I was pretty worried I would find Signalis to be too scary. Instead, I found Signalis to be too boring.

I’m not really a fan of horror and, as such, I have played basically zero games in this genre, including any of the Resident Evil games. So my closest analog to Signalis is “it’s like an old adventure game but with creepy monsters that keep getting in your way”.

Most of my major criticisms of this game are things that I think fans of this genre would consider to be standard features of survival horror games - things like an extremely limited inventory. I know this is done to make me pick and choose which tools to carry, but 50% of my time playing this game was just running back and forth between rooms and my storage as I juggle critical quest items with my three open inventory slots.

I also think fans of classic Resident Evil games will be no stranger to weird aiming, movement, and shooting controls. I never thought having to shoot 2-3 enemies slowly hobbling toward me would be annoying but it’s honestly some of the worst shooting controls I’ve ever experienced in a console game, new or old, and this game came out in the year 2022. I will never understand why modern game devs feel the need to make a brand new video game that feels and plays like a game from over 20 years ago. It reached the point pretty quickly where I began just running around the enemies to avoid combat because engaging with them was just annoying.

Beyond the bad combat controls, navigating the world with a controller sucks and is made all the more challenging by the overly dark environmental design that makes it difficult to see the items you’re supposed to be interacting with. I cranked the brightness all the way up and I still found myself bumping into black objects on the dark ground that I couldn’t see.

This game also has puzzles! Some of these puzzles are fun, some are incredibly simple, and some are as obtuse as the game’s story. From what little I could glimpse of the story from the cutscenes comprised of static images and flashes of screens that say “INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK”, it seems like there’s maybe an interesting mystery here, but I’m not really one for abstract storytelling and that’s the only language Signalis knows.

Overall, there were parts of Signalis I enjoyed - like when I was running around, collecting objects, and solving puzzles like a classic adventure game. But that is all bogged down by terrible inventory management, opaque storytelling, overly dark environmental design, and frequent annoying combat encounters.

+ Some neat puzzle solving and exploration
+ Cool art design
+ Interesting world (kind of)

- Terrible inventory management
- Combat feels bad
- Frequent enemies are a nuisance
- Obtuse, abstract storytelling
- Environmental design is far too dark

I think this is the game Sam Barlow has been trying to make his entire life. Another game in the "objectively messy but works for me specifically" trend of 2022. A bit too on the nose perhaps and feels like it toes the line between loving homage and straight up stealing, but if you're gonna steal, steal from the best, I guess. With one simple trick this thing innovates on the FMV game in a way that I think could spawn an entire subgenre. One of the best performances of the year in games (you know The One) and one or two moments that are going to stick with me for a long time.

Immortality has a fantastic mind-blowing narrative that spans over three full movies wrapped into one game. While I can't say much on the story because of spoilers, it is a hell of a ride once you uncover it all. Despite this, the gameplay has RNG issues that sometimes need you to interact dozens of times to get to the desired clip. This was my only issue with the game, the rest of it is fantastic, especially the main cast. I was compelled by the acting from everyone involved. I recommend this game for cinema lovers as you will get three very decent movies that come together in a very intriguing overarching narrative.