Blair Witch

 

I had seen the original Blair Witch film many years ago and it stuck in my head as a unique idea, the found footage, first person perspective horror. That's basically where all these new games are getting their inspiration from, these horror games where you have a video recorder and its in first person, that idea originated in the first Blair Witch movie.

In this game it loosely follows the ideas of the movie. You go into the forest to find a missing child, thats where the game starts. There is a search party and youre a part of it, you've got a cell phone that you can pull out anytime, which has all sorts of settings on it you can press like phonebook, text messages, you can even play cell phone games and change your ringtone which is pointless, but it adds to the immersion. So you're in the forest, you get cell phone calls from the Sheriff who leads the search party, you also call your wife a lot to relay how things are going as you search around the woods finding clues. However theres one drastically important detail - You also have your pet dog Bullet with you for almost the entire game. Unlike other games that have quest markers, or quest logs, or arrows telling you where to go, in this game the dog pretty much acts as the quest log/guide. You have this dog that follows you around, or frequently will keep barking for your attention and then tells you where to go and leads you to progress. You can press a button to pull up a radial menu to give the dog different commands like 'Seek' to try to find objects or progress, you can Pet him which apparently influences the ending in some way, and a few other things like that. This dog becomes integral to the identity of this game, and becomes one of the main focus of the narrative. There's a lot of voice acting and you constantly talk to your dog, and theres even a mechanic where if you get seperated from the dog for too long then you start to go insane from isolation or something.

So you're initially just wandering around the forest in the daylight, looking for clues, but soon you find yourself a VHS camera and then you go around finding tapes to put into it. These tapes reveal creepy things happening in the vicinity, and they even have this mechanic where you play/pause the tapes at certain times and it unlocks progress in the game world. I thought this mechanic would suck at first, and be confusing to figure out where to pause, but it wasnt too bad and you don't have to do it too often.

Quickly things turn weird, you start to get all sorts of flashbacks from some kind of middle east war, hinting that you were a soldier and you have PTSD or something, you get yourself into all sorts of surreal situations such as this part where you have to turn on car lights and you can listen to the radio and the people on radio are hinting something isnt quite right, you come across a lot of these twisted stick figurines which scare your dog, you can destroy them. The atmosphere is very engrossing and immersive, the daylight quickly turns to night and you spend most of the rest of the game blindly wandering around in the forest, with only your dog for support. You start to feel a sense of bonding with this dog too, and dont want anything bad to happen, cause the animation/sound effects/dog reactions are very well done.


The writing at times can be a little stupid, for example your main character is hell-bent on staying in this forest and finding the lost child, he wants to be seen as a hero or something, I don't know. Because multiple times you have cellphone reception and you can simply call 911 to let them you you've discovered some insane psychopath lurking in the woods and thats why the kids gone missing, but you dont. You call your wife multiple times and shes telling you to come home, but you wont. Despite having witnessed so much crazy shit, why wouldnt you just call for backup? Not sure if I missed something but it didnt really make sense.

As the game progresses you come across a few threats such as these weird grass monsters which are just like a blowing ball of grass that instantly kill you, they were kinda stupid but they dont last long. You get into segments like the movie where you get trapped in a loop unless you go a certain direction, and you have to stop and listen and follow your dogs barking, then other times you have these super fast monsters that stalk you in the woods that you can shine your flashlight on to stop them from attacking you, but other than that theres not really all that many threats or monsters in the game, only a few times you encounter anything threatening. The game isn't much viseral threatening horror, but a slow buildup of tension and suspense with atmosphere and immersion, making you feel like youre actually lost in the woods and something sinister is taking place.

It's a short game, and theres not all that much to say, the bulk of it is walking around in the forest with your flashlight (which has infinite batteries) so theres nothing to collect really, a few times I was annoyed by how stupid and specific points of progress were, for example one point I saw an object under a wall which I should easily be able to crawl under and grab, but no - you have to stand at a specific point outside a window then an icon of a dog pops up and you tell your dog to get it for you. The game could have used a bit more intense horror segments, as much of it really is just walking around doing nothing basically. The game definitely has a ton of elements of Psychological Horror where things keep messing your mind and youre not sure if its real or not, such as getting fake phone calls / text messages from people, getting texts saying "look up" , stuff like that. Other times you get weird flashbacks and start talking to yourself like youre someone else, but really I think the highlight of the game is the last hour or so, when you find the old house and go inside which turns into this long looping endless maze of psychological terror, getting all sorts of crazy flashbacks and visions, having to look at the night vision on your camera to avoid monsters looking at signs on the floor, getting taunted by the witch to do certain things youre not sure if you should do or not. This segment is a long, drawn out oppressive trial of nonstop horror I thought it was pretty well done. Yeah maybe its a bit too long, but I can see the purpose of that too, trying to make you feel drained and lost, like the films a key point of the plot is that youre stuck in a loop and need to get out.

The thing that I'm undecidied on if I like or not, is that the game purposefully misleads you at multiple parts. Its virtually impossible that anyone will get the Good ending on first playthrough, because in order to do so, you have to somehow know to NOT destroy any of the stick totems, NOT shine your flashlight at any monsters, stuff like that. And the whole game youre basically being told to do these things, by the dog being afraid of the totems, by shining the light at the monsters working, etc. There is also another segment where your dog gets injured, and for 10 minutes straight youre just stuck in a loop carrying him, seemingly not making any progress, even with writing all over the walls to "Let dying dogs lie' the game TELLING you to just drop the dog, but actually if you just keep walking around in a loop for 10 mins straight you pass out and the dog survives. Luckily I just kept walking, but yeah the devs/game is purposefully trying to set you up for failure.

Of course I got the bad ending, like everyone else the first time around, where you turn into Carver, the bad guy, but atleast my dog survived. Yeah the ending stuff is weird because like I said no one is getting good ending first try, but also you can find a battery at the end of the game, but the only way to use it is to do another playthrough and use it in the bunker at the beginning of the game. Like what? how are you supposed to know that? I guess the devs really want the game to be similar to the sprit of the movie where you really are stuck in a loop replaying the same thing over and over, but I don't know i dont wanna actually play the game half a dozen times, they could have done this differently. 

The games graphics are presentation are mostly stunning, thats the thing about these 'walking simulator games' - a large part of why they work is because they have top notch graphics that really pull you into the world and make you feel like youre inside the game world. Its like one step away from VR experience. The sounds, visuals, especially playing in the dark, all help to rope you in. Its got some amazing shaders and shadow technology, and the way the trees wrap around you does make you feel dazzled and lost in the forest to some unknown threat.

Thats another thing, when you do die in this game, its not like you get a big GAME OVER screen and have to reload and wait for 40 seconds, like some other games (beast inside..) - Nope, when you die in this game, you kinda just instantly wake up a small distance away from where you were. I actually like this, because it doesn't really take you out of the immersion and feel too gamey. You sorta feel like youre still in the game world, but just the ghost is fucking with you. In these kind of horror games, dying over and over and watching 'game overs' and loading screens actually takes away the horror for me, I lose suspense, I lose the tension, I lose fear. It starts to feel like a stupid arcade game, but Blair Witch doesn't do this -it keeps you in the immersion, doesn't rip you away to see a loading screen or tell you game over, it keeps you immersed and treats death as yet another psychological phenomenon.

Overall I actually like that its a short game, about 4-5 hours, you can beat it in a session or two, and its packed full of atmosphere and good voice acting, the dog mechanic is unique and immersive because instead of quest markers you have this dog that helps you, but yeah I think there could have been more in your face horror, and maybe some of the monsters arent really true to Blair Witch, they don't look all that terrifying really. I know the movie doesn't really have any monsters, does it? But still I think they could have come up with something better than Leaf monster and some humanoid thing in the bushes. The being forced into bad ending thing is offputting, I'm not sure what I think about that, its kinda funny that the devs troll you like that, but also feels kinda shitty knowing there was no possible way I could have gotten the good ending 1st time around

7/10