Tormented Souls

It's a eight out of ten in my heart but is a bit too rough around the edges and slightly derivative to be called truly great. But the pieces of a really good, almost great, survival horror are all in place; macabre enemy design, unfolding puzzle box map layout with a few key central areas, ammo and especially health conservation, and visual and audio atmosphere for days. A lot of games that use the old school camera system don't understand why it was used, but Tormented Souls uses it to hide clues and monsters just out of the reach of the player, to scare them while forcing them to pay attention, and it does the Silent Hill thing of a lot of fun camera shots too. While there's no inventory management, as you can hold as much as you need to, every other part of the experience is here, occasionally to its detriment.

I love survival horror, but I'm glad the era of the pixel hunt is mostly over. But Tormented Souls cannot help itself, and too often I was hunting for keys I barely missed, and without a real map system, especially in the last third of the game, the experience can drag. The developers also really upped the ante when it came to puzzle difficulty. I'd rather be on the side of defending the puzzles than critiquing them, but too many are still oblique, obtuse, or straight up require an abstract solution you have to think of yourself, rather than one the game gives you, sometimes requiring a sort of real world knowledge you might not possess off-hand. This is saved by excellent tactile interaction with the game world no doubt inspired by Resi 7; this is a game that demands but also rewards concentration. For all the game design's faults, I was totally immersed in Wildberger Hospital the entire time, owing to an immaculate level of visual detail in the environments, though character animations look dodgy, and surprisingly, one of the best horror soundtracks in recent memory.

Though this game also reminded me there were a lot of bad survival horrors back in the day too, and something that always vexed me was so many of these games rely entirely on text and audio logs but have terrible, or even just shallow, stories. Tormented Souls fares a little better with its unfolding mystery that you can piece together through the journals before the main character does, and it's a pretty fucked up and tragic tale, but without an extra edge of symbolism, emotion, or thematic resonance, even other horror revival efforts are running circles around it. But it's also not as dumb as Deep Fear or Countdown: Vampires, and the stilted, overly warm voiceovers are juuuuuust corny enough to fit in with the format. I kind of loved my time with this, but it also has some serious issues. Easy to recommend for old-school horror fans, but Signalis is still the king.

A mix between Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Does nothing really new but does it good enough.

Pretty decent survival horror with amazing atmosphere, music and some interesting puzzles. Don't feel bad for looking at a guide tho, some of them are really not that straightforward and since you don't have a map that tells you if you cleaned a room or not you also might miss some key items sometimes. And last section of the game doesn't even have one, so be ready to rely only on your sense of direction.

I really liked the story too, nothing really mindblowing or exceptional but good enough to keep you interested by reading the various journal entries you find and assembling the events for yourself.

Some flaws, tho : voice acting is absolutely horrendous. It's not "funny bad" or "charming bad" like in old survivor horrors, it's just... bad. Some lines are delivered like the actress had no real direction at all. Also doesn't help that the character we're playing seems so fucking oblivious to what is going on... As the player you find and read the journal entries but it's like your character doesn't acknowledge them and is still surprised at some stuff that you already put together yourself and it can be quite irritating sometimes.

The game uses a limited save system where you have to find tapes to save your game. Really not a fan of this myself but you get enough of them so it never really is a problem (except if you can't play long sessions, it can then be quite bothersome)

(Also the "invincible" enemy mentioned in the other review is one of the lamest I've ever seen in a game like this. Since you get an audio clue when you go into a room where he is, you can just directly go out of the room and go in again and he won't be here anymore...)

Overall a pretty good entry in the genre if you liked old-school survival-horrors.

Pretty competent throwback to the era of fixed-camera perspective horror games from the late 90s/early 00s. If you've played stuff like the original Resident Evil or ObsCure, you pretty much know what you can expect to get, for better or worse.

I think its biggest true flaw is the lack of a convenient map system, like the "big" hospital area you spend 70% of the game has one but in the later areas that are a bunch of underground snake-y tunnels it gets really confusing where you're going since all of the rooms look the same. That and a later "invincible" enemy that shows up that ends up just being an irritating obstacle when it spawns are about the only things I can think of that really bring the experience down. Oh, and the voice acting's pretty amateurish and bad, but the hamminess adds to the charm, I think.

Other than that, it really is something that's well worth the look if you enjoyed 2019's Song of Horror, especially for the price point.