Finally Sony has brought us a new and original horror title. I bought this one for my daughter but I also played it myself as I was excited to play it myself as horror is my favorite genre. Since it is my favorite I am also the most critical of this genre. If you have read any of my other reviews you will know I am a harsh critic in general. Parental Discretion is advised for the following reasons: Foul language, sexual innuendo, sexual speech.
Setting: You are a group of teenagers in the mountains with your friends. Two of your friends, twins, go missing. One year later the rest of you meet up once again at the ski lodge but there is something not right when you get there. Setting is spooky, cold, snowy, dark, and you have to try to get all your characters to make it "until dawn." Every decision you make will effect the out come of your game. You will play as each character in the game at some point. Good luck.
Character Animation: The character animation and realism in the detail was unmatched. The characters are based on real actors and I could identify them immediately.
Character Action/Movement: Lacking, I felt like my characters moved very slowly and kind of clunky. The camera angle views that were fixed made this more difficult.
Game play Mechanics: Lacking. This game reminds me of Clock Tower III, and similar games as far as the quick action sets. You can't really roam freely ,per say. You do have moments where you can look around and search places but it is all very limited and I would have liked to have been able to have more control over the environment and spend more time discovering. The game almost always forces you onto a linear path. Too much time is spent wandering on one linear path outside to your next location.
Action/Decision Mode: This game is mostly linear until you get to the points where you have quick actions to do, for instance quickly hit triangle to avoid tripping on a rock, but most of these seem to have no overall effect on the game outcome. Decision making quick actions actually do appear through out the game and those decisions do change the narrative and or outcome of the game. This fact gives the game replay value as you can go back after the end of the game and go into the individual chapters and change your decisions.
Story Line: The Story line was good, it had twists and surprises. Now the more clues you find will help you to guess what's coming next. Now I don't know if I'm just a good guesser or if I did really good with clue finding or what but the story line seemed predictable to me. None the less it was well done.
Other: While most horror tends to lean towards using sexuality and cuss words I found this title to be somewhat fixated on talking about the characters having sex with each other, which I didn't love as I would like my teens o be able to play horror without all that crap. Parental discretion is advised, however I will say I am happy it did not show anything too provocative or any nudity. The language was overall acceptable but a few times the potty mouth came out of some of the characters as far as sexually based speech, again parental discretion is advised. If you have a reasonably mature teen you will probably be ok with this title as the rest of it is really a great title for teens who love horror.