A very, very good game but one that falls short of greatness for a few reasons. But before I go into the negatives, lets me cover what I feel are the best aspects of this game. For starters, the story is top-notch and it's the main reason this game is so good. The story carries this game, and altho it starts slow, soon you will be wanting to get thru chapter after chapter to see what happens next. Another shining aspect of this game is the sound. Play this game with the lights off and the sound up and you'll be sitting on the edge of your seat while holding the controller. The sound really sets the mood and adds so much to the overall "creepy/erie" atmosphere. Lastly, one of the hooks of this game are the sanity affects. Not only do you have health and magic meters, your sanity can also drop causing weird and unexplainable things to happen to your character and to yourself as you play. Without giving away any spoilers, lets just say this is one of the freshest and most original things to appear in a videogame in a while.
Now that I coverd the positives, let me go over the negatives. First, altho this in no way affects gameplay, the graphics for this next-gen game definitely show it's N64 roots. Not that it's an ugly game, but for a 2nd party developer who's privy to dev kits more so than say a 3rd party developer, this game doesn't push the Cube to it's limits like it should. The second reason it falls short of greatness is the slighly repetative & linear gameplay. There are only a handful of levels, of which you play thru different times with different characters. By the ninth chapter I began to realize that I'm fighting off the same exact enemies, in the same exact manner, in a level I was in four chapters ago. It's not a major downfall tho, just more of a "this is no longer fresh" feeling. The last reason I feel it's short of greatness is the sanity affects. Yes, the same sanity affects that I listed as a positive, I also listed as a negative. Why? Because eventho the sanity affects are sometimes fresh, original, spooky, odd, bizarre, weird, frightening and downright "WTF just happened?!?", once you've experience each one for the first time the novelty wears off. Not only that, once you're use to when and where the sanity affects usually happen, you soon become ammune to them.
So in summary, despite the negatives I listed above, its still a very well made game and a great experience. So any fans of adventure, story-driven or survivor-horror games should definitely try out this.
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