4/24/2023 0 Comments Those who remain reviewsNothing kills horror like familiarity, and nothing breeds familiarity like replaying the section for the second or third time because of poor stealth mechanics. Then there’s the poorly placed checkpoints, which means getting caught at the end of a section often sends you all the way back to the very beginning of it, requiring you to start the whole thing all over again. There’s no crouch option, so your hiding places are limited, and more than once I was detected by the monster seemingly through solid walls. These can be really intense, but the game’s stealth mechanics are slight to say the least. There’s also a few stealth based sections, that involve you making your way through an area while stalked by a horror you are powerless to defeat. For the most part, they’re the latter mind-numbingly simplistic turn the valve puzzles make up a solid chunk of the gameplay. The major problem here is that the puzzles tend to be either too difficult or way too easy. Each level usually requires you to find an item or two, usually to manipulate your environment in a certain way to allow you to succeed. At its core, this is a puzzle game, at least from a mechanical standpoint. This isn’t a bad thing many of those games had some great scares and great stories, and Those Who Remain follows in those footsteps.īut it also features the clunkiness that was so common in those games. Playing the game, I was reminded of those small-scale, independent horror games, the ones that were so popular with Youtube Let’s Players for a while in the early 2010s. That’s not to say that the game is bad, per se. Unfortunately, while the game’s narrative is strong, the actual game it is built around is decidedly less so. It makes the choices feel hard, lending them the much needed weight to make something like that succeed. Most of the things these people do are awful, and yet they’re simultaneously understandable, motivated by real feelings and emotions. The game does a good job of making both choices feel valid or rather, making them both feel equally poor. Oftentimes a whole level will be dedicated to learning about their actions and their motivations. The game does a good job of slowly progressing both narratives, tying them together into a larger whole.Ī major aspect of the narrative is the presence of certain moral choices, where a mysterious figure prompts you to choose to condemn or forgive select characters in the story. Edward’s tale combines well with the central tale of Annika, a teenaged girl whose death kicks off a series of nightmarish events for the small town the game is set in. When someone steals your car, and you’re forced to hoof it on foot in the dark woods, the scares come out, and the story gets going.įrom there, the game weaves a fascinating tale, combining small town vibes (always a fun horror staple), a grieving mother, and a touch of body horror into a compelling story. When you arrive at the hotel, it’s abandoned completely, with no sign of guests or employees. Players take on the roll of a man named Edward, sitting alone at a desk, when all of a sudden his phone goes off with a text. This theme is directly carried over into the game’s narrative, which is easily the strongest part of the experience. The emphasis on safety in the light and danger in the dark, the mysterious, shadowy enemies that constantly stalk you, and it’s use of wind and weather effects to hammer home the atmosphere all evoke that game in my mind, to good effect. The whole thing, visually at least, reminds me somewhat of the Xbox 360 cult classic Alan Wake to an extent. The art direction works to the game’s advantage well, and the lighting really helps add to the scary atmosphere of the levels you’re exploring. This is helped by some generally strong visuals. It shows that the game does a good job of building the tension throughout its levels, keeping you uneasy and constantly like you’re in danger. Often times, you’re scaring yourself more than the game itself actually is, which in this case is a compliment. The game does an excellent job of building suspense, keeping you on edge for nearly the entire experience. And it is within that exact niche that Those Who Remain seeks to carve out a space for itself, blending psychological and atmospheric horror together into a frightening whole.Īnd when it comes to that central goal, Those Who Remain is actually quite successful. There was a resurgence of the genre a few years ago, thanks to games like Layers of Fear and the Silent Hills Playable Teaser.įor the most part, though, horror has become something of a niche genre these days. Survival horror games are a dime a dozen, and plenty of games walk the line of horror. True horror games, games that focus on being strange and alien and frightening above all else, are relatively rare these days.
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