Song of Horror

This game just popped out of nowhere on GoG during the October sale and after being a little disappointed with Amnesia: Rebrirth I decided I would give this a go and I have to say that it was well worth it. In this game you start out as Daniel who goes to see a writer called Husher at his house to find out why he has not met his deadline over a book but when Daniel arrives the door is unlocked but no one is in the house. After searching the house Daniel finds a strange door that should not exist and decides to check out what is behind the door before he too goes missing. Three days have passed and Daniels ex-wife and his boss are worried that he has gone missing and then the first chapter begins. In the game you have a bunch of character to pick from at the start of each chapter each with thier own strengths and weaknesses as well as a personal item that can help them out or at least help you get into the mind of the character. The best thing about these character is that none of them have plot armour, none of them are the chosen one and it just takes one small mistake to get that character killed and then lose them forever. So if you decide to blindly run around the house opening doors without a care and touching everything without forethought then you will probably get everyone killed in the process. This game does not hold your hand and unlike some other horror games, there is no wooble vision, no enemies chasing you down and hitting you for damage, there is no scripted chase sequence, no, what there is in this game is a sudden and violent death and then that is it for that character and it is so great to have such a change of pace from the usual suspects that in this current climent just essentially make the same game as Amnesia: The dark descent over and over again. So if you want a damn hard horror game that will keep you on your toes and actually make you work to survive then get this game.

Let's start with the elephant in the room: The requiem event does not work at all. During that event there is sometimes (in my case often) no enemy around and suddenly you die. This doesn't even take long, maybe just 5 seconds. You have to restart the whole level when you die redoing all the puzzles unless you like to lose a character. And in later levels the puzzles take really long and you need to run in a lot of circles, which is fun the first time, but I tried now level V around 10 times and I seriously give up. It is NOT interesting or enjoyable. You have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL about your death in later levels. Imagine playing any game where you just randomly die and have to redo a lot of tedious nonsense. The game has also 2 impossible to figure out puzzles where the solution description is telling you something different than the actual solution: The Key Puzzle and the Photopuzzle. And of course the game has also a game breaking bug, that happens randomly and makes progressing impossible and you need to restart the whole really tedious level V: the stethoscope doesn't work 50% of the times I tried. I think this game is the saddest product on gog. It could be one of the greatest horror games of all times, but it CLEARLY isn't. Some days ago I was saying it is barely playable, but now I came to the conclusion it is unplayable. It is not worth your time because most of it will be redoing tedious tasks that are not fun because of the most unfair deaths in video game history. It just feels bad playing this game. This game clearly wasn't played by it's developer more than once or twice. When I make games I play each level hundreds of times to make sure it's playable. Fixing the problems of this game is incredibly difficult, but it doesn't work the way it is right now. I love hard games and I want this game to be hard, but it is not solid. It's a broken unplayable mess. It's like if you would fall through platforms in super mario world most of the time.

First of all, i like the visual design of that entity. very spooky and scary. Story: Great one. But the Puzzles: ... , really? Well, I like Games with good Puzzles. No Game should be too easy. But this... , you cant imagine what ive been through. It is no challenge, it is not difficult, it is just absolute Frustration at its finest. Way too unfair, no Instructions and if there are some, they are not precice enough. I couldnt figure out the solutions of the bigger Puzzles, so I had to watch a walkthrough. It is no Joke, i had to hold myself back all the Time. And the really bad Thing about that is; The Amount of Frustration whiped out the positive Aspects of the game. I had nearly no Fear or nervosity anymore. Just Rage and Disappointment. It is sad, but the misbegotten Riddles and Puzzles destroyed my Experience with it. This Game should have been more than just a Troll-experience.

Apart from trivial shortcomings, this game is the perfect horror game for me. You have to look past lips not being synced and some frustrations this game brings, but the story it tells and the spooky atmosphere is really fantastic.