PS4 Review Code Provided by Caustic Reality
The feeling of being trapped inside a house is something that many of us can’t handle, but when that house has a vengeful spirit it is even worse. Putting you at the cause of this vengeful spirit’s existence and forcing you to give it freedom is the horror game Infliction by Caustic Reality. Working with publisher Blowfish Studios, they brought the game to all console platforms with an Extended Cut edition, the latest release being on Nintendo Switch. Inspired by a mix of Layers of Fear and Silent Hills P.T., this game has you facing fear all over a reality that doesn’t exist.
Story
After meeting your own death from a car accident you’re in after fleeing the scene of murdering your wife, you quickly find yourself back in your home with the vengeful spirit of the woman you have just slain. The only chance you have at redemption and escape is to vanquish the spirit. Using the instructions from one of your now-past life’s occult books, you set out to free the spirit of the woman’s whom’s life you just took.
Gameplay
This game is solely based on the player’s exploration. No matter what section of the game you are in or what chapter you are on, your objective will be clear to you and the only way to find yourself making progress is to explore the area you are in. This means interacting with the environment, looking through rooms, observing items, looking for clues, and so on.
Clues are provided to the player in a few interesting ways. The most commonly used one, aside from it being directly written on the wall, is the radio broadcasts. In most chapters, you will find a radio and during what sounds like typical broadcast interlude where they tell of a top story and sometimes plug in an ad, you can hear what it is you are looking for. It also shares a piece of the story as the “top news story” they tell will be about the things your character has gone through and something they mention will be what you're looking for, such as an ad about wedding dresses in the chapter where you need to find clothing worn before God.
Another way you can find clues is also a form of self-defense against the vengeful spirit, and that is with an old fashioned flash camera. You can use this camera to take pictures of areas that will sometimes hold secrets to help you, such as blood trailers or open passageways that are blocked. The flash from the camera can be used to get the ghost to leave if you manage to catch it in time.
Fighting against the spirit is a possibility by using lights, but you can also hide under a variety of locations. The tip to know in this is to see which light switches turn on what lights, but don’t leave the lights on because the ghost appearing will break that light. Instead, remember the light that works and when you are being stalked or chased, turn the light on to banish the spirit for a moment of peace. However, there is no run option so don’t stray too far from safety areas and stay aware of your surroundings.
While you are making your way through each chapter of the game, you can also find memories of your family. These can be a variety of things, from notes to key items. These memories can sometimes help you proceed, but they are mostly around to build the story and background of our character.
Visuals
The environment and scenery were the key elements of the game’s horror. The atmosphere that they build together really puts you on edge and helps drive you to want to press onward. Unfortunately, the character models, including the antagonists, aren’t noteworthy, but they do a decent job of being scary themselves. Overall, it had a great mix of lighting and atmosphere that drove the horror over any other aspect.
Sounds
I like that they had creepy sound effects and would occasionally bring the poltergeist sounds around while you are exploring the house. This really drove the effect of knowing you are being haunted and keeping the creepy factor up. Key music tones to let you know when you are being stalked or when she is simply around helps with the sneaking areas of the game as well.
Replayability
Originally, there was no replayability to this game, but now that they have the Extended Cut there is. Once you beat the game, you unlock a Level Select menu, Bonus section which is a gallery of the art and some behind-the-scenes stuff, and New Game Plus. What New Game Plus offers is a more difficult version of the game with a more active vengeful spirit, reset and changed puzzles, but you keep all the memories you found in the first run.
What Could Be Better
The start of the game had pretty much no scare factors for me at all. I even got concerned that there would be a lot of times that were supposed to be scary that ended up not being scary for me. Unfortunately, this became true. At first, they try to use the environment and threat of a vengeful spirit to scare you, but I didn’t feel that fear rush and chose to explore a bit in the beginning and never ran into the ghost - meaning it was a false fear they were pushing. Then, the chapter ending sequence turned out to be a repetitive set up so once I reached the item I was looking for in this chapter I knew a scare moment was going to happen.
What I found scary in this game was the seemingly random shifting of the rooms and when hallucinations of gore and death would appear the moment I walk into a room. What made them scary was how unexpected they were. Having a scripted and expected scare moment at the end of each chapter doesn’t give off a scare effect. Now, I do understand that this is done for story reasoning, but there are ways to use this as a scare maneuver, such as giving false hope that the player can simply head back.
Another issue I had was with the death animations themselves. Getting caught by the ghost a few times was creepy, but there were a few animations that just pulled away from the fear and leaned on the side of silly. I like that they tried to add a variety of them, but none should come off as a joke with this type of game.
Conclusion
Infliction: Extended Cut is a good horror game that has an excellent atmosphere! I enjoyed playing through the game and would definitely recommend it to horror fans as well. However, I would like to see better animations in future titles from this developer and possibly better character models themselves. Fixing those two things would give this game nearly no downside.
