Reviews
[Review] ‘The Exorcist Legion VR’ is a Varied Collection of Well-Paced Terror
Even at this early stage of growth for VR horror, the trends are already largely predictable. The majority of titles, good or bad, follow the same concept of throwing things in your face for a (usually effective) scare. That’s fine of course, after all, it works so very well in virtual reality, but the difference between those and the few that truly embrace the benefits of immersive horror are very noticeable. The Exorcist Legion VR, by Wolf & Wood, is one of that few.
The Exorcist is a classic book, an iconic movie (with some lesser sequels), and an underappreciated TV show, and it’s managed to add an effective game to the legacy with the final release of Legion.
Split into five 30-40 minute chapters, The Exorcist Legion VR takes the form of five connected, yet distinct, stories concerning a Boston detective and his investigation into a series of murders that have ties to the occult, and likely to a demonic entity. If you want short bursts of murder, demons, and light detective work in VR, then you’ll be in for a treat here. It also fits the canon of The Exorcist III (which was itself adapted into the novel Legion by The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty).
The five chapters are accessed through a central hub in your office and this serves as your first taste of the level of interaction you can expect. Gameplay is fairly light throughout, but Legion makes meaningful use of VR’s interactivity by allowing you to fiddle and prod with most of the environment (though trying to get a coffee from the vending machine is very much like trying to do the task in real life if you happened to be wearing boxing gloves). In the office, you choose your case (chapter) from the caulk board and dive into the action.
Action might be a bit strong though. It’s not unfair to call The Exorcist: Legion VR slow-paced because it is. Rather than be a criticism, it’s largely a snug fit for the horror it produces and for the medium of virtual reality itself. VR is nearly always best when you can soak in the ambiance and take your time, and that’s a great strength of Legion. The scenarios are short and restricted to a handful of rooms of areas, but it does make the most of that space, even if it’s sporadically handled in an arduous manner.
In the opening chapter, you head to a Church where a grisly murder has occurred and you’re the lucky sod that gets to wander about in a dimly-lit area that’s occupied by an especially nasty-looking corpse. Your parameters are fairly clearly-defined, but the hushed voices you can hear via the audio, and the unsettling gloom just beyond the central space you stand in, give you just that extra bit of hesitation about each step you take.
Once the initial bit of atmosphere-building is out of the way, The Exorcist Legion VR ever-so-slightly lets the mask slip to reveal its true mechanical nature. You see, the game’s investigative puzzles are simple, multi-part affairs, which is fair enough when they flow nicely. It’s when you find yourself seeking out what to do next for too long when it falters a little.
The answers are ordinarily obvious, but occasionally trial and error is the only realistic solution, and you end up interacting with everything, moving back and forth between areas, just to trigger whatever is supposed to happen next. This is nothing new for games, it’s just unfortunate here because it takes you out of the moment, diffusing the slow-building dread. You can almost blame how effective the majority of each episode is at ratcheting up the terror for how noticeable it is when you’re taken out of it.
That terror really does deserve more words too. The use of audio and virtual reality’s ‘in-your-face’ bag of tricks are key ingredients of many a VR horror title, but so rarely make such great use of it as Legion does. The horrific reveals are often striking, built to with confidence and sureness. Every chapter maintains a sense of unease from start to finish, only ever faltering slightly with the odd puzzle frustration. As a crescendo of madness and horror is reached and deescalated, the unease never leaves.
Each chapter offers up some form of new horrific lunacy too. The locations and the threat within them are different, and it’s great for keeping things fresh both in terms of the horror itself, and in the puzzles, which may be simplistic, but are applied in a variety of ways thanks to the shifts in the locale. By the time the fifth chapter reaches its conclusion in a creepy old tomb, nearly everything’s been tied together and things have got decidedly dicier. In an uneven Exorcist extended universe, Legion tells one of its finest stories, and it does so by encompassing everything good VR brings to the gaming table.
Plus, this is a game that lets you wield a crucifix and holy water, so you can get swept away in holding back a demon and shouting ‘The power of Christ compels you!’ loud enough to wake the rest of your household (which is totally not what I did).
The direction The Exorcist Legion VR takes virtual reality horror in is one I’d love to see more of in future. This very much feels like the nucleus for something more elaborate as the hardware grows and adapts. It doesn’t do anything revolutionary, but it does understand what can be done with VR horror so much better than most. It doesn’t outstay its welcome and rarely resorts to cheap tricks to unnerve and unsettle you.
The Exorcist Legion VR PSVR Review code provided by the publisher.
The Exorcist Legion VR is available now on PSVR, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift/
Reviews
“AHS: Delicate” Review – “Little Gold Man” Mixes Oscar Fever & Baby Fever into the Perfect Product
‘AHS: Delicate’ enters early labor with a fun, frenzied episode that finds the perfect tone and goes for broke as its water breaks.
“I’ll figure it out. Women always do.”
American Horror Story is no stranger to remixing real-life history with ludicrous, heightened Murphy-isms, whether it’s AHS: 1984’s incorporation of Richard Ramirez, AHS: Cult’s use of Valerie Solanas, or AHS: Coven’s prominent role for the Axeman of New Orleans. Accordingly, it’s very much par for the course for AHS: Delicate to riff on other pop culture touchstones and infinitely warp them to its wicked whims. That being said, it takes real guts to do a postmodern feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby and then actually put Mia Farrow – while she’s filming Rosemary’s Baby, no less – into the narrative. This is the type of gonzo bullshit that I want out of American Horror Story! Sharon Tate even shows up for a minute because why the hell not? Make no mistake, this is completely absurd, but the right kind of campy absurdity that’s consistently been in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse since its inception. It’s a wild introduction that sets up an Oscar-centric AHS: Delicate episode for success. “Little Gold Man” is a chaotic episode that’s worth its weight in gold and starts to bring this contentious season home.
It’d be one thing if “Little Gold Man” just featured a brief detour to 1967 so that this season of pregnancy horror could cross off Rosemary’s Baby from its checklist. AHS: Delicate gets more ambitious with its revisionist history and goes so far as to say that Mia Farrow and Anna Victoria Alcott are similarly plagued. “Little Gold Man” intentionally gives Frank Sinatra dialogue that’s basically verbatim from Dex Harding Sr., which indicates that this demonic curse has been ruffling Hollywood’s feathers for the better part of a century. Anna Victoria Alcott’s Oscar-nominated feature film, The Auteur, is evidently no different than Rosemary’s Baby. It’s merely Satanic forces’ latest attempt to cultivate the “perfect product.” “Little Gold Man” even implies that the only reason that Mia Farrow didn’t go on to make waves at the 1969 Academy Awards and ends up with her twisted lot in life is because she couldn’t properly commit to Siobhan’s scheme, unlike Anna.
This is easily one of American Horror Story’s more ridiculous cold opens, but there’s a lot of love for the horror genre and Hollywood that pumps through its veins. If Hollywood needs to be a part of AHS: Delicate’s story then this is actually the perfect connective tissue. On that note, Claire DeJean plays Sharon Tate in “Little Gold Man” and does fine work with the brief scene. However, it would have been a nice, subtle nod of continuity if AHS: Delicate brought back Rachel Roberts who previously portrayed Tate in AHS: Cult. “Little Gold Man” still makes its point and to echo a famous line from Jennifer Lynch’s father’s television masterpiece: “It is happening again.”
“Little Gold Man” is rich in sequences where Anna just rides the waves of success and enjoys her blossoming fame. She feels empowered and begins to finally take control of her life, rather than let it push her around and get under her skin like a gestating fetus. Anna’s success coincides with a colossal exposition dump from Tavi Gevinson’s Cora, a character who’s been absent for so long that we were all seemingly meant to forget that she was ever someone who was supposed to be significant. Cora has apparently been the one pulling many of Anna’s strings all along as she goes Single White Female, rather than Anna having a case of Repulsion. It’s an explanation that oddly works and feeds into the episode’s more general message of dreams becoming nightmares. Cora continuing to stay aligned with Dr. Hill because she has student loans is also somehow, tragically the perfect explanation for her abhorrent behavior. It’s not the most outlandish series of events in an episode that also briefly gives Anna alligator legs and makes Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian kiss.
“Little Gold Man” often feels like it hits the fast-forward button as it delivers more answers, much in the same vein as last week’s “Ava Hestia.” These episodes are two sides of the same coin and it’s surely no coincidence that they’re both directed by Jennifer Lynch. This season has benefitted from being entirely written by Halley Feiffer – a first for the series – but it’s unfortunate that Lynch couldn’t direct every episode of AHS: Delicate instead of just four out of nine entries. That’s not to say that a version of this season that was unilaterally directed by Lynch would have been without its issues. However, it’s likely that there’d be a better sense of synergy across the season with fewer redundancies. She’s responsible for the best episodes of AHS: Delicate and it’s a disappointment that she won’t be the one who closes the season out in next week’s finale.
To this point, “Little Gold Man” utilizes immaculate pacing that helps this episode breeze by. Anna’s Oscar nomination and the awards ceremony are in the same episode, whereas it feels like “Part 1” of the season would have spaced these events out over four or five episodes. This frenzied tempo works in “Little Gold Man’s” favor as AHS: Delicate speed-runs to its finish instead of getting lost in laborious plotting and unnecessary storytelling. This is how the entire season should have been. Although it’s also worth pointing out that this is by far the shortest episode of American Horror Story to date at only 34 minutes. It’s a shame that the season’s strongest entries have also been the ones with the least amount of content. There could have been a whole other act to “Little Gold Man,” or at the least, a substantially longer cold open that got more out of its Mia Farrow mayhem.
“Little Gold Man” is an American Horror Story episode that does everything right, but is still forced to contend with three-quarters of a subpar season. “Part 2” of AHS: Delicate actually helps the season’s first five episodes shine brighter in retrospect and this will definitely be a season that benefits from one long binge that doesn’t have a six-month break in the middle. Unfortunately, anyone who’s already watched it once will likely not feel compelled to experience these labor pains a second time over. With one episode to go and Anna’s potential demon offspring ready to greet the world, AHS: Delicate is poised to deliver one hell of a finale.
Although, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How do you expect to be a good conclusion if this is what you’re chasing?”
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