Finished Blair Witch today (took about 8-10 hours, who knows). I really enjoyed it (gave me serious Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice vibes) and while I won't be playing it again for the different endings I'm really glad I gave it a shot.
Speaking of
Bloober Team's horror/adventure games...
I just finished-up
Observer, which took me a little over 9 hours to get through it.
I really enjoyed the story, characters, atmosphere, game-world, music, and graphics. Can't go wrong with Rutger Hauer on the voice-acting here either; he does a fine job here. This game, with its cyberpunk look and feel, feels like it's right out of Blade Runner (especially with Hauer here) or Deus Ex series.
Game looks fantastic, over on Unreal Engine 4 (UE4).
The horror sequences, when they happen, are crazy. Very trippy, surreal, and out of this world. Simply put: they're all awesome. Feels like some of the weird, horrific, and outlandish stuff you'd see in a David Lynch movie or TV series; and/or maybe something from Nicholas Winding Refn (i.e. see Fear X).
Game does some interesting & outlandish stuff, in those twisted sequences - hard to not want to see where this game takes things, with its weirdness, twisted-ness, and outstanding graphics. It's always jaw-dropping and interesting with this stuff, to say the least. The detective gameplay is cool, where you examine areas, crime scenes, people, and whatnot - trying to figure out what's going on; trying to piece stuff together. The puzzles are fine and all, but not difficult at all - so those looknig for difficult puzzles will probably be disappointed. There's even a side mini-game and a few small side-quests to take on, too. There is a point, when you will make an important decision, too. All and all, a lot of this adventure game's content is really good.
But, then there's the (awful) stealth sequences. Granted, there aren't many - but there's still too many in the game. The game doesn't even feel like it needs these...as they can be frustrating at times, feel like you maybe got lucky and accidentally took the "right" path, or whatever (as these failures can result in a "Game Over" and "Load Last Save" sequences). These often feel out of place, given that the rest of the stuff in the game gets so right (i.e. almost everything else).
Another thing is this: this just ain't always the best-running & best-optimized game, here on UE4. Even on my i7 7700, 16 GB RAM, 6GB GTX 1060, W10 x64 at 1080p - it would sometimes take hits from 60fps down to 30fps, here and there. I took more framerate issues on my aging desktop with i7 950, 16 GB of RAM, GTX 970, W7 x64, which was slapping me from 40fps to even 25fps at times. All of this was at High settings on both PC's, BTW.
Complaints aside, I really enjoyed a lot of what mostly Observer had to offer up. If they could've gotten rid of the awful stealth sequences and rid of some of these performance issues, this could've been amazing. It's close, though; it ain't perfect. It's a flawed gem and easy to recommend, despite its shortcomings.
Despite its shortcomings, this is an experience definitely worth plugging into.
you to everyone who recommended the Danganronpa and Zero Escape games last month. Beause of you I'm now hooked on not one but two visual novel series and at the moment have little desire to play anything else.
