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.
With all the hullabaloo surrounding Kane Parsons’ big screen adaptation of/sequel to his Backrooms web-series, it’s easy to forget that the Backrooms phenomenon itself actually began years ago. Since 2019, countless creators have tried to leave their own unique mark on this memorable piece of collaborative fiction, with game developers being especially interested in exploring the architectural nightmare of the rooms in virtual environments.
However, now that this once-niche creepypasta has escaped the online bubble and permeated all of popular culture, several of these developers have decided to rework and rerelease some of their old titles in order to reach a new audience. Puppet Combo did this with their interpretation of The Backrooms last month (originally released in 2019 as Day Seven), and now Cortez Productions is doing the same with the console release of The Backrooms: Lost Tape.
However, Lost Tape is more than just a cleverly timed rerelease, with Vini Cortez having taken the time to completely overhaul the 2022 game’s graphics and transfer the project over to Unreal Engine 5.6 – complete with bug fixes, exclusive new content, and a brand new visual style that’s a little too impressive when compared to what the original version of the game was trying to do. In fact, I’d argue that this is more of a remake than anything else, though it’s still built over the skeleton of that original game.
In the updated title, which is presented as a found footage anthology where each “tape” tells a self-contained story, players initially take control of a movie theater usher named Josh as he no-clips into the titular Backrooms and tries to find his way out of a liminal labyrinth. The second (and final) tape follows Josh’s brother Nikolas as he attempts to track down the missing usher and ends up embarking on his own journey through infinite hallways and not-so-empty pools.
What follows is a highly atmospheric first-person walking simulator with the occasional light puzzle and a handful of thrilling chase sequences. While the liminal environment is obviously the star of the show here, the rooms are actually populated by monsters in this game, and our characters have plenty to say about the situation they find themselves in.
Unlike Parsons’ more introspective take on the Backrooms mythology, Cortez has decided to incorporate the multiple levels of the Backrooms wiki as well as several crossovers with the SCP “franchise”. While I personally don’t mind this inclusion due to the creepypasta’s collective origins, die-hard fans might be bothered by the fact that you can run into SCP-173 (affectionately referred to as Peanut by some fans) while wandering around the yellow hallways.
However, the real problem here is the fact that the game is simply presenting imagery and ideas made by other people without adding anything new to these familiar elements. There is an undeniable novelty to exploring these beautiful renditions of classic liminal environments, but Lost Tape offers little in the way of originality in both narrative and presentation. This extends to the unfortunate use of generative AI in some of the new textures and audio files – issues that weren’t present in the 2022 version of the title.
Though Cortez has promised that he’s working on bringing back the VHS filter that made the original experience so grungy and atmospheric, the glossy new visuals make the game feel a lot less scary while also consuming way more computing power than can be reasonably expected from an indie title. Sure, the game is pretty in a “tech-demo” sort of way, but there’s no reason for it to be hogging resources like a blockbuster AAA title.
This is made even more frustrating by the fact that this found footage anthology is technically still incomplete. The two existing tapes only scratch the surface of the setting’s narrative potential, and Cortez has announced that the next ones will only be available as (likely paid) DLC. Josh and Nikolas’ tapes are self-contained yarns that’ll each get you about a feature film’s worth of entertainment, though a lot of that runtime is taken up by very slowly walking from one point to another. But it’s a shame that there isn’t a concrete promise of more content to come.
At the end of the day, Backrooms: Lost Tape isn’t a bad game. Cortez really nails the liminal atmosphere and even breathes new life into tired SCP tropes, and the upcoming VHS filter will likely resolve most of my gripes with the revamped visuals. That being said, I find it hard to recommend a project that took a completely functional experience and spoiled it with AI-generated assets and poorly-optimized “upgrades” that no one was really asking for – especially since it doesn’t give existing owners the chance to roll back to a previous version of the game.
So, if you’re looking for more Backrooms-related thrills after enjoying the A24 adaptation, Lost Tape isn’t necessarily a bad place to start, but there are certainly better and more original options out there.
Backrooms: Lost Tape is available now on Steam and PS5.
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