I've always been a sucker for stories where your mind is as much the enemy as anything. After all, anything can happen in your head, right? So of course this game would find it's way into my collection. And after playing through it, I can honestly say I'm glad it did.
Story: Welcome to Reaching Dreams, a rehab where Sam has found himself in his attempt to get clean. But this place is not normal. Something is going on, and right from the first night, Sam knew things were off. Someone seemed to be calling out for help... but were they? His world has been an absolute mess from his addictions, after all... and he isn't sure how much he can even trust himself.
From this starting point the game will place you in your first night at Reaching Dreams as you explore after hours to figure out what is going on and what is literally all in your head... and keeps you on that blurry line the entire time. Unfortunately this does mean the story is almost non-existent beyond this point until the very end of the game, only then plugging the clues you saw together with an infodump to explain it... so expect to remain confused until the end.
And don't expect there to be a lot to it once the damn breaks. This is not a long game so you can only pack so much in the last moments it offers. However not being a lot does not stop it from being appropriately heavy or an entertaining and creepy ride through it all.
7/10
Graphics: Decay is a very odd game to describe graphically for one major reason: Full Motion Video. You will play from a first person perspective, but rather then a fully interactive world, you will explore by scenes representing where you are looking in each room/position. But where most games of this nature will use a single image for each location, Decay opts for active videos. True, many of the scenes are fairly static, but this does allow the world to still remain alive with the active elements of a room blending in completely with the around them, as well as ensuring any new surprises blend in perfectly when they happen. This is all done in full CGI which keeps everything feeling like it belongs together. Add to that a nice light tough of filter grain that actually makes sense in this case, and you have a game that looks really really good.
If I had to make a downside here it's that being video like this means that even though the game will always use your desktop's resolution as it's own, it can't make the game look any cleaner. However, the part that might be able to (I don't know as I played it at 1080p resolution as per my own monitor) does not fair so well, however: the user interface.
On the plus side, the interface is completely out of the way, only taking up space in the corners and the bottom of the screen in the form of a very simple overlay, letting the world take center stage. But on the negative, it looks terrible in that little space. Each icon is garish as a simplified white icon with an outline around it, looking frankly unprofessional as hell. This does not improve when you see the subtitles which look the the kind of thing Youtube generates when you select "Closed Captions" on a video. If it wasn't so out of the way, this would be a huge detriment on the way it looks. As it is, however, it feels more like an afterthought to what the game is meant to show you: it's meat and potatoes, if you will.
8/10
Sound: This is a bit hit and miss in Decay, but thankfully a lot more hit then miss. When you start the game, the first thing it's going to hit is the music and wow! Moody, atmospheric, heavy, it's absolutely perfect for setting the tone! The only shame is when it stops. It works for the spooky effect, but it's just so good you wish it would stay. Sadly though, it's also another place where the game lands a more amateurish vibe, as the music is not always timed correctly or even faded out when the game is finished with it, but rather just... stops. And that's during cutscenes! But you can add to this sound picture incredibly clear sound effects adding to that eerie environment beautifully.
The one thing you can not count on here is the voice acting. There is not a lot of dialog in this game and most of it is just in subtitles, but those few times the game speaks, the lines are really delivered flatly. I understand this is a small indie team and likely could not afford professionals, but for how little they used, it might have been a better idea to skip this.
7/10
Gameplay: As noted in the graphical section, this game plays out from a first person point of view, but not one you move freely in. Rather you are given a scene and your cursor does your navigation and interactions: If you can click on it, you will either move to or interact with it in some way. With this rather simple interface you will navigate through the building and collecting objects you will use in the process. However while this is intuitive as hell, it is not perfect due to a lag here. This is not slow movement or anything like that, however. What it's slow about is shifting back from the icon to show you what will happen when you click to the ordinary cursor, resulting in you often thinking you might have found something hidden in the screen that you did not. It is not something you can't work around but it will require you to adjust and slow down some.
Not everything can be quite that intrinsic, however, so you can expect a few icons around the edges of your screen, and there are three of note. The first of which you will see are little arrows that can either be at the bottom or the sides of the screen. Clicking these will turn you around (or step backwards, case depending), allowing you to investigate things beyond your field of view. These are common enough but still don't always assume you will have these options as they are very case dependent.
The next and perhaps even more familiar icon will be an exclamation point in the upper left corner of the screen. This is your inventory and clicking it will allow you to examine or attempt to use or combine any items you may have. The controls at this point are every bit as intuitive as the main screen itself and most of the items will make it's use obvious.
But the final icon leads to something I have to give the devs credit for walking a very fine line on: the question mark in the lower right corner. This icon is your "hint" icon, but this is pretty well named incorrectly. If you take enough time wandering it will appear and can offer hints on occasion, but most of the time, all it will do is guide you to the room where your current task resides, leaving the rest to you. It is smart enough to only lead you where you have the items you need already, meaning no wandering around wondering if you missed something across the map, but it's still up to you to figure it out, making for a nice balance of just enough help to keep you moving, but not do it all for you.
Not that those puzzles are hard. Most of the time, it will be very obvious once you see what you are looking at what you need to do. And when it is not, often your inventory will give you the remaining hint. But this is definitely a game I recommend keeping a notepad near your PC for: some of the clues are environmental and worth taking down when you see them... you will likely need to backtrack and do it anyway should you forget to.
7/10
Bugs: This is not a game I had to worry about any issues while playing. It ran flawlessly.
Score: If I were to say this game was a masterpiece, I would be lying. It is not. But that doesn't make it bad in any way. It's a creepy little title that feels very rough around the edges thanks to it's presentation. Yet once you get past that, you can see something very solid underneath that will give you a few hours of spooky fun before you move on. If you like point and click games, enjoy it for what it is and have a good time. If you are new to them and their type of puzzles, this just might be a descent first one for you. But either way, you won't walk away hating what you played. It's actually pretty good when you put it all together.
7/10
System Requirements:
- 2.2 Ghz dual core processor
- 2 GB RAM
- NVidia Geforce 205 or AMD Radeon HD 3400
- 2 GB hard drive space
- Windows Vista
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
No comments:
Post a Comment