Reviews
[Review] ‘Tormented Souls’ is a Scrappy Throwback Survival Horror Experience
While plenty of indie developers have captured the essence of survival horror as it was on the original PlayStation, far fewer have managed to do so with the PlayStation 2 era of the sub-genre. This was arguably the peak of it at the time. Those few precious years, before the impact of Resident Evil 4 shifted the goalposts, housed memorable cult favorites such as ObScure, Rule of Rose, and Haunting Ground, as well as the more noted classics of the generation such as Silent Hill 2.
Flaws and all, Tormented Souls feels like it belongs in that era. Its developer, Dual Effect, has seemingly made a survival horror throwback that understands its influences remarkably well whilst not forgetting to throw in a few modern quality of life touches to the package to ensure it slips comfortably between nostalgia and ease of use. There’s a real mean streak to it that calls upon the more controversial games of that era. Tormented Souls is gleeful in its character’s suffering, which is something many throwbacks try to compromise on. It doesn’t make it a better game necessarily, but it does show confidence.
The setup to Tormented Souls makes it abundantly clear just how indebted to the early 2000s formula it is. The protagonist, Caroline Walker, heads to Winterlake Mansion, which serves as a hospital, in search of twin girls from a photograph she received. Upon arriving, Caroline is knocked out, and awakens in a bathtub, with a tube from a respirator lodged down her throat. Oh, and someone’s cut her eye out. Not off to the best of starts is our poor Caroline.
So Caroline begins to explore the dark, and seemingly abandoned mansion/hospital, only having the flame of a lighter and the odd candle to illuminate the gloom. It’s a survival horror game, so you’d be correct to assume that some shit goes down that makes escape difficult, but wholly necessary for her continued survival. It’s a tale as old as time, with more than an air of the melodramatic and enough oak-paneled line delivery to make a substantially-sized cabin. Tormented Souls’ tale already feels strangely comforting in its rougher edges.
Tormented Souls’ environments are very much the star of the show as it stands. The grimy, dark halls of the hospital areas hint at a bloody history and their intersection with the mansion’s grandiose decor tells its own story. The game opts for a classic fixed camera which really helps to highlight the scenery properly and set the mood and atmosphere up superbly well. The dark in the game is truly blinding without a portable light source to hand, and staying in it negatively affects Caroline’s state of mind. You’re repeatedly asked to decide on the best course of action whilst in gloom. You could run through it and keep your weapon ready, or you could ensure you don’t blindly stumble into a horrifying situation by equipping your lighter.
The build-up to the first enemy encounter is nicely done. The building creaks in that unnerving way so many old buildings do, and occasionally something will fall somewhere, and after accessing the basement level, Caroline catches a glimpse of something ahead of her, and shortly after is confronted by a grotesque figure in a wheelchair and they’re wielding some pretty stabby-looking knives. This foe doesn’t move especially quickly, but there’s an unnerving swiftness to the way they wheel themselves towards Caroline, the squeak of the wheels increasing in volume as they gain ground on her. I’m not a fan of wheelchairs being used as horror devices, but like anything used to garner terror, it’s more to do with how much thought goes into the reasons behind its use. While I can’t speak for that enemy’s backstory, which doesn’t do it any favors, I can appreciate the use of the wheel squeaks to ramp up the intensity.
Caroline escapes from them soon enough, and finds herself in an X-Ray room that’s apparently now also a chapel, as a priest is reading a shrouded corpse its last rites. The priest says he’s met Caroline just days before, she has no memory of that. He also casually mentions that there’s an evil presence about, the staff and patients of the hospital have moved on to a new site, and the lights are out because the generator is playing up. Lucky Caroline (and you, the player) you get to go fix it for him.
In the preview build, I’d run into some issues with stuttering audio from characters, coupled with some low rent line delivery. This interaction was the first instance where it really hurt the game, and it showed no signs of getting better as the preview continued on. Happily, the stuttering is now a rarity, and the dialogue, while still decidedly naff, is at least consistent in that quality.
Back to the action. Caroline leaves to go and fix the generator and has to solve a pressure display puzzle by sorting valves out. What I like about Tormented Souls’ puzzles is that the inventory screen is right there alongside the puzzle in question, so you don’t have to flit between menus or the puzzle to find that code or item. When interacting with anything, the game moves from third-person to a first-person perspective, allowing you to examine everything relevant without back-tracking between the game and its menu screens. Nothing mind-blowing, but a nice touch.
With the generator fixed, Caroline is sent to explore the rest of the mansion, and even with more light, there’s plenty of disturbing things that are going to get between her and her quest for knowledge. Luckily she now packs a nailgun to ward off evildoers in the punchiest way possible, and some morphine to cure what ails her. Perhaps it’s best if you stop by and save your progress (Using a Magnetophon) first though, eh?
The nailgun works much like any gun in tank control survival horror, but it’s sometimes difficult to tell if you’re actually hurting your foes. Some scuttle about low on the ground and are hard to target as a result. They don’t always show up alone either, meaning you’re often best just running away instead. When it matters most though, the aiming system works well enough to overcome whatever new heinous beast Tormented Souls throws at you.
The relatively rudimentary control scheme makes perfect sense for the kind of horror game Tormented Souls wants to be. Tank controls have always been about imbibing the situation with a big syrupy dose of nightmare fuel. That almost unbearable dreamlike balance between being just quick enough to realize you’re in trouble, but too slow to easily escape it is a superb tool when used appropriately, and Tormented Souls largely succeeds at it. Besides, it handles nowhere near as treacly as the biggest offenders in the genre.
Yes, you could argue that in trying so hard to make a game for the mid-2000s in 2021 leaves the developer with a game that’s fundamentally dated before it began, but that’s the point. All the modern indie horror games that work get that. Compromises will certainly bring you a bigger audience, but games like Tormented Souls, as scraggly and mean-spirited as the games that inspired them, are far more likely to scratch that itch for survival horror’s golden era, rough edges and all.
Tormented Souls review code for PS5 provided by the publisher.
Tormented Souls comes to PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and Nintendo Switch on August 27
Reviews
‘Unhinged’ Review: Netflix’s Interactive Horror Thriller Is Short But Serviceable Gaming Fare
Netflix has such a strange history in gaming. I wouldn’t be surprised if most people don’t even know that there are free mobile games you can access through the service. Many of them are adaptations of their TV series, like “Too Hot to Handle” or “Squid Game”, while some are mobile versions of existing games, like Into the Breach or Hades.
In addition to mobile games, they’ve also created interactive movie experiences where you use your remote to select narrative options at branching points. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was a fairly successful version of this, but my sentimental favorite was the one where WWE’s New Day had to escape a murder house boobytrapped by The Undertaker. Even if some of these made a bit of a splash, it seems it never really hit with mainstream audiences the way their shows do.
One of the studios they purchased while trying to break into the game space was Night School Studio, the creators of the spooky narrative series Oxenfree. This struck me as a particularly smart acquisition, as this type of narrative game seems like something that would feel at home under the Netflix umbrella. While they did release Oxenfree II while owned by the streaming giant, it was released on traditional platforms, which led me to wonder when their first Netflix exclusive would show up.
While they did produce a game called Thronglets, a mobile version of a plot element from an episode of “Black Mirror”, the recently released Unhinged seems to be one of the highest profile Netflix games in a long time.
Unhinged is a first-person, narrative-driven thriller starring Zoë Kravitz, Sadie Sink, and Troy Baker. This 30-minute experience, played on your TV through the standard Netflix app, is controlled by your phone, using some clever tricks to make the whole thing feel more immersive. It’s a neat variation on the “interactive movie” subgenre, with a tiny bit of point-and-click adventure game DNA thrown in for good measure, but it doesn’t exactly offer you as many options as something like Until Dawn.
Kravitz plays Ava, a woman who is hunkering down in her apartment complex during a dangerous hurricane. As she talks with her friend Claire, who lives in a neighboring building, about possibly leaving to find shelter elsewhere, she finds herself in a desperate chase with a crazed killer that stalks her through the halls of the building. It’s a decent setup for a very contained story, but I wish there was a little more meat on the bones. The voice acting is great, but there’s not really a ton of characterization for the two leads, and the killer was a bit “generic psycho” for my taste. There’s some implied backstory with other tenants in the building, but it’s not enough to make me feel like there’s a web of relationships that would give the story more emotional weight.
To play the game, you open up your Netflix app wherever you usually watch, then select the game. This will bring up a QR code, which you’ll scan on your phone, prompting you to download a controller app that will sync up to the game. The majority of the way you’ll interact is by pointing at the screen like a Wiimote, which selects on-screen options for Ava and shines her flashlight around the environment.
While this does give it the feel of an FMV game, Unhinged is rendered in a photorealistic graphics style, and while not quite to the level of something like P.T., it does the trick of drawing you into the action. You’re still put on a pretty strict path while moving around, which is done automatically when you select a direction, but moving your phone gives you the ability to look around your environment, even if only slightly.
The real immersive part of the game is the fact that your phone also acts as Ava’s phone. The plot is frequently moved forward by calls and text messages that you answer as you would on your own cellular device. As sound blasts out of your phone, it does put you in the shoes of the main character, momentarily worrying you that the sound of the call or text is going to alert your on-screen stalker. This part of Unhinged truly takes advantage of the format to draw you deeper into the story, though unfortunately it’s so effective that I wished the game found even more ways to use it.
There are a couple clever moments that make for unique ways of delivering twists or doing extremely light puzzle solving, but most of the time it’s just used to allow your friend to give you instructions on how to move the narrative forward.
All these mechanics come together to give the illusion of tension without actually fully delivering on it. When you get to a situation where you’re under pressure, a timer bar will appear on the top of the screen, indicating how long you have to get to safety. It’s a fine gimmick, but it comes off as a little hard to gauge. Since you don’t have direct control over your character, all your actions are very heavily animated, and sometimes your choice ends up taking longer than you think it will not because of the idea behind the choice, but because of the length of the animation. Fortunately, if you die, you’ll just pick back up at a checkpoint right before the choice, and you’ll even be treated with a voiceover discussion between police officers examining the crime scene, describing how you died.
So in theory, there is tension, counting down as the killer gets closer and closer to reaching you, but what you’re actually doing almost never feels like it’s testing you in any meaningful way. Actual choices come up very infrequently, making most of your interaction with the game world just scanning your pointer across the screen looking for an interaction point to progress, hoping the animation doesn’t take up too much time before the timer runs out. I didn’t hit a ton of friction points with it, and there’s even a Story Mode if you want to take out all possibility of death, but I found myself wishing there were more ways to affect the world around me. The phone calls and texts felt really fun and clever, but the rest of the gameplay just didn’t match that, making me wish there was more emphasis on the unique interaction model rather than the more traditional one.
Even though the mechanics aren’t necessarily pushing the tension as hard as they could be, the actual content of Unhinged’s story contains some pretty brutal situations. The villain isn’t the most unique or fleshed out, but he’s responsible for some gruesome moments that raised the stakes to make the game feel more intense. It makes your fight for survival feel that much more desperate, so even if you’re just highlighting icons on the screen, it feels more visceral thanks to what Ava is witnessing.
While I appreciate the game being lean and mean, I wish it was just a little bit longer. Thirty minutes is a pretty short runtime, and it doesn’t feel like the story for Unhinged has the time to come up with something that really sets it apart from other stories of its kind. The focus on the hurricane at the beginning made me think that was going to be more integral to the plot, but it didn’t really do much aside from explaining why the apartment complex was so empty. Thrillers like this live or die on how memorable their killer is, and there wasn’t anything really clever or unique about him. If this game doubled its runtime to the length of a standard Netflix show, it might have given them more room to build character relationships that made the action more meaningful, or at least given it a bit more personality of its own.
Night School Studio is on to something with the format of Unhinged. The combination of on screen and on phone prompts makes the game feel more immersive, drawing you in even when the narrative itself doesn’t feel fully formed or unique. The short runtime is both a help and a hindrance, keeping the pacing tight at the cost of adding any depth to the proceedings. This feels like a great first draft, and I hope that Night School is given the freedom to continue experimenting with the model, as the level of polish shown here was promising.
Even with its flaws, if you’ve already got a Netflix subscription, there’s no reason not to sit down for half an hour to check out Unhinged. If you can keep your expectations in check, it’s a nasty little thrillride that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Unhinged is streaming now on Netflix.
You must be logged in to post a comment.