Observer (2017)

Lately, I've seen movies, tv shows and video games being described as 'cyberpunk' just because its futuristic and has some neon billboards.

I feel like the themes of works like Neuromancer, Blade Runner, Deus Ex and Ghost in the Shell are getting lost.

Observer is not a great game, but is one who really uses well its 'cyberpunk' themes and aesthetics.

I wrote about this in GamerFocus. Its in spanish, but I hope you'll like it.

Overall I did like this BUT...

I came in with pretty high expectations. The screens alone look SICK. The idea of a memory detective who probes into people's thoughts sounds aAWESOPME and scratches that itch i've had since playing SYNDICATE to fuck with people implant's. And this game does deliver. But This game has some rough edges at times. In the end it's a very unique and interesting experience that is a cut above most of the walking sims i've played. It's tone is perfect and it has a nice orchestral score that is built to resemble Vangelis. Many aspects of the game are constant nods to Blade Runner and the game encourages exploration and has side quests. For a walking sim it's quite a bit of game (though that might not be enough for everyone)

Unfortunately, this game has a lot of weird obtuse puzzles and janky bugs that crop up at times that can break immersion and dont really add much to the experience. Nothing major, just enough to grind one's gears (that's right, you have gears!)

Things like locked doors that dont open or weird physics puzzles or switches. Or the good old fashioned crap they did in blair witch where you have to find something in an environment before you move on (not much of that thank god)

(Basically they couldn't make a psych horror game without a few puzzles to put you into a state of psych horror yourself)

A lot of the game is very ad hoc and based on side quests as you wander around in an apartment complex trying to uncover evidence (and figure out what's going on) in a serial killer's murder spree, however much of the game is actually collecting 'collectible cards' playing a retro game on lap top, and talking/questioning random NPCs through their doors on voice speaker. A lot of these extras are nice but also feel like completely pointless filler. It's nice that you can explore this game but very much like blober's other games, you can literally 'run' through the game rather than really explore nooks and crannies and it's at times honestly quite tempting to do it.

One of the things I really liked about this game was the way that you, as a detective who explores 'memories' and experiences of others often experiences weird glitches and artifacts in those memories. I felt it was actually really well depicted. You might open a cabinet only to see a blank void or open a doorwa y that goes to nowhere. Or look at something and it phases in and out of existence. Clearly, to anyone who has played Layers of Fear this is par for the course, but I found this a really interesting way to depict memories. Both in the sense that memory is generally never really well written and that you as an 'observer' might be focusing on something the original experiencer didn't really 'take in' or fixate on, and secondly it raises the question of what another party might experience of another's memories. Many things might just not translate so clearly.

The game (when it goes into memory exploration mode) tends to have this very glitchy aesthetic and tends to go very very heady handed and over the top with the cyber aesthetic at all other times. Everything glows like it's out of tron when it's not fuzzing up on you. Just because of this alone makes it a really cool game to play on a VR headset.

Despite some of it's shortfalls i give it some decent stars because of it's cool factor, the fact it's pushing some new stuff, and because it kicks Somas' ass and delivers a far better story line and more believable premise (but touches on some of the same concepts, slightly) It's also a continued improvement from Blober.

In the end it's somewhat mixed quality but it's still pretty much a borderline must play if you like this genre (or Blade Runner/cyberpunk) Also, it's not that scary. It tries to be but isn't really. There are however quite a few drawers to open.

Observer is a truly terrifying game that taps into familiar cyberpunk territory and weaves it with horrific nightmares that make it quite the bite.

Taking place in a scummy apartment, you play a police officer who can hack into brain implants to relive their dreams and memories to piece together what happened. In a similar vein to Condemned, you can analyze evidence from crime scenes and come to a conclusion about what you've seen. Most of it just leads up into the hacking, but vision implants for bio-readings (usually blood) and detecting important mechanical parts such as computers and implants come in handy.

Once inside someone's mind, things take a real turn. Twisting corridors, stealthing away from vicious monsters, and trying out puzzles with a strange dream logic that is further heightened by moments of terror. Whether it's from a jump scare here and there or absolutely horrifying and unnerving imagery, the dreams piece together a much more interesting narrative on top of the casually cyberpunk setting. The sound design is top notch and Rutger Hauer's familiar voice adds a classy flavor to an indie production.

Observer is short but wonderfully shocking - like a lot of games on an indie budget, it crafts an intense experience in a few hours that must be seen to be believed.

LIT ON THE SPOT - REVIEW

Observer is a first person cyberpunk game with a horror twist: its protagonist can hack people’s minds, but they are nightmare inducing places. Although initially interesting, Observer is a game that quickly loses its appeal: its main horror scenes drag on for too long, repeating the same tricks over and over, while its narrative is terribly structured, struggling to find a theme to focus on until the climax.

The game’s protagonist is a Polish police detective called Daniel Lazarski – played by Blade Runner’s Rutger Hauer – who, after receiving a mysterious call from his son Adam, goes to his tenement building to find out what is happening. There, instead of his son, the detective encounters a trail of dead bodies that will mark the beginning of a sinister investigation.

Observer starts with a direct nod to Blade Runner by opening with a description of its setting in scrolling text: “The year is 2084. If they told me what the world would become, I would not have believed them. First, there was the nanophage. The disease of transition. A digital plague that swept across the land, killing thousands upon thousands of augmented souls. A heavy cost for meddling with our minds and bodies.”

This is a cyberpunk world, where giant corporations rule with an iron fist and technological implants function more like a curse than a blessing. Rooms are cluttered with cables and screens, making for ugly, claustrophobic environments, while the augmentations look like scars, monstrifying people’s bodies. Lazarski is an Observer: a detective that can hack people’s minds to find information about them, although the actual process of going through their memories is a digital nightmare.

These scenes are the game’s main set pieces. When Lazarski is inside someone’s mind, nothing is straightforward. The environments glitch constantly, changing without warning, while people suddenly appear as shadows and objects move abruptly, creating some jump scares. The soundscape reinforces the harrowing atmosphere, with loud static noises and piercing cries for help.

Calling these scenes “interrogations”, as the detective does, is a bit of a push: they are presented more like a severe cybernetic bad trip than anything else. The suspect’s memories appear out of chronological order, forcing the player to connect the pieces, and Lazarski’s own memories and fears can come into the mix, fusing with the chaos without warning.

Although frightening at first, these moments eventually overstay their welcome, stretching forever. One can accuse Observer of going too far, especially when things don’t work: in a certain “interrogation” Lazarski is trapped inside a house, where everything is too dark, player’s view is being constantly obstructed by glitches, the doors are banging and there is an excruciating sound of a baby crying, which increases and decreases without a noticeable pattern. After half an hour of being immersed in this agony the player can find out that the screen-device they needed to proceed actually disappeared when it was not supposed to. In other words, that amidst all those glitches and bugs, they came across an actual real one and, since there is no way of telling the difference, they lost valuable time wandering around in that agonizing place – and, which is worse, that also means they have to restart and suffer through everything again.

Despite that, the main problem of these interrogations is that they are not that important for the narrative. They make playing Observer a frightening experience, reinforcing the idea that technology is dangerous, but they do just that. Since, for the most part, they don’t move the story forward, the game eventually starts to fell padded with them. There is a bunch of stuff and noise and then the detective finally discovers the number he was looking for or has a glimpse of the place he has to go next.

There is a lot of repetition in the devices used – there is a lot of shadow people and loud sounds coming out of nowhere to cause jump scares – and only a single theme being developed: there is a bit of interesting imagery throughout the scenes – such as a serpent made of cables – but they all mean the same thing: technology is evil. Therefore, the problem is that, in the end, the bulk of Observer is just a bunch of random hallucinogenic scenes.

This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that the climax has little to do with what preceded it. Suddenly, the central discussion becomes centered on artificial intelligence and the possibility of having a digital self, and the whole investigation – alongside with the murderer and the killings – is sidelined as collateral. What is worse is that the whole thing about the nanophage and the great evil corporation also doesn’t matter in the slightest. The ending, then, becomes greatly disconnected from what came before. The only thing that links everything that happens is Lazarski’s notion that technology is evil and that human bodies are sacred and should not be tampered with – it’s not random the fact that he discovers that certain augmentations are being implanted in a tattoo parlor –, but that only seems to be reinforced by everything that is happening now: there is little conflict in the story, since Lazarski is being constantly proven right, despite his son’s claims of the contrary.

If the Observer’s core gameplay and narrative are problematic, the same cannot be said about its art direction. In the tattoo parlor, for example, you can spot a digital painting on the walls of renaissance men looking astonished at an autopsy, but the man being opened up has mechanical pieces inside him. In other moments, the game goes full Orwellian, with eyes appearing on screens to symbolize constant surveillance (Lazarski’s son even tells him he’s not in control). And the tenement building feels appropriately deteriorated, with giant holes in the walls, conspiratorial graffiti everywhere, and a lot of cables, screens and litter cluttering each room. It’s a pity, then, that the rest of the game doesn’t match its art direction in quality.

Observer is a game that gets lost in its own premise. It presents an agonizing look inside the mind of its characters, but fails to make it meaninful, while its own plot also fails to go somewhere cohesive.

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To be fair, I think one of the reasons I was ultimately disappointed with Observer was that my expectations were different. Getting to explore someone's mind sounded like an amazing concept, and that was one of the big reasons I picked up the game. To have those sections mostly be blurry, fragmented walking sims was a huge disappointment.

But mostly, this game had such potential and just never seemed to go anywhere. It has a promising dystopian setting, and very little was done with it. It had an interesting protagonist who was never really developed. And it also has the dubious honor of having the worst save system I've ever experienced.

Layers of Fear won't make my all-time favorite list, but at least it did something with its potential (and had some replay value to boot). This developer's capable of doing better, and I hate that they didn't. Two stars out of my customary four.

The exact same problems I had with Layers of Fear rear their ugly heads here as well; it's just a constant stream of jumpscares wrapped in a cacophony of violent noise and visual diarrhoea. It's the Michael Bay equivalent of a horror game where you just hold forward while stuff jumps at you at every turn (for no reason). There's zero nuance or tension, just the game constantly shouting at the player that THIS IS IN FACT A HORROR GAME ARE YOU SCARED YET CMON ISNT THIS SCARY OH LOOK AT HOW TERRIFYING THIS IS. So you're basically just stuck in a walking simulator where the little control you do have (the act of walking, looking, interacting) is taken away from you every time anything happens. You have no agency whatsoever and it's all tedious as hell; having to wait before the game is done with all of its scripted setpieces before you can finally continue again... It completely zaps away any sense of atmosphere as there aren't any consequences to what you're doing and you know exactly what's waiting for you around every corner as well. The bad maze-like level design isn't helping either especially as it's marred by poor sign posting and buggy interactivity to boot. It's a confusing and exhausting experience. Compare this, or their previous title Layers of Fear, to something like Silent Hill 2 or Resident Evil (or newer titles even like Alien Isolation or SOMA) and it's quite apparent how subpar these titles are in almost every way.

It's a shame as Observer started off really promising with its terrific presentation and horror elements reminding me of the Sanity effects from Eternal Darkness but unfortunately its quickly devolved into a messy and uninteresting slog of a game.

Observer started out great. It has Rutger Hauer, a grimy atmosphere, cybernetics, murder, everything you want from good cyberpunk. Though the area the game takes place in in limited, it's wonderful and creepy and grimy to explore. Glitches are used to maximum effect. Your character can jack into people's minds to see their memories and find out what killed them. There's a lot to like here, but I feel it would have been better off without stealth/run from a monster or die sections forced into it. The mechanics around that weren't fantastic and it often caused me to be more frustrated than anything.

Also, it runs terribly on XB1. It's a good thing I'm not overly bothered by framerates, because they are atrocious. A few crashes too.