Better than its reputation
Survival horror is a dying genre, for some reason game developers have decided that brain dead (pardon the pun) action can compensate for a lack of depth, atmosphere and emotion (i'm looking at you Resident Evil 5).
I'm not saying this game has it all, but it manages to mix survival horror with a decent storyline and a pretty effective atmosphere. There is the feeling that the developers tried to mix too much in - survival horror with transversal puzzles, an interactive inventory system that feels a bit clunky, open world sections, timed driving sections, set piece battles, puzzle solving, fire-based armed and hand-to-hand combat system – it gets quite overwhelming at times.
For the most part these elements work well. The armed combat controls are a bit strenuous – it takes a fair amount of effort to get your character to swing a melee attack in the correct direction – and at certain parts you have no access to fire or flammable items. Also later on there’s a section that for me felt tacked on to me to lengthen the game.
Overall if you like survival horror games, give this a go, you won’t love ALL of it, but there should be just enough to keep you going to the end.
