trauma as primary subtext, or just 'text', needs to go away. shoo. vanish. or at least the horror community need to find another topic from the giant fishbowl of pain they mine for stories, because then you wind up with this: a game about a man with like, let's see... one-two-three-four-potentially five or six instigating traumas. two of them are so identical it genuinely feels like a mistake that they both made it into the game. criticising this game for doing a poor-to-damaging job of representing mental illness and trauma victims is giving it too much credit because it feels like a game whose writer fell asleep at the wheel and crashed through a convenience store. ignorance might not seem like a good defence but the intent seems harmless, driven by cliches and broad trends/modern conventions rather than intentionally calculating and cold.
on the flipside, i can't help but just vibe with the kind of horror design bloober are aiming to make. this feels like a better version of what resident evil 7 thought it was. the ending is maybe too painfully long and the game's moral and stealth systems seem broken and boring respectively. however, i love taking solitary walks in a big, beautiful scary forest. the monsters in the game are barely visible and present but terrifying as hell, genuinely feels like the woods themselves are attacking you. there's virtually no combat aside from a torch which i like. bloober's penchant for using video games to push physical spaces to insane proportions is on show once again too. a forest can become a warzone in a blink of an eye. a sudden burst of light can turn night into day. the blair witch house can be an insane horror maze. i love this shit, i can't deny it.
and the support the dog the game gives you. it's such a great catharsis. the dog affords the player almost the same level of comfort he offers the main character. you never feel alone or abandoned with him by your side. bullet is his name and he's one of the all-time video game pets.
i don't think bloober are capable of crafting a rich, compelling narrative. if anything, they're doing the opposite. but i do think they have a good head for horror design philosophy and can are making some of the richest visual horror games around. they're like the zack snyder/michael bay of horror games: dumb as a bag of bricks, but man they know to craft an image or two.
on the flipside, i can't help but just vibe with the kind of horror design bloober are aiming to make. this feels like a better version of what resident evil 7 thought it was. the ending is maybe too painfully long and the game's moral and stealth systems seem broken and boring respectively. however, i love taking solitary walks in a big, beautiful scary forest. the monsters in the game are barely visible and present but terrifying as hell, genuinely feels like the woods themselves are attacking you. there's virtually no combat aside from a torch which i like. bloober's penchant for using video games to push physical spaces to insane proportions is on show once again too. a forest can become a warzone in a blink of an eye. a sudden burst of light can turn night into day. the blair witch house can be an insane horror maze. i love this shit, i can't deny it.
and the support the dog the game gives you. it's such a great catharsis. the dog affords the player almost the same level of comfort he offers the main character. you never feel alone or abandoned with him by your side. bullet is his name and he's one of the all-time video game pets.
i don't think bloober are capable of crafting a rich, compelling narrative. if anything, they're doing the opposite. but i do think they have a good head for horror design philosophy and can are making some of the richest visual horror games around. they're like the zack snyder/michael bay of horror games: dumb as a bag of bricks, but man they know to craft an image or two.