Reviews
[Review] ‘Observer’ Brings its Trippy Cyberpunk Horror to Nintendo Switch
Bloober Team’s cyberpunk sci-fi horror heads to the Nintendo Switch for another trip. Find out in our Observer review if it’s worth jacking in again.
The idea of diving into someone else’s memory is a fascinating one, and naturally, it can work very well when attached to horror. Bloober Team understood this when it created Observer, and went ahead in creating some seriously messed up headspaces. With the Nintendo Switch version out this week, it’s a good time to revisit.
Set during a grim cyberpunk dystopia (rarely any other kind I suppose) in Poland, Observer plants you firmly in the gumshoes of Lazarski, an augmented investigator known as an ‘observer’. This is a world where the post-augmentation reality is such a harrowing ordeal for the disadvantaged and destitute that they try any way possible to leave it. Financially-speaking, it’s not all that viable to just up and leave, so many have decided the best solution is to shut themselves out of reality and find comfort in the virtual world instead.
Lazarski (voiced with added gravel and whiskey by Rutger Hauer) can, thanks to augments, hack into the memories of people in order to solve crimes by watching what they do and piecing together details. On the night the game takes place, Lazarski heads to a decrepit tenement building after a tip-off and winds up embroiled in a murder mystery and while the building remains in lockdown, he must investigate the case, uncovering some truly nutso things along the way. There’s some fucked up places to go as Lazarski journey’s though some sick minds, but is it because of the people? Or is it because of something more sinister at work with their (and Lazarski’s) augments? Suffice to say, the game certainly keeps you guessing.
The majority of the game is set inside the tenement, and the design of it is suitably scuzzy with that sheen of technology hiding the crumbling reality below. The pockmarked walls of the building’s hallways are lightly disguised by digital wallpaper that steadily pulses to try and distract from the grottiness that surrounds you. It feels haunting and adds to the strange unreality Lazarski encounters during his investigation.
Before Lazarski gets into the mind trips, he can scan and scour areas for clues and piece them together. It’s surprisingly in-depth and largely satisfies when you collect data together to figure something out, but you’re dropped into it so early and so heavy that it feels a bit much the first time you experience it. The game is just building up its atmosphere during the opening twenty minutes when you first get down and dirty with the detective work, and it ever so slightly spoils the flow until you reach that first bout of ‘observing’.
Bloober Team Would be a Great Fit For a Silent Hill Remake.
Observing plays back digital memory, and when corrupted, it can cause some interesting ‘glitches’ in the memory, and in some cases, the virtual reality worlds some people choose to live in seep into actual memory, creating bizarre and horrifying imagery. Bloober used this trick well in Layers of Fear, and here it’s ramped up to new weird heights. Each dreamscape has its own ruleset, and they really shake up the stark bleak nature of the tenement. The reality and unreality blend closer and closer together as the story unfolds, and Observer even has the player doubting what’s actually real. There’s clearly something more to this than a routine murder case, and the ‘fun’ is in finding out what that is exactly.
Once Observer settles into its story, it masterfully shifts gears to create unease and terror from moment to moment. Slowly bringing it to the boil before serving it in twisted little parcels of mania. On the Switch in portable mode, it adds a bit of extra spice if you’ve already experienced the game on other platforms. Plug in some headphones and play in a darkened room and Observer sucks you into its repulsive, grungey world.
Rutger Hauer’s performance as Lazarski is unfortunately somewhat distracting. He puts across a nice line in world-weary gumshoe dialogue, but the delivery is inconsistent. There’s a fine line between weary and sleepy and Hauer flits either side of it. The effect on your personal enjoyment may vary, but it takes a little edge off.
Observer puts another horror string in the Switch’s bow. It remains an effective and compelling sci-fi horror trip that isn’t afraid to take things at its own pace whilst sticking firmly to its own rules. That does mean that it’s not going to be to every horror fan’s tastes, but it’s admirable that it stands by its convictions to deliver an unsettling and evocative experience.
Observer review code provided by the publisher for Nintendo Switch.
Observer is out now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Reviews
‘Her Private Hell’ Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Returns With a Hypnotic, Inscrutable Neon Fever Dream
Nicolas Winding Refn considers his first feature film in ten years, Her Private Hell, a resurrection. At the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the filmmaker revealed that his return was inspired, in large part, by his own mortality. His need to create art kicked into overdrive after beating death in 2023, when his heart stopped for 25 minutes.
Her Private Hell is pure art, too, bearing the filmmaker’s neon and synth signatures, as well as a deep disinterest in scrutable storytelling. Much like The Neon Demon, Refn’s latest demands you bend to its wavelength: an expressionistic vision more interested in the artistic process than the narrative.
That’s not to say that Her Private Hell lacks plot; this sci-fi horror noir features two central overlapping plots. At the forefront is actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who lives in the penthouse suite overlooking a hazy neon metropolis with her father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), and young stepmom Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who happens to be Elle’s former best friend before marriage got in the way.
To say that Elle has daddy issues would be an understatement, made worse by insecurities, the arrival of a new acting ingenue (Kristine Froseth), and a vicious killer prowling the city: the Leather Man.
The secondary plot follows the enigmatic Private K (Charles Melton), an American soldier in Japan with resolute vengeance on his mind. Whereas Elle’s world exists in a space of glamour and opulence, Private K pummels his way bare-knuckled through the sweaty backstreets ruled by local crime syndicates down below.
Refn, who co-writes with Esti Giordani, manages to corral a variety of seemingly disparate genres and influences into a clinically cold and cryptic whole. The filmmaker infuses his signature style with everything from ’60s sci-fi to Golden Age Hollywood melodrama to Japanese folklore, hung on the framework of a Dario Argento-style Giallo. There’s a prominent psychosexual edge to both Elle and Private K’s separate journeys, one that dials up to zany excess when it comes to the former character.
There’s an overarching sense of mystic mythmaking to Her Private Hell, with elusive seamstresses, played by Shioli Kutsuna and Aoi Yamada, dipping in and out like folkloric, omnipotent kitsune as they seemingly preside over the increasing chaos that entails brutal knife fights, Freudian melodrama, and a supernatural killer that brutally rips his victims apart. All of it told with Refn’s detached, sterile style.
It’s less a conventional movie and more a stream of consciousness, a collection of inspirations and personal thoughts and themes. Nothing is really explained in this nonsensical fairy tale fever dream. Thatcher gives herself fully to the spoiled Elle, whose affluent privilege makes her a bundle of raw, primal emotions that erodes her sense of identity and reality. It makes her the tonal and visual opposite of the elusive Private K., and much credit goes to Refn, Melton, and Thatcher for wringing compelling performances out of such nebulous, vague characters.
As with most of Refn’s work, you’re either on his frequency or not. Her Private Hell is wholly uninterested in explanation or convention. It’s also heavily disjointed and unhurried in its eclectic, sparse amalgamation of genre inspirations. Still, it’s tough not to fall sway to the magnetic allure of its exquisite, pulse-pounding sights and sounds, complete with an incredible score by legendary composer Pino Donaggio.
While it never fully pulls you into its tangled web of artistic musings, there’s a lot to admire in a technically stunning feature this fearless in its incomprehensibility and ambition.
Her Private Hell releases in theaters on July 24.
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