The Good
- the music, the dialogue, and the atmosphere is mysterious and makes you want to find out what's happening in Greenvale.
- the opening of the game makes you think it's going to be fully horror, but there are comedic events that happen which makes it somewhat interesting. I think this was good, because if it was fully horror, the visuals would have definitely held it back. It overall feels like a tug of war between horror and comedy, which makes the experience quite unique.
- the sudden quick movements of the enemies is actually kind of creepy. The backwards walking always creeped me out in horror movies. It's too bad the visuals are so basic that it takes out the fear factor of it all.
- this game open my eyes to see how music can affect the mood of a game. Although the overall narrative is horror and crime mystery, whenever there is light-hearted music playing, even the most horrific visuals can feel comedic.
- the overworld is very barren, but it is very large, and it's better than having no overworld at all and just teleporting from one gameplay sequence to the next.
- the game had me constantly wondering who Zach was. It was kind of like an underlying question mark that kind of kept me going with the game. Was York crazy? Maybe he passed out from the crash? Maybe he was imagining all of this?
- I love the protagonist monologues. So long as I like the character, I love it when I get to hear their thoughts. It gives an insight on what the character is thinking at the given time. It also gives me an opportunity to connect with the main character, which makes me care about the story more and what will become of the protagonist.
- adding a horror perspective to York’s investigations is creative. I also like how the developers represented how York’s mental picture of the crime becomes more clear after every clue is found represented a film reel that becomes less static with every new clue found.
- the ending was incredible. Huge unexpected plot twist.
The Bad
- the visuals look very dated. The voices do not match the movement of the lips at all, which makes cutscenes look awkward. Some facial animations are also a bit weird. Like the smiling animations. The game does mention bad 80s movies during monologues in the car with Zack. So I wonder if cheesy quality is kind of what the devs were going for. Or was it that the visuals turned out so bad that they included this monologue after most of the game was finished. They say if you joke about yourself, others will laugh with you, not at you.
- I like the narrative style this game is going for, but the aesthetics and barebone gameplay really holds it back. I would really like to see the same narrative style but with everything refined and have more detail.
- the driving sequences are trash. Nothing happens when you crash into civilian cars besides a bit of damage to your car, but there is no animation of the crash or your car breaking down. The driving controls are horrendous. And I dont understand why the stamina bar is still present while Im driving. Theres all these controls for driving like signal left signal rides and handbrake, but who gives a s***, theres no police, so its all fluff. Running out of fuel is also annoying and quite pointless, since theres only like one gas station in the entire town.
- too many of the same enemies. They are all exactly the same visually, and they have the exact same audio too.
- the quick time events are very odd, especially the animations. Its the most robotic and unsynchronized Ive ever seen. Especially that chase with the killer in episode 1 chapter 5 in the mill.
- the door knobs in the game looks like soda cans.
- the residence Greenvale use the 24 hour clock in regular conversations, which sounds really awkward during cutscenes.
- that entire sequence where are they found Becky hanging in the shower was retarded. No gloves were warned so the crime scene could have been messed up. The cop just cut the string when the victim was clearly attached to it, and the entire thing just look like a trap.
- the map end navigation system is bad. there is no fast travel despite the map being so large. Theres no marker to use if you want to go somewhere besides the default marker for the main objective. There is no legend that shows a list of where everything is. Only when you put your cursor over a highlighted object on the map, will it show what it is. All this adds up to a lot of inconvenience.
- this game is like a poor man’s LA Noir
- there are small things like your suits getting dirty. Not cleaning it will cause flies to fly around your body. You also need to eat food and sleep. It makes for a realistic experience I guess, but overall these things just felt like unnecessary tasks that I needed to do completely unrelated to the story.
- not being able to cancel your reload when a monster is closing in on you is just poor design.
- there's a lot of extra medals you can get which translates into money. But there is so much money can you get, that there is no points in going out of your way and collecting these medals.
- travelling around the town to get to missions becomes very tedious because of the lack of navigation and poor driving simulation.
- the puzzles are extremely simple and shallow. A lot of it revolves around mundane tasks which requires no thinking.
- there are a lot of auto scroll sequences that are dragged on for way too long. Either you're following a dog leading you somewhere, or you're following an apparition, both involves you simply holding forwards and nothing else. Add this to the mundane driving, it makes the game play very boring.