Silent Descent (PC) Review

I'm going to be honest with you. This game did not open itself up with the best first impression. It promised to be a psychological horror and the trailer suggested that you would spend your time investigating a haunted house. The title screen looks good enough once you loaded it up, but starting your game leads to a relatively lengthy loading time only to hit another one seconds later as the opening video finishes playing. And the game itself has no instructions or way to even look at your controls, leaving you to wonder how to even really begin. And on top of all this when the game actually starts, it is not what is promised. But this is also one of those titles where I have urge you to read on and have patience with it's akward start, as there is definitely something great beneath this grit.

You will play Silent Descent from a first person perspective with bare-minimum controls available to you. WASD will move you around, the mouse will look, and left-click will interact with most of the world. I have to say most as there are three basic things you will do: hitting buttons/switches, picking up notes to read about what happened to this place, and opening doors. Inexplicably, that last one is not done with the mouse button, but automatically by walking into the door. If it can open, it will and you will go through it. If it can't, you will rattle it around.

If you haven't figured it out yet, this is not going to be an action-based or investigative game in the least. Rather you will spend your time going from room to room in an ever-repeating world as you face the forces that control it and slowly morph it into a living nightmare. But that is very much the point of this game as it was heavily inspired by a certain Silent Hill demo Konami released and then did their best to erase the existence of when they had a fight with one of their developers. Each time you go through, something changes or a new note is available, or you will be asked to complete some small task before the door at the other end will open to let you into the next iteration.

And while this sounds dull, it really is nothing of the sort. These rooms are usually pretty short, keeping you moving too much to get bored before the major changes (and other rooms) begin to enter the mix to be explored, adding some much needed variety to your environment. But occasionally you will be asked to complete a puzzle before the door will open. For example, early on you will be required to find the pictures that have been flipped over and return them to normal before the door to move on will open for you. And while these occasional puzzles are required, you would be forgiven if you thought of them as minor since the main event you will be looking for are letters. A game this focused on atmosphere before all else needs a reason for you to be here and these letters will tell that story as you traverse your nightmare.

But all of this does go by very quickly, as making a point to enjoy my haunting and see what I can, I still clocked the entire game at about 2 hours. You will not be here long, which may work to it's advantage, but it is a big reason as to why this game is so cheap.

Bugs: While this game ran very well it did crash once at the very end of the game. I thought the game messed up rendering some last needed monsters, but others (and based on steam reviews, it is fairly common) thought it was caused by clipping out of the map at literally the last moment. Either is possible, but thanks to a descent save system, it's easy to get back to this point and see the ending if this happens to you.

Overall: Short, sweet, and to the point, this game won't keep you waiting long to get to what makes it a great experience. It will make you have to figure things out you probably should not have to in the modern gaming era, but it will definitely make it worth your while if you enjoy your horror games. Others may want to look elsewhere, but it would be a shame to pass this up if they are indeed your cup of tea.

Score:

 7/10


System Requirements:

• Intel i5
• 6 GB RAM
• Nvidia Geforce 680 GTX
• Windows XP
• 6 GB hard drive space
  

System Specs:

• Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
• 16 GB RAM
• Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
• Windows 10

Source: Steam 
Note: P.T. video provided is not by me as I have never had or played a PS4. This video was made by Gamezone and linked to explain what I was talking about to those who didn't know what I was talking about without giving too much away.