All things considered, Jonathan is a weak, weak man, and I hate him. You’ll have to turn the flashlight on at this point, but that can attract enemies too. You can’t hide in the dark too long either, or poor Jonathan will start to get scared and the already extremely restrictive field of vision you have will become even more restrictive as it becomes ringed in red. Sometimes you’ll be close enough to smell their alien cologne and they won’t bat a tendril, other times they’ll spot you through walls and then simply stand next to you for an instakill. Both human and alien enemies have view cones that pierce the oppressive darkness, and it’s often extremely difficult to tell if they’re going to spot you. This is a mechanic that is difficult to pull off at the best of times ( Soma and Outlast are solid examples that come to mind), but here it’s about as fun as getting a prostate exam from an untrained gorilla. Other than exploration and looking for clues as to your father’s whereabouts or how to end the torment that is playing this game, the other aspect of the actual gameplay is hide and seek stealth. The game uses this form of ‘puzzle’ design a lot, where you’re not really logically following clues, but just interacting with everything in sight until you brute force the progression. The initial moments are extremely aimless, and for the longest time you’ll simply paw around in the dark looking for the next interactable object to lead you to the next interactable object. The house is a bland and blurry mish-mash of muddy textures and pixelated non-descript portraits strewn about (and actually repeated) at random. The start of the game drops you in Jonathan’s father’s house after a short prologue, and it’s clear the developers wanted to channel some Gone Home vibes, but the sense of mystery or discovery or place just simply isn’t there. Its ludicrously small field of vision coupled with Jonathan’s jerky yet slow basic movements makes even the most basic task a Sisyphean ordeal, but using the torch is basically the game’s core mechanic so…have fun? To battle the darkness, Jonathan has his trusty flashlight with all the power of a phone screen on 2%. The game does little to endear itself from the outset, with a pervasive fog seemingly permeating everything in an unbearably dark and lifeless environment. The story is as tenuous and paper thin as it is generic and poorly told, and unfortunately, it’s actually the best part of the game. It’s up to Jonathan to follow the breadcrumb trail his father left behind to uncover the truth behind a government conspiracy involving *wild meme guy appears*… aliens. No sooner has he reached the surrounds of his dad’s property is he beset upon by shadowy men with…stun batons…and he’s running for his life. Jonathan has come to the town of Greenlake at the behest of his estranged father Hank (and you know he’s estranged because he calls him by his first name), who left a mysterious message for him culminating in telling him to come fishing. You play the game from the first-person perspective of the titular Jonathan Morris, a young man with the hardest working internal monologue in the business (seriously, Morris narrates his own experience to within an inch of its life, it’s maddening).
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