Recent reviews by Xbob42

A bit spookier but much easier than the first game. The first had many subtle anomalies that, if you weren't super perceptive, could leave you wondering why you got reset. It could start making you paranoid and have you double-checking the entire area.

This one's got a lot more obvious horror anomalies, that you couldn't miss if you tried, and a few are more about figuring out how to continue past them without dying. It's a fun mechanical switch-up, but I feel like there weren't enough subtle ones to go along with them.

Also I feel like there's not enough anomalies in general. I get that it's only $4 USD, but I'd happily pay more for several times more anomalies. They don't all have to be big special effects, and in fact as you can tell from my review, I'd prefer a lot more that were just small creepy things instead. The setting of a train is perfect for them.

The rules are also a bit more difficult to suss out. The first game told you straight up what to do, this one actually misled me a bit due to a sign that is only relevant for the car it is in. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it was a speed bump in learning, which is fine I suppose. So the rules were a bit harder to learn, but the actual game once you understand them is much easier.

All in all, I prefer the first game, both mechanically and in terms of anomalies, but I still enjoyed this and hope we get more. It's a fun concept for bite-sized horror. Oh, and the game isn't almost 2.5 hours long, I spent at least half of that AFK. It's more likely to give you about an hour or so of entertainment.

I never played the original, and I'm surprised at how well this has aged. Obviously it's been somewhat modernized, but looking at original footage, it seems mostly just user interface stuff, all the actual game and map design appears identical. It plays really well, and is actually very compelling to explore. I don't know how much else I have to say, it's just really good, and I'm glad I finally got a chance to play it. I hope they do System Shock 2 as well, as that's another classic I've missed out on and I trust this studio to get it right!

A great game that did well, time to shut down the studio and give 343 two hundred more chances.

A great game that's been fun to play for the short amount of time I've actually got to play it. Runs super smooth, supports high frame rates and ultra widescreen, all that good stuff. Happy to see that Sony listened and people weren't just farting into the wind.

Fun little light horror-themed spot the difference. Just pay attention and turn around when you spot anything that doesn't fit. Some things are very obvious, and some are very subtle. I like the concept, would be happy to buy a longer version with different stages and more anomalies.

Low effort port from a low effort studio. 7 major patches and it still runs terribly no matter the system. If anyone tells you it "runs fine for them," well, don't expect any compelling evidence, because the issues are with the game, not with your system.

It's like Pokemon, but you can fuse all of the monsters together. Like, all of 'em. I also think it has much more fun mechanics than Pokemon (I think Pokemon's been stuck in a weird purist gameplay loop for decades and it wasn't that exciting to fight to begin with) and much more fun overworld exploration. And like Pokemon, it has a killer sountrack that gets even better when you fuse.

Buy it already.

Just giving some first impressions. Never played the demo, planned to try it blind and refund if I didn't like it. My main interest is it was the DreadXP guys, and I generally like the stuff they publish/develop.

What I did not expect was basically a sort of... first-person RE4, almost? Kind of. You're not running around helpless, which I think is a good thing. You've got at least a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. I'm not sure if you get more. You've got an RE4 tetris-style inventory (that you access in real-time, no pause!) and you're solving puzzles, putting emblems together, shooting baddies, that kind of thing.

I'm still early on, so again, first impressions. But the controls even on a controller are super responsive and snappy, you've even got a dedicated 180 button. You're collecting keys with symbols to doors with those symbols, there's save rooms with save room music, all that good stuff.

Game runs buttery smooth, and runs well even on a Steam Deck, no stutters either way. (The intro seemed to be a bit iffy on the Steam Deck as it wanted to skip the opening scene, but after using the latest GE Proton it's all normal) All menus and everything work as they should on a controller or a keyboard and mouse.

Guess I have two minor complaints: Strafing is much slower than moving straight forward or back, I guess to make it harder to easily outmaneuver enemies, and most doors actually trigger a load screen. It's a super short one, like maybe 1 second on my SSD, so not a big deal, but worth noting, might be longer on a mechanical drive.

No idea how long the game is, but I do like that on survival mode you have to use currency you find in-game to save. On normal it autosaves so either playstyle is covered.

I'll probably update this once I have more time, I just wanted to signal that this seems to be a quality title and not just another "ooo the enemy chases you as you helplessly walk through hallways" kind of deal. Those can be fun but there's been far too many lately in my opinion.

Just a super quick and dirty basic tech overview for things that I was looking for, not a "review":

- Supports 30, 60, 120, 144 and uncapped FPS with a separate vsync toggle.
- Supports resolutions up to 4k, but does not support ultrawide out of the box, you'll get black bars. Defaults to Borderless, but also has windowed and exclusive fullscreen.
- A decent amount of graphics options, not super impressive but you can make it look significantly better than the Switch version in terms of actual graphical features, not just FPS/resolution, which is what I was worried about, as it looked bad on Switch and ran worse.
- I had zero stutters in the 30 minutes or so I played, which was just me rushing through the beginning which I'd already done to at least get to some combat. Ran buttery smooth the entire time.
- Rebindable controls (Can't remember if Switch had them, but always a welcome addition) + you can swap between Xbox/PS icons
- While it's in an awkward spot, they remembered an exit button! Not too common for console devs to forget this anymore, but it still happens from time to time. In this case, you go to options and hit the start button or its equivalent depending on control scheme.

The game defaults to medium settings, so if you're not on a potato, I recommend cranking those immediately. You can open the options very early on. It also defaults to a 60 FPS cap, so if you want to go higher, be sure to switch that as well. And while this might be more subjective, I found the default camera sensitivity to feel very weird and slow. Increasing the horizontal and vertical camera sensitivity by a single notch made it feel like a normal game.

I wasn't paying too close attention to the cutscenes, but it seemed like some were locked to 30 and might've been pre-rendered videos since they had very low image quality. Not 100% on this though.

Overall, the game feels tremendously more playable than the very compromised Switch version and looks far better to boot. It's not perfect, and I assume someone's working on an ultrawide fix if there isn't already one, but overall I'm pleased.

As someone who has worked as a night security guard on and off for a few years now, I can confirm this is how every night begins and ends.