Game:

Hollow (2017)

Category:

Review

Duration: 19:38

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3

This is gameplay and a review of Blameless, a free first-person atmospheric horror game by Vaclav Hudec. The game advertises a strong focus on story and puzzle elements and also gives the warning that it is an estimated gameplay time of 20-60 minutes. They aren’t lying… I beat the game 3 times during this recording session, the final play through only took 3-4 minutes. Since it is free, I am much more inclined to go easy on it and will pretty much recommend it no matter what unless it is a complete and utter waste of time and hard drive space. It’s also uncommon for me to want to review, let alone play, a horror game of any sort. However, it is my hope that part of New Release Friday will be me branching out and trying new sorts of games that I normally wouldn’t.
New Release Friday is a series in which (hopefully) every week I will hop over to the “New Releases” section of Steam and pick-up a game to play for a few hours and give a first-thought review on. This series is an attempt to not only keep content fresh and relevant around the channel by covering current games in a concise and genuine fashion, but also to offer exposure to new games via a relaxed review format to inform potential, unsure buyers.
Now, onto the specifics of Blameless. First thing’s first, the game does NOT like Dxtory. It appears that during every single load screen, DirectX or OpenGL shuts down entirely and causes Dxtory to split your recording and start a new one after the load screen. This made editing way more of a pain in the ass than it needed to be. This is pretty irrelevant to the review, because it doesn’t impact gameplay but only impacts the ability to capture gameplay of Blameless. I honestly just wanted a reason to let someone know how much work went into editing this compared to a normal series.
After starting a new game, a nicely stylized cut-scene plays (I skipped most of these, not only to avoid spoilers but also because it is kinda boring.) The first thing that I noticed about the cut scenes was definitely the voice acting. Blameless is a game developed by a single man and voiced by a tiny group of what I would assume to be entry-level voice actors. The quality isn’t insanely believable, but for a game that is free and this small of a production, it will totally suffice. Some of the writing is a little bit weird, including a like stating, “I drove there with my car.” The guy might be foreign, so I don’t want to be judging because of that, but that is a pretty strange/pointless statement in my opinion.
Getting past the voice acting and onto the gameplay, we get our first environment; a messy workroom in a seemingly abandoned construction site. First thing I notice is a bunch of blood on the floor that appears to have been smeared by the dragging of something. That is all fine and good, but then I realize that there are tons of tools around and I am immediately hyped. I start gathering them up and trying all sorts of different stuff at the workbench… upon further review, I only needed one of them and it wasn’t even actually a tool. The environment, though just a single room was really nicely done and actually felt like a messy workspace for a remodeling project. Particle effects were used wisely and helped to portray the dusty, unfinished house in which all of Blameless takes place.
All of the environments seem to maintain the consistency of being really nice. Everything is a mess and ties together in ways that just make sense. The progression if pretty linear for puzzle solving; however, I later come to realize that it might be for different reasons than poor design or convenience. There are interactive items all over the place, including tools, notes, tips, corpses, keys, environmental switches and what not. It’s all so well implemented and really gets you excited to fiddle with all of these things and see how they impact your progression through the gameplay of Blameless. Then the game ends.
That’s it.
All of these explorable areas of the game, all of these carefully crafted atmospheres that have you convinced someone is about the chase you down and dismember you, all of these items you can pick up and play with and take places… only about 10% of them have any meaning or purpose. I thought that for sure I was wrong, that I was just playing like an idiot and need to go back and try new things. A review of the game confirmed what I feared… gameplay is truly hollow and lacks any real puzzle solving with impact or any real item substance beyond “Oh, look I can pick this up and put it down.”
The game isn’t bad, man. I mean, the ending of the story sucks, but it implies that there will be a sequel which gave me a bit of relief. The environments are cool, the game runs buttery smooth, and has virtually no bugs or issues… which is a lot more than most AAA developers can say about their gameplay these days. Blameless just relies too heavily upon the illusion of important actions that actually don’t mean jack.

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