Posted on: July 9, 2021
Yog_Sothoth
Possesseur vérifiéJeux: 451 Avis: 1
The illusion of freedom
If you enjoy reading dozens of diary entries, this game might be for you. If you're looking for a genuine gumshoe experience, you might want to look elsewhere. I can appreciate what the developer was trying to accomplish with this game. You arrive at a ghost town completely void of life tasked with investigating a murder, that took place years prior, and given the freedom to perform your investigation as you want. It's merely a promise by the devs, however. In reality, only few scenes-of-interest are open from the very start with the rest being locked behind closed doors. Half the time spent with this game is spent looking for keys to unlock new areas. I don't find the promise of open-world freedom entirely compatible with the idea that every important area in the game is locked behind a scavenger hunt. In fact, hunting for small objects is not something I enjoy in any game. What I do enjoy in detective-style games is the investigation part. Alas, The Painscreek Killings fails to really give this most crucial aspect any substance because most of your time is spent not hunting for clues but rather hunting for keys. What little actual investigation there is tickling your deductive reasoning skills is performed by reading diary entries. It's rather odd how everyone in this town has kept diaries; worse, it's immersion breaking. Instead of drawing conclusions through careful observation and deduction, everything is written down--plain as day--in one diary or another. Hunting keys and reading diary entries is something you do in every other low-budget criminal investigation game. It's certainly not conducive to freedom of exploration. Reading the many diary entries is made worse by the fact that the story is really not all too interesting. "Captivating" is certainly not the term I would use. It's rather a "Romeo and Juliet" kind of scenario. In short, the game fails to deliver a true investigation experience. Two stars as the atmosphere is quite chilling at times.
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