One of my favorite survival horror games with enough flaws to make it one of the hardest things to replay.
You play as Rion Steiner, a recently awoken patient in a lab who's lost his memory and is on a psychic powered path of vengeance to find your memory, save your childhood friend, and stop an evil supercomputer from ruling your world.
Visually, this game whips. The environments perfectly match each stage from the run-down hotel with out of date electric/piping, to Rion's abandoned childhood house and its desolate emptiness, and even the starting lab's hyper-sterile, uncanny hallways. The character models themselves are nicely detailed for how low resolution they're rendered, being distinctive and decently animated. Out of everything the CG cutscenes have aged fairly poorly with very stiff animation and poor lighting.
At least if there's anything, the sound design (voice acting aside) is absolutely incredible. One of the best soundtracks on the console with banging industrial hip-hop, electronic noise, gross undulating vibes, and just ambience galore to match every occasion and run-in you'll have with the mutilated experiments and scarred townsfolk. Really if there's one thing holding this game's audio back, its the voice acting sounding immensely amateur for the most part, and laughably unfitting at its worst. There's a charm to it, but it doesn't feel right for this game.
Lastly, the game itself controls very much akin to Resident Evil with its tank control scheme and very stiff turn radius. On top of the controls, attacks require charging and proiper resource management so you don't run out of psychic power or let your character "short circuit" leading to rapid health draining. This plus tight rooms where you'll be forced to fight, make this game quit difficult. Almost unfairly so in some cases.
It's a rough game on its edges and its core is definitely half-baked, but what's here is one hell of an experimental horror game that really stands out as one of the weirdest screwball titles on the PS1. And I think that's worth a look at least once.
You play as Rion Steiner, a recently awoken patient in a lab who's lost his memory and is on a psychic powered path of vengeance to find your memory, save your childhood friend, and stop an evil supercomputer from ruling your world.
Visually, this game whips. The environments perfectly match each stage from the run-down hotel with out of date electric/piping, to Rion's abandoned childhood house and its desolate emptiness, and even the starting lab's hyper-sterile, uncanny hallways. The character models themselves are nicely detailed for how low resolution they're rendered, being distinctive and decently animated. Out of everything the CG cutscenes have aged fairly poorly with very stiff animation and poor lighting.
At least if there's anything, the sound design (voice acting aside) is absolutely incredible. One of the best soundtracks on the console with banging industrial hip-hop, electronic noise, gross undulating vibes, and just ambience galore to match every occasion and run-in you'll have with the mutilated experiments and scarred townsfolk. Really if there's one thing holding this game's audio back, its the voice acting sounding immensely amateur for the most part, and laughably unfitting at its worst. There's a charm to it, but it doesn't feel right for this game.
Lastly, the game itself controls very much akin to Resident Evil with its tank control scheme and very stiff turn radius. On top of the controls, attacks require charging and proiper resource management so you don't run out of psychic power or let your character "short circuit" leading to rapid health draining. This plus tight rooms where you'll be forced to fight, make this game quit difficult. Almost unfairly so in some cases.
It's a rough game on its edges and its core is definitely half-baked, but what's here is one hell of an experimental horror game that really stands out as one of the weirdest screwball titles on the PS1. And I think that's worth a look at least once.