Recent reviews by car

story
-i think since this game focuses much more on its gameplay, the story is pretty forgettable. but thats not necessarily a bad thing because the game offers a few levels or chapters(?) that are all pretty unique. like the first one is just a random farmhouse, but the later ones are an asylum, a western town, or a slaughterhouse. and they all have their own unique antagonist.

gameplay
-the goal of every game is to just collect items to set off a ritual. and they are all multilayered. it's not just collecting keys to open doors, like most horror games. all of the levels are complex in the way you gotta set off the ritual. the first example, in the farmhouse, is like releasing some goats, using hay to trap them, carrying them to an altar, getting gasoline for a fire, and then burning them to “sacrifice them”. and you do this 10 times to beat the game.
-in all the levels there's a bigger overarching antagonist after you trying to kill you. for example, in the western ghost town, it's a cowboy chasing you around and shooting at you. the antagonist gets more lethal as the game goes on, to the point where it's nearly impossible to escape unless you play perfectly. which makes for a much more intense and exciting game.
-throughout the whole game, there are smaller, less lethal enemies that you have to deal with using your uv flashlight to burn them away. it's easy to ignore them because they don't possess such a great threat for most of the game. but if you let them stack up, youll be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ towards the end of the game, when you have to use the uv flashlight to deal with big man. they are a constant reminder that you are not safe and it also creates these crucial decision making moments for when to use your uv flashlight.
-this game is incredibly fun with friends. making sure everyone has a duty thatll help, like focusing on collecting the resources, killing enemies, or using medkits, allows for natural teamwork to unfold.
-on the other hand, hearing your friends scream for their life on proximity mic, is always so great. it helps you release some tension and makes the whole game better.

visuals
-the game looks really really good, everything is really detailed and atmospheric.
-all levels look different and provide a very unique experience.
-my only note is that the lighting on the enemies in the little cutscene that plays when they kill is a bit off.
-like everything else, the visuals get more intense as the game continues, with flashes and ♥♥♥♥ flying everywhere.

sound
-okay i wouldnt usually talk about the sound design of the game, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. i cant describe the feeling this game gives me from it's sound design. once things start heating up in the game, everything gets more intense, but more than anything else, the sound.
-there are moments in the game where im like legit jumping out of my seat thinking something is running up on me when the danger is across the map. i never feel safe and i love that in a game.
-the sound isn't just loud, idk how to describe it, it's just atmospheric, every little thing, like thunder, footsteps, wind all add up to this hella scary environment. it gets in your bones.

random thought
vr prolly goes crazy

final thought
the overarching increase in difficulty in the game is like none ive ever seen before. if you took 5 seconds from the beginning of the game and compared it to 5 seconds of the end of the game, you truly wouldn't believe it's the same game. devour gets really really difficult at the end of the game, which might put some people off to the game, but having to rerun the map, just allows for more fun. the game actually leaves me exhausted after playing one round to completion. the game just gets so intense, and i love it.

8/10

i could not finish this game

gameplay
-jesus christ this game is so ungodly slow
-the game does not do a good job in tellin you what to do next. everytime i did a task, i would have to go around the entire house and click on every possible item to see if maybe itll jump to a cutscene or something like that.
-and im not an idiot, im quite the critical thinker, and i was still confused the entire time.
-the puzzles are pretty simple, none of the puzzles were hard, they were clever and i liked that.
-the survivability aspect of the game is SOOOOO lame. there's an indicator at the bottom right that tells you your like insanity and if it goes up you get killed. but WHY WHY WHY, would the game want to warn you when youre about to die. it removes the horror aspect if you know it's coming. one could argue that being able to see when something bads about to happen is scary because you now know that soon youll be scared but it doesn't really work when it's always the same jumpscare.
-it would be SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better if there was no indication. idk why so many games just spoonfeed you when to be scared. let it happen naturally. the more you play the game, youll understand that your insanity goes down and bad ♥♥♥♥ happens, why not use that to create this more powerful fear of the unknown, especially in this game, cus it has to deal with how the house is forever changing. you could have like bad ♥♥♥♥ happen when your sanity is normal, and that gets you questioning your sanity. or even better, the opposite, have the insanity go really really low and have nothing go wrong, because that makes you panic because youre conditioned for something bad to go wrong, the more you play, and it could lead to you doing things you wouldnt normally do, like continue to roam in the dark, and then youre truly in the unknown. you can be scared whenever and itll actually scare you cus you DON'T KNOW WHEN IT'S COMING.

-for some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason, this game allows you to pick up nearly every single thing in the house, even if it's useless, however, there is no visual difference for the things that ARE important. you can say that this is done so that the game stays immersive and specific objects arent just randomly glowing, but you can do the same thing by just not making everything in the game intractable. the game already changes the crosshair a bit when you hover over something you pick up so why not just do that for things that matter?

-there were a few bugs in the game. after reaching a certain point in the game, the thunder that goes off makes your game lag so much, whereas, in the beginning, there is no issue. another thing was that i had this hammer, and swung it near a window the animation made the hammer phase through the wall and it got stuck on the other side of the wall, forcing me to restart that section.

and finally, there is a point in the game where you need to look at the time on the clocks to know which corridors to go through, i did everything right up to that point, i knew what times to look for but when i have to choose the corridors with the specific times, it was impossible because the CLOCKS DIDN'T HAVE HANDS. i had no way of knowing which corridors to go through. and note that you have to choose 1 of 3 corridors everytime, 5 times in a row. meaning that even if i tried to just guess, it would be a 0.411522633% chance of me getting it right. and it takes a few minutes to restart that section so essentially, i ain't doin allat.

story
-the story essentially is reliving things that happened in the past, some very bad things. and as you figure out what happened, it's like you are being hunted by what went wrong. so like in the chapter i played, it was figuring out what happened to grandma but she after me.
-you sorta forget the story as soon as you start doing the long-ass drawn-out ♥♥♥♥♥ ass puzzles.
-sometimes you are seamlessly transported to the past and those moments are really cool because it feels like a whole new game for a bit.

visuals
-looked good, playing on max settings def had my pc screaming tho
-like i said it does a good job of changing the tone whenever the setting changes to the past.
-the game is pretty atmospheric on it's own, there's def a unique vibe to it
-it did a good job visually showing how the house would be changing, like when a hallway is
suddenly twisted and ♥♥♥♥, or the lighting goes from dark and cold, to warm and bright.
-jumpscares are pretty bad cus they are slow, it's always just someone slowly approaching you then a slow cutscene of them killing you.

random thought
why are people saying this is the scariest game ever?

final thought
man i was so hyped to play this game. i wish it wasn't such a let down. all the ♥♥♥♥ i called out turned me off so much from finishing the game that i didn't even finish 1 of the 3-4 chapters of the game. the biggest letdown is obv the gameplay because it just becomes you roaming around the house looking for the next thing to do as you watch your sanity go down and then slowly get killed. it gets monotonous quickly. with a few quality of life changes, it would be so much better.

4.5/10

story
-it was a pretty simple story, not an uncommon idea too. like fundamentally, its just like escape the house, then later escape the ship, then escape the cave by killing the mega version of whoever that “chapter” is focused on.
-in terms of pacing, once you get to the ship, it's pretty slow but the rest was pretty well-paced, not fast, but engaging.
-wish a lot of it was more show don't tell, simply reading notes is always lame
-characters didn't have depth
-i really like how memory was integrated into the story at times, whether it was looking at the tapes and going back into the past and actually playing in the memory, that was mad hype, or evie getting in your head to make you see mia chase you around with the chainsaw at the end of the game the same way she was in the beginning of the game, so you stupidly waste your bullets shooting a hallucination.
-ermmm the ending tho, kinda lame boring sucks. after everything youve done, evie grows into this huge gigantic form that you cant beat and she is tossing you from like 20 meters up in the air, your guns do nothing, it's supposed to be over. you land on the ground, somehow still alive, and look to your right and oh what's that? a PISTOL that has superman kryptonite bullets that insta kill her. deus ex machina endings are horrible.
-it was pretty simple to follow i think, i can look back on it and prolly retell it easily.
-the twists were stupid.

gameplay
-i liked solving the puzzles, like lucas’ party part was my fav cus it was just a puzzle. at times it would just be like kill the monsters while you walk around unlocking doors. which is sooooo boring cus it's not scary or engaging, you stop looking forward to what's next when all thats happening is you trynna open doors.
-wish it was scarier. the only genuine scares were like the first jumpscares but once you know when theyll happen it's pretty lame, like once you shoot a crate and it explodes, you expect it every time and it loses its punch the next 50 times. it wouldve been SOOOOO much better if the game had that thing where evie makes you hallucinate throughout the whole game. like if it made the game this like crazy schizo experience, id love that.
-it was really easy to forget it's a horror game cus it mostly just felt like a survival game. there were no stakes, i could chill in an area and do whatever i wanted and take my time cus i knew nothing bad would happen. the thing is i only really felt this after the first two parts. once i didn't have jack and margarette(?) patrolling, it wasn't scary to do stuff. so only like 2/5 chapters felt intense. with no stakes, there's no drama.

visuals
-it looked good
-i really really like how the lighting was affected by how human eyes actually work, like the longer youre in the dark, the brighter it gets cus we get used to it. and how when youre in the dark and something bright gets lit everything thats not that, gets even darker.
-im not a fan of the like mushy fleshy gooey masses thats in so many horror games, they never look good or scary. wouldve been better if the unnatural scary stuff matched the like run down earthy swampy environment.

random notes
marges voice actor was real af
i only played one of the "endings"

final thought
one hand is steering the other is busy writing meaningless depth to a simple story. in an attempt to explain unnecessary stuff, the game gets really monotonous when you are sent to the ship and the cave. like those chapters could have been removed and it still wouldve made sense, wouldve been better. if the story was just about how evie wanted a family and, made her way into jacks family, and tried to uphold this perfect idea of it, we could have had a nice complex story where even though it's dramatized for the game, anyone could relate to it, fundamentally. but instead, it turns into this “well shes an experiment in a lab and she got out and shes crazy gotta find her and science blah blah blah” like why not just focus on the universal ideas of a family?

6.5/10