror of the complex. Throughout the Early Access period, lore was drip-fed in an almost frustratingly slow fashion. The question always was, “why does this giant underground facility exist, and what the hell were they doing here?” But with the release of 1.0, the veil has been lifted in some spectacular and surprising ways. While GTFO doesn’t have procedurally generated levels, developer 10 Chambers have been releasing a new set of levels every few months called “Rundowns.” This type of release schedule should continue past release ensuring that there will be new content to dive into. While Rundowns do feel a little bit more handcrafted than other procedurally generated content, you will see chunks of levels you’ve seen before, making repeated excursions in the Complex feel repetitive. While 1.0 does release a few new visuals to make things interesting (I don’t want to spoiler them here) it’s not enough to make GTFO feel new again—so if you’ve been playing GTFO for a while, don’t expect the 1.0 release to be full of new things to see and do. But there are a few surprises in store. Different Rundowns also mean Rundown specific weapons. While GTFO does have a base set of weapons and gadgets to choose from, each Rundown tends to have a new set of weapons and even a few new gadgets to try out. While it can be a bummer to lose your favorite Rundown specific weapon, there’s also new things to try—and you might even find a new favorite. One of the biggest new additions for GTFO has been bots. While I definitely recommend playing GTFO with other human players, especially friends, playing with Bots primarily—or even as supplemental teammates—isn’t as impossible as it might have seemed a few months ago. Bots aren’t perfect when it comes to carrying items, or even pathfinding—but they’re great at fighting. Bots have crazy good aim, and a team with myself and three bots often feel more capable of handling harder threats than me and my friends do. While GTFO is one of the best stealth games I’ve played, and definitely one of the best stealth-based co-op experiences out there, its difficulty is oppressive. It’s definitely not for casual players—and if you’re older, with a job and other obligations, it’ll be harder to find the time for the hard and long lower floors. If you want to play solo, there are bots that are capable—but don’t expect them to carry you through the hardest challenges, though they are surprisingly good fighters. I’m glad GTFO has finally reach “1.0” and look forward to see what horrors my friends and I will uncover in our next expedition. GTFO is out now on Steam. This article was originally published on 12/18/2021 at this location: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2021/12/18/review-gtfo/

Signalis kind of came out of nowhere. It was just another game in a sea of review keys that didn’t do much to stand out–that is, until I played it. It was a surprisingly novel take on the survival horror genre. If you are a survival horror fan, you have to play Signalis. I’ve been replaying classic horror games a lot lately, and there’s something about their low polygon, low resolution nature that makes them scarier than a lot of modern games. But Signalis isn’t a game that leans on nostalgia in any obvious way. It doesn’t even really bill itself as a retro experience, because while it has those elements, it’s more than a game that’s just banking on nostalgia. Signalis is a survival horror game mostly played from an isometric perspective. In it, you play as Elster, a synthetic person who is looking for her lost partner who is trapped on a frozen planet, in a facility full of walking nightmares. There’s an extra layer of horror as you uncover that the society in which you live is a fascist, totalitarian regime. Replikas work and live among the normal populace, serving as guardians and workers—not quite human, but resembling them. In classic survival horror fashion, you have to explore the facility uncovering the truth, while fighting off enemies with a variety of weapons, bypassing locked doors and other obstacles to progress. It’s very Resident Evil-like, but with a retro-glitch veneer and a little bit of anime flavor. There are puzzles to solve, and enemies to avoid or fight—ammo is scarce. And unlike some games that claim ammo scarcity, there were some moments in Signalis that I had to choose to avoid enemy encounters rather than use what precious few bullets I had left. While Signalis dabbles in both traditional horror and psychological horror, it’s more effective towards the latter. I just didn’t find Signalis to be a very scary game overall. There were parts that were definitely unsettling, but that was mostly despite its setting and environment instead of because of it. Signalis also relies heavily on horror tropes—but mostly uses them well. However, despite its attempts at a scary atmosphere, I was never so much scared while playing Signalis as intrigued. But Signalis does use its environments well, and uses shifting perspectives even better. Occasionally, you will shift into a first person view, usually to interact with a specific object, or to solve a puzzle. Sometimes, usually during flashbacks, there are entire sections played in first person. These parts really helped to amp up the psychological horror aspects of Signalis. There is an underlying mystery throughout Signalis, and you’ll get glimpses of it as you progress through each area. But at first, you start off with little information on the what, who or why of anything—and you won’t even be sure that if what your character is experiencing is real. Sometimes new clues will unlock new memories, and adventures into these different memories can even yield objects that you can take and use in the waking world, which deepens the mystique. While you can avoid much of the fighting in Signalis, there are times you will be forced to fight. Combat in Signalis works almost identically to how Resident Evil established third person horror combat way back in the 90s: aim your weapon to ready it, and then fire. There are tools to help you avoid combat, or survive if your HP hits zero. Which is good, because Signalis using a bit of an archaic-made-new-again save system—you can only save at certain checkpoints, in safe rooms, much like Resident Evil. The equipment that you carry in Signalis can actually be pretty powerful—and I found that the game was pretty generous with how it gives out items. To combat this, Signalis gives you an incredibly limited inventory space of only 6 items. You don’t have to play inventory Tetris to get everything to fit, however. In addition to the simplified inventory, like items stack to a certain number. However, weapons, tools, and consumables all take up inventory slots per item type. Therefore, you will have to pack carefully. If you want to bring extra health, you might not have enough room for extra ammo, too. And since ammo can be genuinely scarce, sometimes inventory management is where the real horror of Signalis comes in. Despite how familiar Signalis is, it does a few things differently, and the things it apes from other games it does very well. Signalis is an unexpected hit, and my favorite new survival horror game this year. It’s a little light on scares, even despite its limited ammo. But it has an intriguing mystery and excellent sci-fi world building. If you are looking for a survival horror game to play this Halloween, Signalis should be towards at the top of your list. Signalis will be available 10/27 on PC via Steam and is also available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 as well as Xbox One and Xbox Series S|X through Humble Bundle. A Steam key was given to us for this review This review was originally published on November 2, 2022 at this location: https://www.culturecombine.com/post/signalis-is-a-great-throwback-to-classic-horror-with-lots-of-new-ideas

If you asked me 10-15 years ago about scary games, I’m sure System Shock 2 would have been brought up. It’s a classic that genuinely scared me in a way its sprite-based predecessor didn’t. Now we have the superbly remade System Shock, lovingly crafted from the ground up by Night Dive Studios to bring Shodan’s original terror spree to contemporary gamers. Not only was it great at launch, but the developers have been listening to feedback, and it's still getting updates as of August of this year. GLaDOS is perhaps the most famous rogue AI in video games, but long before I played Portal I was facing off against an antagonistic AI that absolutely terrifies me in a way that GLaDOS doesn’t: Shodan. While there is some humor in GLaDOS’s horror, Shodan is a terrifying megalomaniacal AI that revels in genetic experiments and creating cyborg monstrosities while demanding her subjects worship her as a god. System Shock is a first person adventure game that has been painstakingly recreated by brilliant retro resurrectors Night Dive Studios. In it, you play as a who is hacker forced to fight their way through Citadel station after the station’s AI went rogue. In fact, you’re the reason Shodan’s leash is unhooked. It’s your job to undo this damage as you find yourself trapped on a Citadel Station that is controlled by Shodan, with its cramped corridors filled with mutants, cyborgs, and robots bent on destroying or enslaving you. Body horror abounds in high definition. Before the denizens of Citadel Station were depicted in highly pixelated gore, you can see the fruit of Shodan’s carnage in a whole new way. Despite System Shock’s graphical overhaul, Night Dive Studios left a bit of pixelated retro feel in their art. If you get really close to an object the textures are pixelated in a way that feels like a deliberate art choice by the developers. It helps maintain that retro feel. But you also have all of the modern graphical bells and whistles you’d expect. While the graphics changed significantly, there has been obvious care put into System Shock’s gameplay. It feels like a modern game, but it’s surprisingly faithful to it’s the original’s design. And that means this is a true retro adventure. There is absolutely no hand-holding, so you have to pay attention to dialogue and the environment to find your next task. There are no waypoints. You can reference dialogue snippets that you find as you explore Citadel Station and discover audio logs left from the deceased crew. There are also little to no explanation on the game’s mechanics—if you’re not familiar with this type of game, the learning curve might be frustrating. Especially because there’s a real possibility you can play yourself into a corner. If you don’t save often enough, or lose track of an important game item, you can lose chunks of time. I found myself going back to my old habit of saving frequently, and creating a new save file each time I saved so I could go back and undo anything that might get me stuck. System Shock comes from an age of corridor shooters, and feels only one step removed from a grid-based role-playing game. What I mean by that is: most of the game takes placed in cramped environments. You could argue that this is appropriate for a space station, but it does make System Shock feel labyrthine and claustrophobic—but more in a hard to navigate way than in a scary way. In fact, despite the Shodan’s threats and the prodigious amounts of gore, System Shock isn’t a very scary game. It does achieve a cyberpunk sci-fi atmosphere, but the hacker you play as feels very capable of handling the threats that Shodan produces. Once I got a lightsaber (sorry, laser rapier) and boots that let me run super-fast and nearly fly, I felt like Shodan should be afraid of me. System Shock is definitely one of the most authentically cyberpunk games I’ve played in a long time. Even the original game’s infamous cyberspace hacking segments are created in bright neon colors that invoke the feeling of flying through the ‘net and compromising systems in a way that 90’s popular media promised us. While System Shock contains some frustrating elements for the uninitiated, fans of the original will absolutely love this remake. It’s even more accessible to modern audiences, if they possess a little patience to weather the 90’s video game design. This is my favorite game of its type since 2017’s Prey, and an absolutely worthy remake to a 90’s sci-fi video game classic. System Shock is available today on PC via Steam and the Epic Game Store. A Steam key was given to us for this review This article was originally published on May 5, 2023 in this location: https://www.culturecombine.com/post/system-shock-is-a-brilliant-remake

So--we’re about halfway through the fourth season of Lower Decks, and we finally have an episode that’s all about the show's newest Lower Deck regular T’Lyn. It also has a few throwbacks (of course) and some surprisingly poignant moments while fleshing out Trek lore. Honestly, this intro is completely unnecessary, because I’m essentially just describing the show at this point. Most of this season has been fantastic, and “Empathalogical Fallacies” has some genuinely great Trek moments. In Empathological Fallacies, the USS Cerritos is tasked with transporting three Betazoid diplomats. As I would have expected from Betazoids, these are real party aunt types–loud, boisterous, and flirting constantly and openly. You know, like three Lwaxana Trois, except drunk and (surprisingly more) disorderly. T’Lyn, the Vulcan addition to the Lower Decks crew, cannot stand their behavior, and finds it extremely off-putting. Soon after, the crew begins to experience heightened emotions–something Captain Freeman thinks is being caused by the Betazoids. It’s always hit or miss when you have a Star Trek episode that revolves around characters losing their inhibitions, but “Empathalogical Fallacies” does a great job riding the line between satire and parody, while staying true to Trek’s spirit. There are also some interesting lore tidbits that popped up in this episode, especially the fact that Caitians used to hunt Betazoids. Seeing T’Ana feverishly looking for the Betazoids to hunt was hilarious–but it’s hard to find a scene with Doctor T’Ana that isn’t. While telepathic hell is breaking loose on the Cerritos, Boimler is somewhere deep in the ship during a B-plot with Shaxs and the security crew. Boimler is hoping to learn some moves to kick ass, but instead is invited to play board games and listen to slam poetry. I love how much of a Papa Bear Shaxs is, and the whole episode turns out to be a sort of Karate Kid moment for Boimler. I wasn’t sure where “Empathalogical Fallacies” was going at first (despite its title hinting at the truth) and I thought T’Lyn was being set up as a villain. Thankfully, that’s not the case, as I’ve really grown to like her character. T’Lyn has turned out to be a great addition to Lower Decks crew. In fact, it’s strange to think that she wasn’t there acting as the “straight man” all along. Certain characters took that role every now and then, and I think Boimler may have originally been meant to occupy that space, but all of the Lower Deck crews are quirkier and more enthusiastic than any straight man can be. “Empathalogical Fallacies” ends with some hints towards the season’s big mystery. While we’re not given any answers, we’re brought a little closer to the truth. I’m hoping they’re not saving the reveal for a two part ending, and that we’ll get a few more clues to its purpose and who is behind it before any finale.

This isn’t exactly a horror game, but it isn’t NOT a horror game. While there are a few things in this deckbuilder that are unconventional (and lots of surprises for those who managed to avoid spoilers) and sometimes horrifying. Either way, it’s a game that had unsettling moments that left an impression on me almost three years after its release. This review strives to be as spoiler-free as possible. It’s hard to write about Inscryption. It’s a game that’s full of surprises—and those surprises are part of the fun I’ve had while peeling back Inscryption’s many layers. But writing about it proves problematic because of spoilers—and while I know my efforts will be in vain, since spoilers will be on the internet once the embargo lifts, I don’t want to be the reason that you are spoiled for this amazing game. Inscryption is a darkly atmospheric deckbuilding and puzzle game. If you’ve played games like Slay the Spire, Inscryption may look familiar to you—but that’s surface level. Inscryption’s brilliance is hidden within multiple layers of compelling mystery. To start the game, you find yourself a hapless victim in Leshy’s cabin—an insane hermit who is forcing you to play a deadly game of cards against him. If you lose, it costs you your life. The gameplay of Inscryption not only requires you to build good decks to defeat the challenges you’ll face, but to also solve puzzles to reveal secrets, and uncover its mysteries. Screenshot: Inscryption My first impression of Inscryption was that it was a haunted game—like it was something I discovered, but wasn’t meant to. It uses its dark atmosphere, and scaled down retro style graphics to set the tone of a game that feels like it was plucked straight from creepypasta. It’s not long before you start to realize that things aren’t necessarily as they seem, as the cards begin to talk to you. Get up from you seat, and you can explore the cabin, finding secrets including hidden cards, and information that reveals the truth of Inscryption. As far as deckbuilders go, Inscryption takes a whole lot of bold and exciting steps, and is one of my favorite card games in recent memory. Card duels in Inscryption are extremely fun, and very high risk—with decisive moves making duels over in only a few rounds. It’s set up a bit like Magic: The Gathering: cards are played opposite one another in a number of lanes. Cards that attack with no card in the opposite lane will instead do damage to the other “player.” There aren’t conventional hit points. Instead, if you’re hit, a scale is weighed down in your direction—if the scale lowers too far, you lose. This makes health dynamic, and sometimes duels are a tug of war, trading blows back and forth. Screenshot: Inscryption There is a lot of room for crazy, unconventional, or just plain overpowered cards in Inscryption. There are a few methods of upgrading or modifying cards, with certain combos of abilities that make for fun synergies. Cards have health values and damage values—but they also have sigils that determine their behavior. Inscryption’s style of card dueling rewards high risk behavior and sacrifice. In fact, especially to start, sacrificing cards is necessary to even play them, though new card mechanics are added (and removed) as you play. There is an underlying mystery in Inscryption, and to get to the bottom of it, you’ll need to explore everything you can. Nothing in Inscryption is as it seems. It creates an incredible atmosphere of dread, propped up by the amazing soundtrack by Jonah Senzei. Screenshot: Inscryption A major part of Inscryption is interacting with its environments. There are many puzzles and other unexpected things to interact with and discover. While some of Inscryption’s puzzles are easier than others, none of them had me stumped for long. There are so many things to discover, that I felt like I was hardly ever stuck—and always moving towards the answers to Incryption’s secrets. Inscryption pays homage to video games in many ways. It uses meta narrative in a way that reminds me of what was so exciting about Undertale—and while I can’t predict if Inscryption is destined for such massive popularity, it deserves to be. Inscryption is easily one of the best games I’ve played all year. Inscryption is available tomorrow for PC via Steam. This article was originally published on 10/18/2021. The original article is located here: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2021/10/18/review-inscryption/

31DoH is our 31 Days of Horror series, where we will post one horror game review every day for the month of October. Enjoy! To start off this 31 Days of Horror games I wanted to highlight one of my favorite horror games this year: Amnesia: The Bunker. I was a little bummed by the direction of the Amnesia series after Rebirth–it was a solid game, but it pulled the curtain a little too far back. The Bunker, however, takes the series in a different approach. Developer Frictional seemed to be channeling their earlier works–like the Penumbra series–as well as a bit of Alien: Isolation (among other titles) to bring an experience that is genuinely terrifying. I’ve been a fan of developer Frictional Games since I played Penumbra: Overture. In fact, I heartily recommend their game Soma to anyone who might ask me for game recommendations. But Frictional Games is best known for their Amnesia series. While I thought their previous entry Amnesia: Rebirth might have pulled the curtain back a tad too far, Amnesia: The Bunker is a return to form for Frictional Games, with gameplay that calls back to the Penumbra series. It’s also damn scary. Amnesia: The Bunker is a first person survival horror game. In it, you play as a World War I soldier who has recently recovered from a wound only to wake up to a horror: trapped alone in an underground bunker with a bloodthirsty creature. The officers escaped, and collapsed the tunnel behind them, so you have to find a way out of the bunker while avoiding the creature. It won’t be easy, however, as you also have to find your way around obstacles, through locked doors, and around traps left by the soldiers who have died before you. You have to do all of this while trying to keep the lights on at all costs, because the creature prefers to hunt in the dark. But the generator loves to gulp down fuel, and you’re either forced to use your noisy wind-up flashlight, improvise a light source, or attempt to survive the bunker by groping around in the dark. Screenshot: Amnesia: The Bunker When you first start up Amnesia: The Bunker ( or The Bunker) you’re forced to play through a clumsy beginning that establishes the setting, and works a bit like a tutorial. It’s an unfortunate first impression, but it’s quickly forgotten as the game immediately creates a tense atmosphere that only gets more intense as you continue to play. Once you’re on your own, there’s a message that informs you that “if you think it’s possible, it probably is” in regards to what The Bunker’s physics-driven interactions can be. While there is definitely some possibility for emergent gameplay, I found this mostly means finding creative ways to break down doors, and sometimes clever ways of warding off the creature. Doors are your main obstacle in The Bunker, and while some can be smashed open (or blown up, shot, etc.) others will require you to find keys or combinations to the locks that impede your way forward. Most of these keys and combinations can be found through careful exploration, but also by reading the various notes left around. This is how the story is told, and gives you an idea of what happened in the bunker leading up to its current state. Screenshot: Amnesia: The Bunker There’s always a sense of dread in The Bunker. There’s the constant time pressure of the generator and its fuel consumption, and the pressure of item management: inventory space is limited, so you have to decide what’s important, or what gets left behind in your stash. There’s only one “safe” room in The Bunker, and one save point, meaning you’ll have to explore outward from there. The further out you go, the more intense the pressures can be. And of course, there’s the constant dread of knowing the monster is actively hunting you and may be lurking just around the corner. The creature itself never quite invoked the same childhood induced trauma levels of fear that the xenomorph in Alien: Isolation caused me—but it comes pretty damn close. While most games developed by Frictional Games have you helpless and unable to fight, you can actually fight back against the monster in The Bunker—but anything you do to it will just slow it down. While the creature is repelled by the light, you aren’t safe just because you’re in a bright room: once he sees you, unless you can fight back you’re dead. While the monster isn’t the only enemy you’ll face in The Bunker— it will be a constant threat through your entire playthrough. Screenshot: Amnesia: The Bunker Even after you’ve played through The Bunker the first time, new playthroughs can have their own challenges. Certain elements in The Bunker are randomized. The codes you find in your playthrough are randomly generated, and even sometimes randomly placed. Resources are randomly generated and placed in different locations on each new playthrough. Even traps are randomized by placement and type. There is also Steam Workshop support, which opens up the possibility of being able to play user made content—and I can’t wait to see what the community comes up with. If you find that The Bunker is too difficult, there’s an “easy” mode that allows you to explore with a little less pressure from the monster. Conversely there’s a “hard” mode for those who want an increased challenge. Amnesia: The Bunker is a fantastic game. It’s easily the most terrifying game I’ve played since Alien: Isolation. It instills a sense of dread and its intensity ramps up until the very end. If you’re a fan of horror Amnesia: The Bunker is one of the best and scariest games out there.  Amnesia: The Bunker is available June 6 for PC via Steam and on the Epic Games Store. A Steam key was given to us for this review This article was originally published on 6/5/2023, and was originally found at: https://www.culturecombine.com/post/terrifying-and-brilliant-amnesia-the-bunker-is-a-return-to-form