Not what I expected from this game. I thought it would be a couple hour romp full of jump scares and shit, but it ended up being a narrative driven character study. I did not expect to be this invested in this story but the way Ellis was written, it was hard not to.

Without spoiling anything, the game revolves around Ellis, a veteran police officer investigating a missing child in a forest. I absolutely love the original movie, and was curious to see what it would do. The game is set a few years after the movie, and there aren't a lot of ties to it, and there aren't even that many easter eggs or stuff that only people who watched the movie would get, aside from the whole gist of the blair witch, which isn't really even explained in the movie. Anyway, the game really does encapsulate the feeling of the movie, delving into the giant forest, and getting lost. I would have liked some more time in the daylight to establish the game, as the game sort of gets dark(literally) quite fast. I'm not gonna speak too much on plot details but the plot did hook me, even though I could see the major twist coming from a mile away. The ending too, is quite satisfying, both the good and bad endings. The story is told through various means, phone calls, video tapes, hallucinations etc. and they all work well together to tell the story without giving away too much(most of the time). Something I appreciated about the game was how it didn't insult the player's intelligence. Aside from a handful of moments where Ellis would just straight up say what's going on, without you being able to figure it out, the game relies on you to understand what's happening through context clues, which I like. Ellis as a protagonist is great, all be it sometimes generic. Another thing I would like to applaud about Ellis is the talking to himself part. Something I hate about games is characters talking to themselves. Not only does it not make sense in most games, but a lot of the commentary is lackluster and annoying, disconnecting you from the character. This is especially annoying in first person games when you are supposed to be one as the same with the character. Ellis talks to himself quite a lot in this game, but it makes sense and also most of his self-dialogue is necessary. At various points at the game Ellis would say something word-for-word as I was thinking it, which is very very impressive. VA was also pretty good, Ellis being a highlight while the "carver" was a low point, a lot of the time sounding cartoonishly evil. Some criticisms of the story are: Some story threads were sort of half baked like the grocery store thing, or Ellis potentially beating his wife, which was mentioned like once. Also, the switch up Ellis has on Lanning after a certain point in the story makes no sense to me. He goes from hating his guts and not following any of his orders to suddenly being sympathetic.


The story, no doubt, was strong, however there is other components to this game which I think fall flat ridiculously. The combat, if you can even call it that, is pathetic. It appears I think 5 times in the game, and each time I could have done it asleep. The combat consists of looking at your dog to see where hes barking at, shining your flashlight at that area, and repeating. Same thing goes for the puzzles. The puzzles are terrible, and compared to contemporaries like resident evil, they are pathetic. It's not even worth talking about just because they aren't of note at all. The only time in the game where a puzzle had slightly involved me was during a sequence with a cart, where a glitch happened where my dog got stuck trying to give me something for a puzzle which I couldn't pick up which was frustrating. There's the whole tape thing, which is a fairly cool concept but is so underutilized it's crazy, they boil down to only being a story telling device towards the ending portion of the game. All this leads me to the question: why was all this in the game? While yes the argument could be made that the game is already quite lean as it is and cutting it down would lead to it being shorter, is that really a bad thing? I understand if they didn't have time to fully flesh out the various mechanics, so why not completely remove them and turn it into a straight up walking sim?


Now as a horror game it isn't super successful. The game, while creepy, failed to scare me for the most apart, the exception being the great last chapter but even that wasn't super scary. The game is very atmospheric, and as I said in the intro to this review, I see it as more of a character study than a horror game. Ellis's PTSD and trauma haunts him, and maybe the true monsters were the people?????
Seriously though, the depictions of PTSD were quite interesting, although I never had the feeling of "is this real or not" as the game seemed to want me to have. In terms of visuals, the game is quite great aside from some of the animations and models in the tapes looking off, although thats quite a minor nitpick for a game that does overall look very good. The sound design is also something I wanted to shout out. While a little too much at times, especially when you're walking in the forest and theres like a million different sounds, the sound design contributes to the overall atmosphere of this game and is a huge plus.


Overall though I would recommend this. While not doing everything it sets out to do, and failing as a horror game, for a 4 hour spooky experience with a great story, this is worth it. Not the scariest game you'll ever play, not the best game youll ever play, hell not even the best bloober team horror game that came out that year you'll play, but a worthwhile, enjoyable experience.