Games in the genre of horror ("horror" - English.) There is a huge variety. Many players just love it when the developers are scared, so they are constantly looking for new thrills. But what happens if you make a video game, the main character of which is a blind person? When you can not see the source of danger, but can only hear it. How much does this concept fit into the established genre? It is this question that we will try to find the answer to today, and the video game called Perception, released for the PS4, Xbox One and PC, will help us with this. The Deep End Games studio is responsible for the development of this game.
The Deep End Games was founded by the spouses Bill and Amanda Gardner who started working on the Perception game in the basement of their house, free from the upbringing of four children. Earlier they worked on the games of the famous series BioShock in the walls of the studio Irrational Games. Later they were joined by some of their former colleagues from different studios, who put their hand to such hits as Mortal Kombat, Dead Space, Rock Band and other games. In 2015, they launched a fund-raising campaign to raise funds on the portal Kickstarter, which ended in success. To complete and polish the game, the team took a little more than two years.
The main hero of the game Perception is the blind girl Cassandra "Cassie" Thornton. For several months she sees terrible nightmares, in which she is a mysterious mansion Echo Bluff in the port town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The estate with a centuries-old history often appears in local urban legends, and the inhabitants of Gloucester try to avoid it. It is rumored that Echo Bluff is inhabited by ghosts, and several generations of the dynasty residing in it constantly faced inexplicable deaths and misfortunes. To once and for all get rid of nightmarish visions, Cassie decides to face her fears face to face and explore the abandoned mansion personally.
The concept of the game is reminiscent of the adventure games Gone Home, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch and similar "walking simulators", when the plot is served in small portions as the game locations are explored. The developers do not hide that they took inspiration in the games Fatal Frame, Silent Hill 2, as well as in the cult films "Shine", "Ring", "Something" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". Since Cassie is completely blind, she has to use her cane, tapping on the surfaces around her and creating sound waves. The reflections of these sound waves form a picture of the surrounding world. Echolocation is often found in wildlife, for example, in bats, shrews, dolphins and other animals. Something similar we also saw in the movie "Daredevil" with Ben Affleck and in the video game Beyond Eyes, about which I told you a couple of years ago.
Once inside the mansion, Cassie realizes that apart from her there is something else. Something that is almost impossible to explain from a rational point of view. Perhaps the legends of the ghosts of the old mansion really do not lie? The girl hears voices coming from the walls, faces supernatural phenomena, but, despite her horror, continues to unravel the ball of Echo Bluff secrets and solve the riddles of his past. In the study of the mansion helps her smartphone, which built in the application Delphi. Once you stumble upon text documents or tablets, they can be photographed, after which a special algorithm will recognize the text and read it aloud. In cases where you need to study photographs or pictures, Cassie's help comes to the online community "Friends' Eyes": the girl contacts with the operator-volunteers who, looking at the outside world through the camera of her smartphone, describe in their own words what they see.
Since childhood Cassie has a rare gift. She can activate the "sixth sense" and knows exactly which direction to go in order to achieve her goal. This integrated in the main heroine navigation system is activated by a separate button on the gamepad and will not allow you to get lost in the world of eternal darkness. Do not expect that the cane for the blind will help you out constantly. After all, the more often and more loudly you will knock it, the faster you will attract the attention of the otherworldly entities that inhabit the mansion. And if they open the hunt for you, you'll have to run frantically and seek shelter, for example, climb into a closet, a laundry basket or hide behind curtains. I was especially scared when I was in a room full of bubble wrap film. Try to walk through such a room without making noise and not drawing attention to yourself.
The "sixth sense" of Cass's superpower is not limited. She is able to touch special subjects that were in her dreams, and how to be carried to the distant past. At the same time, when the owners of these objects lived in the mansion. Together with them, she will experience their tragedies, gradually moving towards an understanding of what really happened in Echo Bluff centuries ago. Occasionally, Cass will encounter puzzles, for example, you need to select the code to the safe, but the complexity of them is simply ridiculous, and such riddles will not often occur. It's a pity. By the way, before the game starts you will be offered to choose one of the modes: "Silent Night" - when the main character will remain silent, without disturbing your thoughts at the expense of events around you, and "Talkative Cassie" - in this mode the girl actively discusses everything with than collides.
The main problem with Perception is its monotony. At first you are very interested in seeing a world woven from sounds. Waves that spread from the cane and your own steps, an unusual black-and-blue palette, the need to get used to your position and learn to navigate in space in an unusual way - all this really carries away. But only at first. After about an hour you realize that the game repeats the same tricks again and again. You have to look for open doors time and again to get to the next room, read the documents found and listen to audio recordings, hide from ghosts and solve simple puzzles. There is an acute shortage of budget, because the developers collected at Kickstarter only 165 000 dollars, and also invested in Perception some amount from their own pockets. In any case, before us is not an AAA game, but an extremely unusual independent project from a small team of enthusiasts.
Visually, the game looks nice, but it can hardly surprise you. The almost complete absence of textures is completely justified, but the three-dimensional models are angular, and the animation in places leaves much to be desired. I also noticed the crooked Russian subtitles, which are replaced from time to time by English phrases, because of what on the screen we see porridge from two languages. But in terms of sound design Perception above all praise. Greatly written and read by the actors, the dialogs make the characters feel empathy, and the sound atmosphere is woven so delicately that you completely immerse yourself in what is happening on the screen and begin to associate yourself with a blind protagonist.
Pros:
- Unusual game mechanics, using the principle of echolocation.
- An interesting story told in a very original way.
- Excellent voice acting characters and incredibly atmospheric sound.
- The game process keeps in constant tension.
Minuses:
- From a graphic point of view, the game does not stand out as anything special.
- Sometimes the gameplay seems too monotonous.
- The puzzles are too simple and infrequent.
- Serious problems with Russian subtitles.
Perception - an unusual horror, trying to bring to the genre something new and original. The budget of the project, of course, does not do him good. For all the originality of gameplay mechanics, the game sometimes lacks the entertainment and variety, because of what the player can elementary start to yawn. Perception is not so much frightening as it keeps in constant tension, and does it simply masterfully. The studio The Deep End Games got a strong game, which you can go if you want in three or four hours, but to which you hardly want to return after some time. Nevertheless, Perception is very interesting from the plot side and tells a truly grown-up and fascinating story for those who know how to listen carefully. I put the game 7 points out of 10 .
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