VideoGame Linear, scripted, cliched in some ways, but still scary and with some originality
In this Norwegian-developed horror game, you play as a toddler. Your actions consist of walking, climbing, crawling, running until you collapse and end up crawling anyway, and picking up and moving or throwing things - and you can't throw them very far, either. After all, you just turned two.
For pretty much the first half of the game, I was mostly bored. Creepy atmosphere, yes, then boring puzzles in some kind of playground environment. No danger, boring environment, totally linear progression and lack of real exploration, nothing much to care about. Scripted fake-out scares all over the place. When a shadowy monster appeared multiple times in the distance, I just thought "whatever". When the monster appeared in front of me and walked straight towards me, I thought "Stop it with this fake-out crap, it's not sc-" and then it picked me up and killed me.
Holy crap.
From that point until pretty much the rest of the game, I was genuinely terrified of that thing. And the game uses that humanoid creature to excellent effect. Any time it's showing up, you know it can catch and kill you. It oozes threat all over. It's faster than you. You can't fight in any way. Your actions are limited entirely to movement, with no defensive capabilities. The most you can do is look for the nearest thing to hide under or inside and hope the creature passes you by. I'd involuntarily scream a multitude of profanities when that damn thing showed up. My hair stood up on my neck. No enemy in a video game has struck terror into my heart like this one.
Late in the game, the creature is used more intelligently. Without giving anything away, there's a certain situation where if you're not careful, you can trigger the creature to show up via your actions. And you can easily tell what you're supposed to avoid doing to prevent it from showing up - making sure you successfully avoid it, now that's the hard part. And even once you do get past that tense moment, guess what. It shows up again anyway.
While a lot of horror games have some kind of real-life theme, the one in this game, while handled pretty well in my opinion, isn't the most original. I won't spoil it, but let's just say, there's a lot of understandable symbolism. Hint: your character is a toddler. What do you think the game's theme is?
Anyway, a trip worth taking once, but not more than that.
VideoGame Man, that baby is HARDCORE.
I first heard of this game from a friend. As soon as the words "you play as a two-year old in a survival horror game" left her mouth, I instantly thought "fuck it, I want this game". Because really, while survival horror isn't unique since many years back, the fact that you control a two-year old was very, very interesting to me, and very original. I was so curious I didn't want to ruin my experience by watching playthroughs and the like; I just bought if off steam and began playing.
I am Swedish, but I didn't think "They copied Amnesia: The Dark Descent one of my favorite games ever, nuuu!" In fact, I didn't care. I mean, yes; it did have similar elements (which game doesn't nowadays?), but as long as it had an interesting story, I was all for it.
Like the other reviewer said, I was a bit disappointed. I got accustomed to no monster chases and just thought that the creepy athmosphere and jumpscares would be all that the game was going to shove at me. So I felt I could run like hell whenever I wanted. Big mistake. I shat my pants when the monster was catching up to me. And from that point on, like in Amnesia, I was paranoid and would constantly take stops to look around.
What kept me going was my curiosity. I wanted to know what happened, dammit. I mean, it would be way easier to understand unlike other more complex horror stories. I didn't need to be Einstein or anything. The perspective was seen from a freaking toddler.
I wasn't disappointed in the ending, however. In fact, it made a lot of sense to me. I thought it was odd that the child was brave throughout, as he was a toddler, but the ending summed the reason up perfectly. Just finish the game yourselves; who am I to spoil.
Just saying one thing, that kid is badass. He's a toddler and endures watching monsters and the like. I remember pissing my pants upon seeing the McDonald's Clown when I was 4.
I'm getting irrelevant here. Anyway, it's worth a play. But only once. Once you know your way through and stuff after finishing the game; it's kind of a bore. But it's still a great piece of survival horror.