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 …
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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.
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