Bought a copy here recently and just started playing it for the first time, and I frankly have no idea what to think of that game. I don't even know where to start... I guess I'll start with the thing which irritated me the most; the overall image quality or "visual style" of the game. For one thing it's extremely low res. Now, I know this retro look is the hip thing to do and it doesn't generally bother me. I even play some old 8 or 16bit games once in a while, via emulator. But the graphics in LS are so low res, they seem to turn out extremely blurry when scaled to the full size of a modern LCD screen. The fonts in the game, in particular, can be pretty hard to read. On top of that, there is a permanent overlay of various noise filters. Like various other game aspects, inspiration for this likely came from the Silent Hill games. Thing is, in Silent Hill the graphics had a higher resolution, the noise was more subtle, and even then, you still had the option to disable it entirely. No such option in LS, as far as I can tell. So basically you're stuck with blurry, low-res sprite graphics, covered in permanent noise. Don't know about you guys, but personally I found it to be physically uncomfortable to look at the game screen for more than about the 20 minutes I played so far. I can't help but wonder if most of these effects, as well as the fonts, are optimized to be viewed from a distance, on a TV screen, instead of up close on a laptop or PC screen.

Which leads me to another thing; apparently this was released before on console stores, right? Then why isn't there any native controller support? Seems that should be a given, if the author is going for that classic console game feel. Game didn't recognize my controller, though ( official Microsoft pad ), and I didn't see any options or menus related to that. In fact, there's not really any options menu at all, and the mouse is being completely ignored for navigation purposes, too.

Overall it seems like a bad console port, not a game well optimized for PC gamers. I don't want to make it sound like it's all bad; the music, at least, was good so far, and there's probably a fair amount of content and an interesting story to the game. But still, my initial impression has been pretty bad. Doesn't help that I bought it for ~15 bucks, when currently I'm downloading Rayman 3, a game about 10+ times the size of LS ( at least going by file size ), which I bought for, I think, 2-3 dollars during the Ubisoft sale.

Anyhow, have any of you played the game, and if so, what were your impressions? Am I missing some settings or ini tweaks? Am I just doing it entirely wrong? Would like to hear some opinions on this, and perhaps some tips to enhance the game experience if possible.

( And yes, I know there's a forum on here specifically for the game, but it's practically dead, and I didn't want to wait a month for a reply. :( At least the main forum is always active. )

Edit: I played a little more and found out that you can change the size of the game window by hitting the "Q" and "W" keys. It's not very convenient or intuitive, but after hitting "Q" about fifty times the window had more or less the right size on my screen. Still not sure how I feel about the game itself, but at least playing it no longer results in a headache. It looks a lot sharper this way, and the noise also seems more subtle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Survivor_%28video_game%29

The console versions were the ports. Also keep in mind that it is stylized to a certain demographic, as is everything. Nobody can make you like the game no matter how much anyone defends it.

Thing is, I want to like this, and not only because of the price tag. I played most of the older Silent Hill games, as well as various other Horror titles, and the concept of SH in 2D theoretically seemed like a fun concept. But right now I just don't know.

Sounds like you know more about the game -- have you played it?

And if it's not primarily a console game, then the lack of optimization for PC ( input options, controls for graphics etc. ) is kind of... underwhelming?

I find some of their stylistic choices a bit unfortunate, too. They make it more difficult for me to get immersed in the game.

It's still fun to play, but a lot less than it could be, at least for me.
Haven't tried the Director's Cut yet - but it looks like not much has changed in that regard.

I've seen other people played it but haven't done so myself.

The most I can really offer that if those are the issues you have with the game, the conflict is coming from attempting to blend a modern feel with old-school gameplay. Lone Survivor is a bit like "To The Moon" in which the gameplay isn't really complex, but the involvement you have is going to be in the story. You're witnessing an evolving narrative of someone who isn't entirely sure what's real or not, even the monsters. The simplistic style is a by-product of trying to make the game easy to pick up, and the lack of settings, I couldn't really tell you. Consider it more a horror novel than a horror game and you might find your enjoyment that way.

Is it possible to at least play it in a window instead of scaled to full-screen? And is there really no official gamepad support, or did I just miss something? That way, at least I could comfortably play with some more distance to the screen. I think that would help with some of the visual problems, such as the big scaled fonts.

Can't help but wonder whether the game would work better in a true, clean retro sprite look. Either that, or a more modern, high-res 2D look. Really not sure how to feel about the current blend of low-res sprites combined with the various noise and effect overlays. Well, the game itself is supposedly good, at least if the various positive reviews are anything to go by. At this point I'm mostly bothered by the visual style and the lack of user control over things such as graphics settings or input devices, which seems unheard of for a PC title.

I have played it and my feelings towards the game went from "Meeeh..." to "Don´t like it. At all."

I agree with the OPs opinion about visuals and sound. While the sound is simply annoying, the visualy are a real game killer to me. Though I love my old games I am not a fan of that 16-bit art style in modern games. It might be a nice way for independent devs to bypass the lack of money, but too often it feels just like a lack of effort.

And Lone Survivor is simply painful to look at. It took me ages to realise that the main character of the game is not featuring a stupid joker-like grin, but is wearing a surgical mask instead, due to the blurry visuals. Just as the OP I find found it impossible to play it for more than maybe 30 minutes, because it literally gives me headaches.

And I must say that I don´t like gameplay and story as well. Most of the time you are stumbling around without having any clue whats going on and unfortunately things stay this way until the very end. Sure, there are hints, depending on which of the two endings you reach, of what is going on. But in the end you have to jury-rig you own story and most of the time I absolutely HATE it when games or movies are doing this. Sometimes something like this works, but unfortunately this is not the case for Lone Survivor.

The only thing this game is actually good at is in making people somehow believe that it is a good game and not a pretentious piece of crap.

Hah hah... Someone else here made the same remark about the mask in a post recently, so you're not alone.

I think overall you're probably being too harsh. I mean, so many people seem to like it, there has to be something to it... right? At least I still hope so. But I want to play at least a little more, before I pass any final judgement.

The visual style is definitely a problem, though. I was actually feeling a little dizzy too, after that first LS session. I think it's mostly due to those blurry, scaled fonts. Still seems to me like the visual style probably works better on a tiny PSP screen, or on a TV with the PS3 version, when you're playing with a gamepad and aren't stuck right in front of the screen.

I finished the game about a week ago, and I'm with OP and some of the rest here. I usually like retro-style graphics, but this was just too low-res and pixelated: made the text hard to read and the objects in the environment hard to recognize. It was easy to make wrong turns. The plot was really a bit confusing, especially the end (was the guy just crazy?) In short, it's a poor man's Silent Hill, copying numerous things from that franchise, but fails to be as engaging in every sector.

Maybe you are right. Maybe this is because at the same time I had my encounter with Lone Survivor I had to dump "Distant Worlds", since I could not read anything in this game as well. For those who don´t know, DW is one of those games where you can establish a galactic empire by building spaceships, exploration, diplomacy and war. It also has tons and tons of text - which is tiny. So tiny in fact that I only can read it when leaning close towards the screen. And then Lone Survivor came along... Maybe I was a little teed off.

But I still believe the game is overrated. I think this is one of the cases where someone likes the game, makes a big fuss about it and for some reason people believe him/her. And all of a sudden you have lots of people liking a game because they persuaded themselfes that this is a great game.

Let's hope for a HD remake with vamped up graphics! :)

For what it's worth, I've only slightly played the non-DC version, no big impressions yet. But the game I do not really understand is Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (not in GOG, I think?). I've played the Android version quite a bit, and still I somehow don't get it, what to really think about the game.

I think the game is right as it is now. I liked it, and I had no problem at all playing it.
I think that is one of the best survival since Silent Hill 4.

The graphics did not bothered me in any way.I think the game is brilliant probably my 2nd best game of 2012 after Hotline Miami but hey different strokes for different folks.

I didn't want to judge it any further, before playing it at least a few more hours but "... it's a poor man's Silent Hill" is exactly what it felt like to me, after playing for about an hour or so. I can see some potential and good ideas here and there, but so far almost every aspect of the game appears to be copied from the Silent Hill franchise. Worse yet, the game reminded me of all the things I did not like about Silent Hill, because they copied most of the bad stuff, too. Ugh.