Game:

Visage (2020)

Duration: 3:52:16

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This is a pretty darn good game. It certainly gets atmosphere right. It takes some huge inspiration from PT and that is a good thing. There are 4 stories going on here and three are activated from items in the environment. It's a strange approach, but it works. What threw me off is that the first chapter I chose took place in the house and so I just wandered around trying to get my bearings. I thought I was playing the way the game intended but turns out I got distracted and missed where the game was leading me and got a bit confused as to what I needed to continue the game. I found a step ladder and thought hey I can use that to get into the attic. Nope. I thought maybe I was just placing it wrong. Nope. Turns out I needed the hook to reach the attic and it was in a room I had written off. Oops. This kind of thing is pretty common in adventure games and it's a pretty easy fix. The worst part is that I couldn't even use the step ladder where it was intended because you needed to be outside of a chapter to use it. Maybe certain items shouldn't be available outside the chapters? It just added some unnecessary confusion. I really liked Dolores's chapter. I loved wandering around confused and scared with no idea what was happening, figuring out mechanics on the fly and just being overall lost. It really added to the experience. Once I got a grasp on how the sanity meter worked I never had to use pills. This game also borrow heavily from the Amnesia series and you have a sanity meter that lowers when you are in the dark. The lower your sanity the more paranormal things that happen. Which usually just means the lights go off or the radio comes on or the stalker shows up more frequently. I kind of wish the game delved more into the weird. Like when the kitchen appliances talked to you and gossiped about George and Dolores. Heck, I liked all the chapters. Rakan takes you to a hospital and Lucy takes you to a nightmare version of your house. Each is mixed with some surreal dream like areas which help with the metaphors and allusions and flesh out the story bits. Lucy's chapter was probably the scariest. It's a shame that Dwayne's chapter was the least fleshed out. You learn stuff about his alcohol and prescription drug abuse and eventual fallout with his family, but I would have really liked more. It felt like the bare minimum. The ending also left me wanting. The other chapters seemed to get fair resolutions and Dwayne's just kind of ends abruptly. There are some decent puzzles? I guess you can call them puzzles. Most of the time it is find item and use item to proceed. There are some real puzzles, they are just few and far in between. I really liked the game and would love to see the next iteration with some real polish. The game did crash my PC once and could have really used some more optimization. There were a ton of small goofy things that went wrong. Like randomly losing my camera even though I still had it in my hand. Dragging a discarded item for a huge chunk of a level. Endless reminders items were placed back in storage The graphics were great and the environments were very pretty. I'm still not sure if there was a reason why you didn't have hands or if that was part of the lore. The controls were fine if a little wonky when opening and closing things but that was rarely an issue where it mattered. The game had amazing atmosphere and it did indeed get me a few times, which is really great. Enjoy my blind playthrough.

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