It is often incredibly difficult to see the environment around you in the game’s more poorly lit areas. It is an exceptionally dark game – and I don’t mean the subject matter. However, this brings me to my main problem with Paradise Lost, although I’d like to think it’s one that can be rectified post-launch. It all adds a little dash of much-needed flavour. Whilst some of it seems mainly pointless and interactive for the sake of it (I’d personally have been happy for a single button press to be required to open doors and drawers), some of what you’ll find seems a little more poignant or even sinister, depending on your perspective – take, for example, the button in an office that reveals a secret room where the inference is that secret musical performances have been taking place, even if it isn’t clear that both parties were happy with this arrangement. There’s plenty to interact with in Paradise Lost, with things to pick up and look at that act as the game’s attempts at environmental storytelling. I’m not suggesting for a second that you should be able to sprint around like a Pilot from Titanfall, but given the game does provide for some light exploration off the beaten path, a little more spring in the step would have been appreciated at times. Even for a walking simulator, the pace of movement can most generously called ponderous, but – more often than not – felt glacial, particularly when navigating some of the bunker’s longer or larger areas. As such, it’s a pretty sobering affair throughout.Īs for how the game plays, Paradise Lost presents something of a mixed bag here. This is made all the bleaker when you know things like this likely happened in real life. As you might expect, given it’s a bunker previously occupied by one of the most evil factions the world has ever seen, most of the details you’ll find are truly horrifying in nature. I’ll stop short of spoiling any of the major story elements of Paradise Lost, but what I can is that – in reading and listening – you’ll also find some of the blanks filled in with regards to what was happening in that bunker. These answers are more often than not presented to you through exposition – namely the conversations you have with that mysterious voice or the audio logs you happen across – or the written word, which you’ll find on memos, notes and torn-out book pages dotted around the environment. For instance, who is the mysterious disembodied voice guiding you along the way? Or what was your mother hiding from you about your father? Coming across a spookily abandoned Nazi bunker, Szymon quickly realises there are not just answers, but a lot of new questions as well. So far, so standard, but the twist here is that the year is 1980, and we’re in an alternate history where the Nazis didn’t lose World War II. You play as Szymon, a young boy in search of answers in a frozen post-apocalyptic wasteland. However, few walking simulators have had a premise that intrigued me quite as much as Paradise Lost, a post-apocalyptic mystery from developers PolyAmorous. Yet, some of the flagships titles in the genre – the likes of Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture – have left me cold. I also maintain soft spots for the likes of Virginia and Gone Home. What Remains Of Edith Finch might have a shout for top 20. I’d tell you all day long that Firewatch is a top 5 game of all-time. I have something of a funny love-hate relationship with walking simulators.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |