For tackling such rich thematic veins as long cultural tradition, the hierarchies we lock ourselves into, and the paths we promise ourselves, Indika has awfully little to say. The central premise has perhaps one interesting idea: that faith isn't fungible, that if we look to quantify and compare righteousness and good deeds, we inevitably lead ourselves to either unreconciled hypocrisy or abhorrent conclusion. But Indika works almost immediately to prevent you from ever believing otherwise. Whether by instructing you early and often with the tone of a tutorial that such measurements are without value, or through drawn-out exposition belaboring the same, cudgeling the player with an idea bereft of any diegetic support and then acting as if the only remaining argument is a profundity gained through agonized soul-searching is clumsy. It's a misstep that prevents Indika from being a story experienced and instead petrifies it as an oversimple morality play. Perhaps this would be different if the player had any reason to buy into the conceit from the start, if you were ever challenged to surrender something you thought you needed or took comfort in. Alas that the story, as told, leaves no room for nuance or interpretation, even from the devil on your shoulder. The art direction shows early promise, be it the opening credits' labyrinthine isolation or toying with surrealist imagery not already done to death by the genre, but it quickly runs out of steam. Indika's back half is brought to you more by extravagant use of UE4's Scaling tool than a cohesive vision or responsive environment. Pixelated mini-games retreading past trauma and frustratingly precise action sequences are nearer to distractions than collaborators in the story's narrative or emotional arcs. Much of the rest suffers from a tonal whiplash that gladly follows a prevented assault with the slapstick of a near-sighted man falling down. Ultimately, we're left with a game that feels, at best, a rough draft.
I love cerebral, psychological horror, but as much as this game touts itself as a slow-burn tension builder, it's ultimately a fairly inane re-trudging of old tropes built atop no story whatsoever. The game's experience relies not on characters or story, but on cheap jumps and poorly implemented chase sequences. The atmosphere is there, but progressing through it takes so long -- thanks either to repetitive sequences or exercises in stealth frustration -- that it loses all impact long before it can land a hit.
Clunky and hard to operate, Westwood offers you just enough rope to hang yourself with Blade Runner, counting on your love or nostalgia to buoy it amidst a sea of troubles. This is a detective game without logic, an action game without action, a story-driven game without its own narrative. No doubt a technological step forward for the genre when it was released, the game feels like a cardboard stand up of the film with no substance of its own. While this really captures a powerful sense of the noir mood and the atmosphere of the Blade Runner world, this only comes from replicating the original visual style and leaning heavily on the Vangelis score to deliver it. Is it Deckard's story? Yes and no. While you're not Deckard himself, the plot runs unbelievably parallel to the film's. That you would have the same fights, the same interrogations, the same dramas and further have these all in the same locations and at the same time(!) as the film, yet all with a different set of characters comes across not as an extension to the world but simply a bootleg knockoff. It's utterly unbelievable that these events would co-exist and so closely mirror each other -- that the game's chief conceit requires you to believe in it robs the title of any narrative power.
The narrative is trite, the scares are the same format throughout, and the combat is straightforward. Occasional animation glitches with overcorrective physics and railgun ragdolls punctuate what atmosphere there might have been with bouts of comedy, and I'm just left wondering why on earth anyone in this situation would put up with this much backtracking.
It's pretty clear that Mage's Initiation draws its inspiration from the Quest for Glory series and no insignificant amount from King's Quest V. But this title really lacks the depth of character and coherent message that made those series stand out. The result is a one-dimensional delivery of an adventure that doesn't bring much to the table and seems to get lost in the telling. But what really holds this back from being a well-delivered, if bland, work is the inconsistency that the game manages to provide in its several components. The voice acting throughout the game is excellent -- with the glaring exception of the plodding, halting delivery of the bloody main character himself. The art style is well-done, particularly personal portraits and backgrounds, but the mid-chapter 2D animated cutscenes are laughably bad. They are so far out of the artistic character of everything you've seen to that point and such low quality that I'm honestly stunned they were not cut altogether from the final product. Combat magic is interestingly thought out in terms of spell variety and exploration of your element, but spells available for puzzle-solving are so limited as to make the solution trivial. You may encounter interesting choices, but these will either be without consequence or simply be morally incorrect and used to punish you. This badly needed more aggressive editing. It's a routine problem in adventure games that you'll need to pick up weird, trivial objects in order to solve problems through lateral thinking later on. But it's a terrible problem if your main character is fine with this in some cases and actively laughs off the idea of doing so in others. When the same voice can say "Anything not nailed down..." and "I have no idea why I'm holding onto this" while also saying it's not worth his time to check under a rug during a desperate search, this reeks of inconsistency and simply insults the player. This was simply limited and uninventive.
Lamplight City spends most of its time wishing that it was Sins of the Fathers and gently nudging the player to wish so, too. Billing itself as a detective game feels in LC's case like grasping for definition in an adventure game that eschews the genre's defining difficulties. With no action set, no inventory, and a surprisingly shallow set of bad consequences for trying, there's essentially no reason not to simply click on everything possible until the case is solved. It's interesting to see something attempt to streamline what I can imagine some consider the drawbacks of adventure games, but the result simply feels clunky without having replaced that content with something more suited to the final product. Objectives don't track well with what you've done, clues are simply too easy to acquire, and the kind of critical thinking a detective game might demand simply doesn't come up. By and large, I found the experience disappointing and, above all, incomplete. The game feels more rushed as it progresses with later elements feeling either tacked on or abruptly cut off. Theoretically a "steampunk Victorian" world, the atmosphere doesn't feel like it gets the chance to establish itself. The game falls over itself to capture the zeitgeist of automation anxiety but rarely bothers to actually demonstrate it. What are stated driving motivations for characters simply aren't witnessed. Instead, we follow around another messy-haired, black-coated, detective type who can't sleep properly surrounded by New Orleanian architecture and Creole culture, but without the upsides of origin, development, and Tim Curry.
Frictional comes through again splendidly with SOMA. I came into this after playing through Amnesia, and Frictional really managed to outdo itself by taking an entirely different path to get to the unsettling parts of mind with this title. I've never encountered a title that managed to deliver such dread just by presenting me with questions. The atmosphere is superb and your progression really builds over time, but the worst moments are planted like seeds within you, hidden away and left to bloom.
Carlos Viola deserves a lot of credit for an excellent score. After that, I fail to see what any of the fuss is about. The first thing you notice is the writing. It's stilted and flat, in what may be an attempt to mimic period dialogue but instead comes off as insincere at best. Playing off all-too-common tropes of abandoned text scattered everywhere, animals being weird, and an explosive case of amnesia, vast portions of the game just feel forced. The characters aren't coherent and motivations seem to change between episodes. This isn't about an Unreliable Narrator or the mysteries that lie behind the adventure; the writing is fraught with such problems it simply challenges your ability to stay immersed at all. Stuff just happens. Spookily, I suppose you'd say. Spooky stuff. All of this adds up to a storyline that's just been ripped straight from HPL's "Rats in the Walls" and Rob Zombie's "Lords of Salem" between extended bouts of coveting Ben Croshaw's 10 year old Chzo Mythos. Adventure fans won't find much here, either. Puzzles are trivial when not adolescent, and inventory choices make sure to slick your gears as soon as possible. The whole experience was over in under 3 hours, and I'm simply disappointed by it.
