Lets Review The Suicide of Rachel Foster: Creepy atmosphere and a difficult story
3Developer's Website: https://www.oneoonegames.com/
The Good
At its core, The Suicide of Rachel Foster could have been a great game. We have a moody setting with a beautiful labyrinthian hotel. We have amazing sound effects that have just the right balance between the noises an empty buildings makes and the noises you might hear in a seemingly empty building when you realize it isn't empty after all.
We have very solid voice work from Kosha Engler and Christopher Ragland as our protagonist Nichole and as the local stranger Irving who is connected to us only by phone and helps us navigate through the hotel and its secrets.
We have a good plot with the tragic death of a young girl and the question what really happened to her.
And we even have some gameplay elements that might not have the best mechanics in the world but are kind of fun and add to the spoopy atmosphere. Speaking of which, the game's scares are mostly quite effective and especially in the third act, I got thoroughly spooked. As a horror game, The Suicide of Rachel Foster was a very atmospheric ghost story, which makes the next part of this review all the more frustrating.
The Bad
A few small bugs here and there are usually not gamebreaking, especially if the game overall is entertaining enough. However, during my playthrough I experienced some rather big issues, including the loss of the conversation audio and numerous game crashes.
I also wonder whether the auto save frequency is really the best for a game like this. The game saves only once at the end of each chapter, so if you decide to quit in the middle of a chapter, you have to start over the next time you log in. This gets further frustrating because you can't load previously played chapters AND you can't skip any conversations (and there are many).
Another thing that - pun alert - bugged me, was the way that some conversations prompts work - or don't work. Throughout the game, the continuation of the story usually gets triggered by a conversation. Those are sometimes dependent on where you are in the hotel. However, it can happen that you miss a certain place not because you don't know how to get there but because there are several ways to reach almost any room in the hotel. If the conversation prompt is on path A but you went path B, well, tough luck. However, without certain conversations, you will not be able to continue, button prompts won't appear and you're somewhat stuck.
That might have been a quite subjective problem for me, since I had to repeat chapters so often because of all the game crashes, but it feels like the workflows for triggering conversations and prompts are not designed as cleanly as they could have been. For example, I did initiate a conversation on the second floor, before I was supposed to go to the second floor. When I actually had to, my conversation audio cut out and I had to restart the game (and also - as already established - the entire chapter).
The Ugly
At the beginning of the game, the player gets greeted with a content warning that the game contains themes of grooming, suicide and sexual abuse. That will be the last time that the game addresses these topics sensibly, which is a damn shame.
Without spoiling too much, the way that especially the sexual abuse and grooming of a minor is treated in the game is lacking - a lot. Instead of addressing the many ways grooming is not ok and a very bad, not good thing, the game and everyone in it tries to paint it as some weird tragic love story which might have worked in a Woody Allen but is fortunately completely outdated and gross in a video game from 2020.
The most frustrating part about this is the fact that nearly all instances concerning grooming are not even integral to the plot. Both the main story as well as the character motivations would have worked perfectly fine with a few adjustments, like making the victim Rachel Foster 23 instead of 16. The way the sensitive story elements are worked into the story feels almost lazy. To be quite honest, I screamed at the game more often than I'd like to admit because it perpetuated the myth that grooming is nothing more than an ill-fated romance of an older adult with a mature teen.
I also would advise everyone who is sensitive to the depiction or mention of suicide in any media to steer the fuck clear of this game. I don't want to go into detail but just as with the sexual abuse, this game drops the ball on handling suicide informed and sensibly. And yes, I yelled even more at the game.
So, if you like mystery games, are not afraid of technical issues and don't mind the occasional victim blaming and tactless dealing with suicide and depression then ... I guess, this is an alright game? It could have been a great game but damn, those were a lot of issues to get through.
#TheSuicideofRachelFoster #RachelFoster #GameReview #MysteryGame #Gamer #Gaming #HulaNoob
Other Videos By Hula Noob
Other Statistics
The Suicide of Rachel Foster Statistics For Hula Noob
Hula Noob currently has 68 views spread across 4 videos for The Suicide of Rachel Foster. About 4 hours worth of The Suicide of Rachel Foster videos were uploaded to his channel, making up less than 0.97% of the total overall content on Hula Noob's YouTube channel.