Black Mirror

The first Black Mirror game appeared to be a stretch in the right direction for a genre (investigation/horror/adventure/p&c) that was suffering from a polarizing series of either relentless shoot em up/rez evil horror, to things like the Alone in the Dark series which had it's ultimate but very frustrating end five years after the OG Black Mirror debuted. It felt like the early AitD series in it's long periods of running around clueless and trying to piece together your next step with some really horrendous controls, but overall satisfying because the storytelling is well paced and, albeit derivative, pretty compelling. This 'Black Mirror' re-imagine's the original story, adds some volumetric lighting, some superb voice acting, and all of the nightmare that comes along with trying to control your character or the camera. Being unable to click on something whilst standing in front of it, instead having to step away and adjust your camera for at least half of a minute before the game recognizes you're trying to play it, pulls you IMMEDIATELY out of the potential set and story arch. The story arch, from the start, is incomprehensible. Not in the way you want a proper mystery thriller to engage you, but in a way that literally makes absolutely no sense and is kind of a dumpster fire. Running from _nothing_ with no time frame to get anywhere. Randomly encountering ghosts who have nothing to offer but abrupt and very brief cinematic moments, the staff of the house doing little things that absolutely no one earth despite the time period would allow to happen to them without interfering or demanding something else... All of these and plenty more are factors that take you out of the attempted immersion into the old school horror/adventure we used to know and love. The inability to maneuver your character where you want him to go, and in my experience becoming 'caught' on things like stairs or even walking across the floor and being completely stuck seems like lazy post production. The aiming at objects to interact, collision detection, abysmal camera and the fact that you can't walk through clearly open doors or spaces merely because the railroad plot won't allow you to go there yet, becomes another infuriating factor. Give me a castle, and a mystery, let me walk about and check it out and properly die a bunch making bad decisions. But this is not Amnesia, or even the original Black Mirror series. I experienced some fairly long loading times as well on a pretty heavy rig. Graphic issues I can get past, always, if the story plays. As a Telltale production, which this almost emulated, this game would have been perfect. A consistent style and visual formula meets well paced storytelling and deeply engaging people. Instead, you have a game trailer with over the top rendering, an actual intro that barely connects to that incoherent thing which has virtually nothing to do with the reason you're at the castle to begin with. I don't mean to rag on the people who created this because it obviously took an enormous amount of effort and talent, and while I am there, I want to say it has some of the finest moody atmospheric music, and very excellent voice acting. Sound design leaves something to be desired as much of the cinematic or cut scene moments have little to no sound effects and there are regular moments where they simply aren't. Ones footsteps, or a door opening, or even a candelabra being knocked over, should be important but nothing is heard. All in all, this get's two stars from me because it is a noble effort, but it is by no means a finished game. Recommend waiting to see if THQ decides to actually polish up the game and bug test and ACTUALLY finish it before releasing it for $27.00. Don't buy this yet, try the original game first if you like an old school point n click with solid, elusive writing. Or, just don't expect $27 worth of game if you do. As so many companies are wan't to do, they released a game far before it was ready to be released and frankly we'd all rather wait. Garbage, dressed up as a nice meal.

As user guideon_tride says, the games feels unfinished and unpolished. The controls and the cameras are bad, the game practically forces you to use a gamepad and the loading times are too long for this kind of games, they don't even bothered to use a "loading..." screen. A quite mediocre and unfinished product that tries to get players (customers) using the Black Mirror game series. I should have trusted my guts and downloaded it for give it a try before buying. Do NOT buy until it gets polished and unfinished.

This is one of the worst games I have ever had the misfortune to experience. First of the controls, like many reviews already pointed out they are horrible. Even if you play it with a gamepad, which is the only way to actually enjoy this game somehow. But if you want to play this game without one, or don't have one, then you are utterly screwed. Because the control are not precise as they need to for some of the QT events. Looking and finding hotspots is a pain in the ... simply because you can't just scan the screen with your mouse but by moving the camera. Which means you have to move the character around and then move the camera to find any hotspot. Anyway, the real issue are the so called interactions. This is where this game truly and utterly suck. I made it to the 3rd act where you find a dead girl in the basement. You have to investigate the scene and then it switches to the spirit world. Here you have to investigate her dead further BUT you only have a limited time to do so because the girl turns into a zombie and kills you. There are NO visual indications why this happens nor are there ANY guides how to procede. You just end up dead without any clue whatsoever. Maybe I am to stupid or old to get passed this scence but in all honesty this is just really, really bad game design. I can't or won't even review any other thing this "game" has to offer because quite I don't care anymore. This game is just BAD. Do not buy it. And the worst part is that this game comes from a very renowed studio that made The Books of unwritten tales and Raven, three excellent adventures. Sad just sad!

I bought this immediately when I saw it in the store; as I loved the original trilogy. Initially it looked very promising - Black Mirror rebooted in a 1920s Scotland setting; and the game quickly has you exploring a dusty old castle by torchlight. At this point, it looks & sounds very rich. Nice ambient sound, OK-ish voice acting, and lots of spooky lighting and decor. But after a respectable first chapter, cracks start to appear: * Almost literally; there are seam cracks throughout the house. In the dark of night they are imperceptible; but in chapter 2 the game has a daytime skybox and light blue lines are scattered all round the house. * There are almost no puzzles after the first chapter. While there are some; often the game artifically prevents you leaving an area with a puzzle left to solve; and the puzzles almost solve themselves. * The game is padded out by having quick time events and interaction with ghosts. Both suck. The QTEs do not tie in with reactive character animation and they do not immerse you. They are just padding. The ghost interaction is badly explained; and like the QTEs they are just filler. It's easy to miss dialogue here as you need to hammer the action button to succeed, and a single extra press skips the resulting dialogue. * Almost the entire game is set in the castle grounds; and what you see in chapter 1 is about 50% of the entire game. Compared to the originals; this is really horrible. * Many bugs. I tried to not let them bother me, but they're there. Some affect gameplay - it's possible in multiple places to press action to interact with something, and the game is unable to complete the action. You need to load your last save. I also found a point (late game) where it's possible to get stuck if you combine inventory items while an outstanding puzzle requires an uncombined item - keep many saves! * Story is not good. The pacing of the mystery is terrible; and the means of exposition are super crude, sometimes laughably so.