Goes out of it's way to bore the player but fans of aimless wandering will love it.
I was a touch skeptical about the open world feel of this game & side quests. Credit the developers I suppose for trying to freshen things up for what has become quite a stale franchise, but it fails in my opinion. Lots of aimless wandering & map checking. Side quests usually involve tedious reading or releasing birds from cages. Puzzles are a mixed bag. Some are genuinely fun & can stretch the grey matter a bit but some had me nearly falling asleep at the wheel. Like the envelope matching puzzle to find a code. I got better things to do with my time thanks. Also, a lot of the buildings you can enter around the town are just empty. Maybe a med kit or a lone enemy. Dull.
So I hear this game (like Homecoming) is made by western developers. Well whoever made this game has limited imagination. Have I ever come across less scary enemies in a survival horror game before. I really doubt it. The atmosphere can be quite oppressive from time to time but then a monster shows up. Screamers are just not scary & those things that only show up in UV light are a pain because the combat is so lame. If you're in a darkened room fighting multiple enemies it's like a bad nightclub strobe effect. Light shooting around the place as you take strike after strike completely disorientated just swinging wildly from the hip. Guns are just pea shooters & are piss weak. Just avoid combat...at all cost. Just run or you will break something out of rage. Luckily the game allows you to flee pretty much every encounter apart from I think 2 boss battles in the whole game.
You get chased by an evil ball of light now in the hell sections which is another downside. I liked it when you could wander around the grim corridors at my own pace. After all these were the scariest bits in previous games. I don't know if I like being chased in games. Some players might like it, but not me.
At least this only cost me £7.50 in a recent sale. I can be thankful of that I suppose. SH Homecoming is made to look a masterpiece in comparison to this pos. At least that game had creeps, decent combat & decent boss battles. There are occasional moments of quality, like the cart ride in the devils pit, but I hope SH goes back to Japan developers & becomes scary again. This game is just junk & felt like a chore to complete. Games shouldn't be a chore.