While it may not be saying much from what I've played, this is Bloober Team's most accomplished work yet. Still need to play The Medium and Observer but here we see their minor (but nonetheless valid) talent for crafting ravishing and atmospheric environments utilized to maximum effect thanks to their dedication in making the player truly feel lost within this cursed forest. There are moments that unlike anything in both Layers of Fear titles where I felt mildly unsettled, which I'll take at this point. While it builds off of an established IP (the Blair Witch mythology demands to be further explicated apparently), they interestingly explore how the titular witch's influence enables inherent traumas and makes one act on their most morbid impulses. The game feels more Book of Shadows in that way than it does the original classic. It's messy storytelling overall because of Bloober Team's insistent lack of nuance and bludgeoning of capital T themes and in the end doesn't quite stick the punch line to these ideas but at least it has a basic minimal understanding of what constitutes as "psychological horror". Bloober Team is giving me tasty scraps and I guess I ate (mostly in part to the dog tbh), but I feel once they get over their obsession with PT they can deliver something truly idiosyncratic to the horror medium. There are traces of it here beyond the terrible enemy encounters and shoddy dog AI because otherwise, I had fun.

Reviewed on Mar 31, 2021


Comments