CWs for Signalis: extreme flashing lights, body horror, trypophobia triggers, bodily fluids, dismemberment, mind control. abuse, practices of enslavement.
Signalis is a delectable and gorgeous survival horror who's affect is painfully undermined by a weak grasp on montage, a death grip on an underdeveloped obscurity, and a deep uncertainty on the player's role as an actor haunting the whole affair. I love how evocative this game is and how well it synthesizes its obvious touchstones at a formal level, but it drags its feet far too long before any stakes or narrative legibility are offered.
Signalis is undeniably looking towards Silent Hill and Resident Evil; the former's theater of the mind playing out in abstraction and architecture plus the latter's rat-in-a-maze approach to resource attrition. This a la carte approach frequently produces grinding halts at puzzles that would be better served as set pieces that functionally appeared as Professor Layton puzzles instead of another inventory juggling moment. There are strides of playtime where the mixed approach sings and the carousel routing highlights new knowledge of the same environmental pieces, but they're far too few in the first act or far too late in the last.
In many ways, this game chases some really intoxicating leads on how to break convention in a genre very in clutches of its predecessors. Signalis looks to the drama of workers revolt, of military domination, of gay women kept apart by society. The sudden tip in power relationships in Resident Evil when you know you can safely blow a fuck ton of ammo theoretically has a lot of room to fill in these topics. Unfortunately, it needs a bit of formal convention as most people will play for a very long time without understanding the shape of galaxy, the relation of the nations, who any one is, and why Elster is taking action at all. I'm not asking for a lot and I'm more than unhappy to be unknowing, but you need to give a player some grounding to resolve the montage of fictional symbolic language if you're not going to develop your systemic language past homage. Even Silent Hill 2 gives us a very short yet explicit monologue: we know where we're going and what that place means in the scheme of Harry's motivations.
Video games are not films. They are not television, they are not books, and they're certainly not a painting. Most do not let you easily return or rewind to chew on what's been delivered. The flags cannot be taken back and the internal timer marches on in the code. I mostly had a very fun time with this game and it is a very interesting object, but Signalis desperately needs to let a viewer in beyond the spectacle factor before the final hour to claim a thematic weight heavier than paper mache.
Signalis is a delectable and gorgeous survival horror who's affect is painfully undermined by a weak grasp on montage, a death grip on an underdeveloped obscurity, and a deep uncertainty on the player's role as an actor haunting the whole affair. I love how evocative this game is and how well it synthesizes its obvious touchstones at a formal level, but it drags its feet far too long before any stakes or narrative legibility are offered.
Signalis is undeniably looking towards Silent Hill and Resident Evil; the former's theater of the mind playing out in abstraction and architecture plus the latter's rat-in-a-maze approach to resource attrition. This a la carte approach frequently produces grinding halts at puzzles that would be better served as set pieces that functionally appeared as Professor Layton puzzles instead of another inventory juggling moment. There are strides of playtime where the mixed approach sings and the carousel routing highlights new knowledge of the same environmental pieces, but they're far too few in the first act or far too late in the last.
In many ways, this game chases some really intoxicating leads on how to break convention in a genre very in clutches of its predecessors. Signalis looks to the drama of workers revolt, of military domination, of gay women kept apart by society. The sudden tip in power relationships in Resident Evil when you know you can safely blow a fuck ton of ammo theoretically has a lot of room to fill in these topics. Unfortunately, it needs a bit of formal convention as most people will play for a very long time without understanding the shape of galaxy, the relation of the nations, who any one is, and why Elster is taking action at all. I'm not asking for a lot and I'm more than unhappy to be unknowing, but you need to give a player some grounding to resolve the montage of fictional symbolic language if you're not going to develop your systemic language past homage. Even Silent Hill 2 gives us a very short yet explicit monologue: we know where we're going and what that place means in the scheme of Harry's motivations.
Video games are not films. They are not television, they are not books, and they're certainly not a painting. Most do not let you easily return or rewind to chew on what's been delivered. The flags cannot be taken back and the internal timer marches on in the code. I mostly had a very fun time with this game and it is a very interesting object, but Signalis desperately needs to let a viewer in beyond the spectacle factor before the final hour to claim a thematic weight heavier than paper mache.