Remothered: Broken Porcelain - REVIEW
And here we are! The first blog post is about a videogame that I've recently bought and played on Nintendo Switch. Remothered: Broken Porcelain
has been created by Chris Darril, an italian videogames author, and it's the second chapter of the horror saga Remothered, following Remothered:
Tormented Fathers.
As you may have read on my about page, I've played many videogames sagas starting from the second chapter... and here is
another case. I've bought it because it was on sale at the price of ~€11, and being a fan of horror games, and reading that the atmosphere is inspired to
many other famous sagas, I've decided to give it a try.
THE MECHANICS
By starting the game, it immediately allows you to read a recap of the first chapter of the story, that in my case has been really helpful
to create a context of what I was going to play. The game is a survival horror based on the concept of the stalker. You have not enemies and obstacles
to kill, but characters that will follow you, forcing you to hide, move quietly, or strive to attack the stalkers and stop them temporarily to explore
your surroundings and reach your destination.
As to the hidings there are many places in which you can do it, as long as you're not in the stalker's sight: clearly you can't stay hidden forever,
in the same place: that's why at some point, the stalker can "sense" you and pull you out of your hiding. In my opinion this mechanic is fair and
helps in obtaining an anxious atmosphere in which the player has to emphatyze with the character and think fast about the next move to do.
Progressing in the story is really easy, as the game is guided, and always gives you simple tasks to do and sometimes it helps you TOO MUCH,
removing most of the challenge of the game, and the satisfaction of understanding how to succeed in a particular task: so the game just gives you orders,
and you execute them. On the other hand, some of the mechanics of the game are too guessy, so I've been in situations in which I had to wait for the
game to lend me a hint. I was in a condition in which the hints were removing the challenge, but at the same time they were absolutely necessary to
complete some tasks.
Otherwise you can distract the stalkers with noisy tools, blind them for some seconds, or damage them to make them stop for some time.
Another mechanic of the game consists in controlling the moths. Sometimes the character will have the possibility to summon and control some moths that
can be used to explore places that the character can't reach, to distract the stalkers or activate some mechanisms. But this mechanic will only be
necessary two or three times during the game. During the rest of the time it can be used to obtain the extras, but will not be useful for the main
story.
The last mechanic I will talk about are the skill updates. During the game you will collect many Moth Keys: these keys can be used to improve
your skill. But this mechanic will only be used one time in the entire game: you will reach a place in which it will be possible to update your health,
resistance, moth control skill, and many other things from level 1 to level 5, by using the moth keys, but in my opinion:
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
As to the graphic part I can tell I liked it, and even though it presented some minor glitches, it was graphically enjoyable. It was not too realistic, nor too cartoonish. The environment was dark, tight, limited, making the experience with stalkers more anxious since it hasn't been easy to always escape from them and forcing you to get in a face to face situation when they find you. The story and the cutscene have been well represented, and even if the mechanics have presented some problems, the story has kept me playing to undestand what was happening. The music and the sounds have been perfect to create the atmosphere and also useful in the context of mechanics, helping the player to detect the position of the stalker while hiding or escaping.
CONCLUSIONS AND GRADES
In the end, I've enjoyed the game, it actually gives horror vibes but it's still immature in my opinion. What I most disliked are some of the mechanics that
haven't been used because the duration and the difficulty of the game don't make them necessary for the player. It hasn't been challenging at all, though,
and the collectible and the extras are not worth another run of the game, as far as I'm concerned.
Here are my grades for the game: