🎱Those Who Remain – Recensione (PS4)

Those Who Remain è un indie horror, developed by Camel 101 and published by Wired Productions, which tries to assemble an experience of terror by taking a little here and a little there, also drawing on illustrious sources.

Find out by reading our review if the result is noteworthy or if Those Who Remain will have to settle for being one of many.

Atone for one's sins… and those of others

Edward is a broken man, he has suffered a serious loss and cannot give himself peace, we learn about him from the short intro. A letter from his wife Andrea invites him to look for her in Dormont, where it all began.

Getting there, however, is not easy because in that town reality seems to have been replaced, in order to trap the unfortunate and force them to remember what they would like to forget forever. In the dark they hide presences with bright eyes ready to mortally strike anyone who ventures without the safety of a light.

Continuing his journey, Edward will realize that his story is intertwined with that of Annika, a 13-year-old girl who died in Dormont in an accident. Clues and visions of the past will uncover troubled secrets and serious sins to atone for. Right after that incident, disappearances and inexplicable facts began to occur frequently in Dormont.

The story of Those who remain, therefore, it does not differ much from the canons of the genre, with a protagonist distressed by memories and a long sequence of events that cast a shadow on the past of the characters involved. If the title does not shine from a narrative point of view, a game dynamics connected to it instead represents the strong point (one of the few) of the product: the moral choices.

In this story the characters are not simply guilty or victims, they are in a gray area that is up to the protagonist to redefine. A character is linked to each explorable location, once we have found all the clues about it we will be faced with a choice: forgive or condemn. Our decisions will change the ending.

Each document will provide us with information to unite all the pieces of the puzzle, it will be up to us, drawing from our very personal code of ethics, to tip the scales on the side of right or wrong.

So many sources and a lot of confusion

The sources of inspiration for Those Who Remain are many: the general atmosphere follows in the footsteps of the Remedy titles, Alan Wake in the first place, but also Control peeps out with the presence of a temporal plane different from the real one with which to interface.

The exploratory part instead tries to create a union between Outlast 2 and the video games of Bloober Team. From the first, the game of Camel 101 takes up the need to escape always and in any case and some rural settings, from the second the sudden change of shots and the desire generate disorientation in the player. In both cases, however, Those Who Remain falls behind making more of the figure of the pupil who tries to copy without being able to get a good grade.

The main game mechanics of the title reviewed here is Lovecraftian, i.e. the impossibility of staying in the dark and therefore the need to find a source of light. If in games like Amnesia being in the dark causes an alteration of the mental state, in Those Who Remain it means certain and immediate death. Most situations result in "turn on the breaker, find a fuse, start the generator".

Right from the start, the feeling of danger in these situations is mitigated by the fact that the presences in the dark are fixed and they represent only a kind of wall. Once you understand this, just don't go into the dark rooms and look for another path.

To increase the fear effect, then, Camel 101 has thought of inserting unique monsters that in some sequences preside over an area and chase us in case of our sighting. Here we run into another hole in the water because the fascination in fuga/stealth they are monotonous and ill conceived. There is no button to crouch, so hiding simply means going to the opposite side from where we last saw the creature.

These sections also become nerve-wracking due to a checkpoint system to be reviewed. Each zone is conceived as an area completely disconnected from the rest, with one save at the beginning and one at the end corresponding to the beginning of the next area. If you are found by the creature on duty, you have to do it all over again, making Those Who Remain look like a puzzle game. trial and error.

To solve the classic puzzles, that is, those that require finding an object and using it in the right place, the player is asked to explore the environments in two different versions. There "astral" version it is accessible by entering doors recognizable by their being out of context with respect to the surrounding environment. Here you can find the items you place we will need in the real world. A good idea, but nothing exceptional since the exploration does not change one iota.

Technically speaking, Those Who Remain are not unlike their counterparts and do nothing to differentiate themselves. Aesthetically there are no flashes and the whole is quite flat.

All the dynamics described are repeated in loop in sequence, often giving the impression that we wanted to give a longevity above the average of the indies of the genre with the consequence, however, of making it frustrating to be able to find the reasons for continuing. A game of this type is right that it does not last very long, unless it has a dynamic rhythm and always on the piece, which unfortunately does not happen with Those Who Remain.

A real shame, it must be said. The first hour had almost deceived us, we had thought of a title that was not very original but still valid, because there are some interesting ideas, but then going on made us understand that the Camel 101 game cannot stand out and improve the one already seen.

Final comment

Those Who Remain could be a well-made indie horror, not great, but enjoyable, it fails due to unfortunate development choices. The dynamics of moral choices are intriguing, but beyond that there is very little to rejoice in. Nervous in the escape sequences, a feeling of fear not received, a mixture of homages that have not been explored in an original way.