Tag: True Fear

One thing I love about the Nin­ten­do E‑shop is that it’s not plagued by reviews, so you choose and buy games based mere­ly off of your own opin­ion. It’s the best way for indie games and most games to make it. Unjad­ed deci­sions. How­ev­er, that means you always run the risk of buy­ing a bad game.

True Fear Forsaken Souls: Part 1

Rat­ing: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Price: $9.99 Nin­ten­do E‑shop, also avail­able for mobile and Steam

While search­ing for games to try, I found the demo for this game. I love escape and puz­zle games over­all and this seemed awe­some, though I was hes­i­tant on the hor­ror part of it. You have the choice of doing escape style puz­zles or find the items for por­tions of the games. I went with escape (it defaults to this). The hor­ror por­tions were most­ly cheap jump-scares, but the sto­ry it paint­ed def­i­nite­ly held on to the creepy, Res­i­dent Evil‑y vibe. So while I was­n’t hor­ri­bly afraid, I was kept mild-mod­er­ate­ly creeped out dur­ing the play. Many of the steps seemed unnec­es­sary, but it pro­gressed the sto­ry with var­ied puz­zles and the casu­al mode I played on was very gen­er­ous with hints. It sup­ports touch or cur­sor play which his awe­some because I’d switch back and forth between the two. Creepy fac­tor increased towards the end and it kept a nice­ly detailed diary with clues and such to help out. Per­haps it’s the lim­i­ta­tions of the pro­gram­ming, but the con­stant appear­ance of the pro­tag­o­nist’s 3D-style, sta­t­ic face dur­ing cut-scenes annoyed me tremen­dous­ly.

Over­all, it is a sol­id game, albeit short. Puz­zles aren’t TOO hard, with a gen­er­ous hint sys­tem, in-game achieve­ments, col­lectibles and a healthy dose of the creepy, though pre­dictable atmos­phere and cut-scenes. Demo pro­gres­sion is saved, so when you buy the whole game you don’t have to start all over again. There is also bonus con­tent that makes up for the rel­a­tive­ly quick game­play. As part of a tril­o­gy, the cliff-hang­er real­ly did make me buy the 2nd one after mulling over it for a day.

True Fear Forsaken Souls: Part 2

Rat­ing: 4 out of 5 stars

Price: $9.99 Nin­ten­do E‑shop

Although I end­ed up down­load­ing the demo for this part of the game, I was intrigued enough to buy this after the first sec­tion. Game­play con­trols changed since the first one, some for the bet­ter, and some for worse. At first, I lament­ed the changes, but after a while, I found myself pre­fer­ring the new. A few tweaks are still need­ed as the touch “back” but­ton over­laps with the inven­to­ry which is hel­la annoy­ing, but the rest of it is good. The cut scenes were a lit­tle bet­ter as now the close up of her face isn’t as sta­t­ic and bor­ing. The sto­ry itself steps up the creepy factor–though typ­i­cal­ly any­thing deal­ing with insane asy­lums is inher­ent­ly scary. MUCH longer game and sto­ry becomes more con­vo­lut­ed, but same gen­er­ous hint sys­tem and the puz­zles are a hard­er than before. You are allowed to skip puz­zles which is nice, but I acci­den­tal­ly hit the skip but­ton a few times when I was try­ing to fin­ish with­out it for the achieve­ment. Some of the touch con­trols were not respon­sive and I had no choice but to use the cur­sor. It was neat to see some Latin involve­ment, though the loose trans­la­tion was too loose for a nerd like me.

I liked it quite a lot and was upset at the doozy of a cliff-hang­er. So much so that I found myself going on to Gob­linz’s Face­book page to fig­ure out why. It’s in the works, which is awe­some to know. Despite some touch con­trol flaws and a few unclear puz­zles, it was a wel­come step up from the first por­tion and a rec­om­mend­ed game.