If that wasn’t obvious from the start, it will be when you check out the top floor and see the diamond carpet laid out in front of you. Having a friend on the phone constantly brings back memories of Firewatch and being stuck in an abandoned, spooky hotel during a snowstorm is clearly a nod to The Shining. It’s a game that definitely wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Investigate everything, including stuff you wonder why they spent time modelling it (a sponge? Really?), all the while talking to your friend over the phone. ![]() ![]() Your only friend is Irving from FEMA who communicates with you thanks to an old fashioned cell phone, what with the game being set in the 90’s, there’s plenty of old tech to investigate.ĭon’t expect any great revelations with the gameplay, it is very much one of those games. The snowstorm has put a stop to that however, as you’re now stranded for days until the snow subsides. Set in a secluded hotel that is cut off from everything due to a snowstorm, you’re the daughter of the former proprietor who has since passed away and are just there to gather some things and look at how rundown the building is. Up to that point though, the game was great. Top tip: Don’t quit out of Day 9 if you don’t want to risk this happening to you. I was really fascinated with where the story was going too. It’s a short game, around 3-4 hours if you know what to do, so you could run through it all again rather quickly, but this whole situation has left such a bad taste in mouth I just want to delete the whole thing from my hard drive. So after about twenty minutes of aimlessly wandering trying to trigger something, I gave up and succumb to the fact that the game had completely blocked my progress. By pressing the triangle button you bring up a map and at the bottom it says “Things to do”. I walked around a bit and retraced my steps to where I should be for the story to continue, but nothing happened. I reloaded the game and was in a completely different area to where I should be. ![]() “Fine”, I thought to myself, I now know where to go so aside from the unskippable dialogue I should return to where I was in about ten minutes. It’s not a design decision that made me want to throw my controller with rage, but it was a needless one, especially when some days can take a while to complete if you become lost or unsure how to progress the story (which did happen a few times).ĭue to the fact that I’m an adult with responsibilities, I had to quit the game midway through the final day and return to it later. Basically the game is played out over multiple days and the game saves at the start of each of these days (which I only figured out after a Google search). Now, a major issue with the game is that it doesn’t save that frequently. A few issues aside,I was really enjoying my time with it and was ready to give it a glowing review. As I was reaching the end of The Suicide of Rachel Foster, I was ready to place that just below them. Both have a great level of intrigue and mystery that made me want to play more, even when the gameplay sometimes dragged. ![]() A story of love and death, where melancholy and nostalgia melt into a thrilling ghost tale.When it comes to the walking simulator genre the pinnacle for me would be Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch. With his help, Nicole starts to investigate a mystery far deeper than what people in the valley thought. With the will and determination to put that chapter behind her, she returns to the hotel with the family’s lawyer to audit the decaying structure.Īs the weather unexpectedly turns for the worst, Nicole has no way to leave the large mountain lodge, and finds support in Irving, a young FEMA agent, using one of the first radio telephones ever built. Now that both of her parents have passed, Nicole hopes to fulfill her mother’s last will to sell the hotel and make amends to Rachel's relatives. Ten years ago, teenager Nicole and her mother left the family hotel after discovering her father Leonard's affair with, and pregnancy of Rachel, a girl her own age who eventually committed suicide.
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