I appreciate a game that gives some love to the 3D era of the PS1.

This tries to steal some of that David Lynch vibe. I'm not sure how much it succeeds but I like the effort

For the French - https://lacritiquedumoment.wordpress.com/2023/10/26/trois-petits-jeux-dhalloween/

This game has some of the best cuts I’ve ever seen. Cutting is a difficult thing to pull off in games, it’s inherently disorienting in a medium that is all about immersion and agency, but for horror those feelings are a boon. I’ve seen the phrase “Lynchian” thrown out for a lot of horror games, but this game comes the closest in my opinion because it best matches his film form. The slow burn of the elevator, the disjointed but well written dialogue, the absurd not-a-metaphor videotapes, all the hallmarks of a well done Lynchian story are there. I’m by no means an expert, but one of the lead writers on Twin Peaks was a mentor of mine and he always said “throw it in there, it doesn’t matter where. They’ll find the meaning”.

Follows a smuggler, assassin, and photographer by jump cutting between them at different times of their stories but out of order from one another. An unsettling looking visual style that looks graphically similar to what you might see on the original Playstation but with an often grimy looking filter, with the atmosphere further improved by the music and sound design. The narrative can be difficult to piece together, more so without finding some hidden or choice based interactions and things are left vague enough where you can only make assumptions about a plot involving (or possibly involving) aliens, hidden facilities, and effected VHS tapes turning people into monsters but everything is done in a way that you can learn and notice things that you missed on a first playthrough.

A short interesting game and I hope the developers are able to return to the setting sometime.