Picked this up recently. Some impressions after around 2 hours of play.
Game is set in 1930s. You control a girl called Jennifer who is lured into being kidnapped by some deranged school kids after the death of her parents. This sets up a Silent Hill-esque survival horror game where you are basically a prisoner of these kids (though they seem to be prisoners as well) who bully you and get you to do their errands. Basically there's a hierarchy at play where kids higher up the food chain can give orders to those lower down. They call it the Aristocrat Society. Early in the game (minor spoilers) some boy tells you how he's the prince and if you don't do what he says he'll kill you. You start at the very bottom of the hierarchy (beggar) so everybody has an excuse to treat you badly.
Graphically the game seems solid. There's a nice noise effect which gives the game an old movie feel (you can adjust the "noise level" in the options). Some nice lighting effects coming through the windows (think RE4, but with no dust). Camera is overhead like Silent Hill/old RE games. Backgrounds are made of polygons and not pre-rendered. No where near as nice looking as SH 3/4 or RE 0/1 on GC. There's some excellent FMV footage though.
Controls are identical to any SH or old RE games. Perhaps RE4 is to blame but it all feels hopelessly outdated, especially the combat (which has been quite rare so far). You get rubbish weapons like forks and tiny knives to use on enemies who look more laughable than scary. The animations when you attack them look like something out of a PS1 game. In fact the entire game feels like something out of the 32-bit era, but worse. There's all this boring backtracking and finding items and more backtracking. There are loads of doors where when you open them some kid with a paper bag on his head pops out for a second and then slams the door shut (meant to be "scary", I guess). It's just so overdone you get sick of it after the third time or so and loses all shock value. Another thing that's overdone is frequent laughter/crying/etc noises that you hear about the place. It becomes annoying very quickly. The puzzles are contrived and boring, not to mention you've seen countless variations of them in other games. There's this dog that helps you out but he isn't particularly interesting either.
Overall, this game hasn't impressed me at all. The story is good enough with an interesting concept and it has some really good, spooky music (most of it violin music). Sadly, the gameplay is simply not compelling enough and nearly put me to sleep on several occasions because it was so mechanical. Maybe if we were in the year 1996 I'd care, but as it stands it's just all a slog and I don't know if I can be bothered anymore. If you're desperate for an old-school (literally, not metaphorically) surivival horror or are looking for an alternative to sleeping pills then maybe it'll do something for you; otherwise avoid like the plague.
4/10.
edit: game is fairly import friendly for those wondering. English menus and voice acting. Japanese text in books etc. Like any Biohazard game basically.
Game is set in 1930s. You control a girl called Jennifer who is lured into being kidnapped by some deranged school kids after the death of her parents. This sets up a Silent Hill-esque survival horror game where you are basically a prisoner of these kids (though they seem to be prisoners as well) who bully you and get you to do their errands. Basically there's a hierarchy at play where kids higher up the food chain can give orders to those lower down. They call it the Aristocrat Society. Early in the game (minor spoilers) some boy tells you how he's the prince and if you don't do what he says he'll kill you. You start at the very bottom of the hierarchy (beggar) so everybody has an excuse to treat you badly.
Graphically the game seems solid. There's a nice noise effect which gives the game an old movie feel (you can adjust the "noise level" in the options). Some nice lighting effects coming through the windows (think RE4, but with no dust). Camera is overhead like Silent Hill/old RE games. Backgrounds are made of polygons and not pre-rendered. No where near as nice looking as SH 3/4 or RE 0/1 on GC. There's some excellent FMV footage though.
Controls are identical to any SH or old RE games. Perhaps RE4 is to blame but it all feels hopelessly outdated, especially the combat (which has been quite rare so far). You get rubbish weapons like forks and tiny knives to use on enemies who look more laughable than scary. The animations when you attack them look like something out of a PS1 game. In fact the entire game feels like something out of the 32-bit era, but worse. There's all this boring backtracking and finding items and more backtracking. There are loads of doors where when you open them some kid with a paper bag on his head pops out for a second and then slams the door shut (meant to be "scary", I guess). It's just so overdone you get sick of it after the third time or so and loses all shock value. Another thing that's overdone is frequent laughter/crying/etc noises that you hear about the place. It becomes annoying very quickly. The puzzles are contrived and boring, not to mention you've seen countless variations of them in other games. There's this dog that helps you out but he isn't particularly interesting either.
Overall, this game hasn't impressed me at all. The story is good enough with an interesting concept and it has some really good, spooky music (most of it violin music). Sadly, the gameplay is simply not compelling enough and nearly put me to sleep on several occasions because it was so mechanical. Maybe if we were in the year 1996 I'd care, but as it stands it's just all a slog and I don't know if I can be bothered anymore. If you're desperate for an old-school (literally, not metaphorically) surivival horror or are looking for an alternative to sleeping pills then maybe it'll do something for you; otherwise avoid like the plague.
4/10.
edit: game is fairly import friendly for those wondering. English menus and voice acting. Japanese text in books etc. Like any Biohazard game basically.