Blair Witch, as a brand, has survived, since 1999, on the strength of two pieces of iconography.
The crossed sticks, bound at the center to form a human shape. And, the shadowy figure, standing in a corner, staring at the ground.
A complex mythology has sprouted up around The Blair Witch Project, though, scaffolded with books, graphic novels, two sequels and a trilogy of games from the early 2000s. But, Blair Witch — unlike Friday the 13th, or Godzilla, or Halloween — has no iconic character to build a world around. The Blair Witch herself is most chillingly effective when she remains unseen.
Enter Bloober Team, the talented developers behind this year’s Layers of Fear 2, tasked by Lionsgate with adapting the Blair Witch universe to the world of first-person horror games. In their last game, Bloober Team ransacked the history of film. To tell the story of a troubled movie shoot, Layers of Fear 2 turned to the past century of cinema, filling its haunted cruise ship setting with familiar images; splicing horrifying sights into the mind of its protagonist.
As a result, Layers of Fear 2 added little to the horror canon. Instead, it remixed horror’s best moments. Like a scary Ready Player One or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate it asked, “What if all the things you like… but together?” The game we got, as a result, was not very original. But, it was scary.
With Blair Witch, Bloober Team has been forced to narrow its scope. Layers of Fear 2 was a game about movies; Blair Witch is a game about a movie. The palate Bloober once had — the twins from The Shining can go in this hallway, the shower scene from Psycho can go in this room — now includes some sticks and people looking at the ground.
That may sound reductive. And, to be sure, Bloober’s approach to Blair Witch feels reductive. It never digs deep enough to find something unique. Instead, Blair Witch is content to hang a bunch of wooden totems in the trees and scatter a ton of Polaroids of people doing the Blair Witch pose around the woods. It has no new scares for you. It simply hopes that you will see the familiar iconography and shudder like Pavlov’s most cowardly dog.
Speaking of dogs, this game has one. Bullet is a good boy and you’ll be happy to know that you can pet him. There’s a whole action wheel of other things you can do with your German Shepherd buddy, too. You can tell him to stay close to you when danger is nearby, or command him to seek out the source of a scent. You can also reprimand him — an action I avoided at all costs.
Narratively and mechanically, Bullet is your greatest asset. Your character, Ellis, has joined the search for a young boy who went missing in the Black Hills Forest, the Blair Witch’s stomping grounds. As you explore the woods, you’ll find discarded items that Bullet can sniff to help lead you to the missing child.
Some of these objects are out in plain sight. Others, though, you’ll need to manipulate time and space to find. With this mechanic, Blair Witch, pays homage to its found footage roots. Early on in the game, you’ll find a camcorder, and as Blair Witch progresses, you’ll pick up mini VHS tapes to watch. These tapes often correspond to the environment that you find them in, and rewinding or fast-forwarding the footage will alter the world around you.
This is Blair Witch’s best idea. After periods of searching the woods to no avail, I would check the tape, and often, find the solution. This was always satisfying. But, Blair Witch doesn’t take this mechanic far enough. The puzzles are simple. It was never so much a question of whether I could use my wits to solve a puzzle. It was more a question of whether I would remember to check the tape. As I played, I thought of the excellent “Effect and Cause” mission from Titanfall 2. That 15-minute level does more to explore the idea of manipulating space and time than Blair Witch does across it’s 6-8 hour runtime — and this is a core mechanic.
The problem is, Blair Witch has a lot of mechanics. There’s Bullet’s command wheel, the camcorder, flashlight battles against the beasts that lurk in the woods, a cell phone, a walkie-talkie. None of these are especially poorly executed. The cell phone, in particular, is a wonderful slice of ‘90s nostalgia. But, with such a breadth of tools, Blair Witch neglects to provide much depth for any of them.
And, in its most climactic moments, Blair Witch neglects all of these ideas. Instead, it asks you to walk agonizingly slowly or for agonizingly long amounts of time. It is Bloober Team’s least scary, least interesting game.
There needs to be more to Blair Witch.
Blair Witch review code for PC provided by the publisher.
Blair Witch is out now on Xbox One and PC