This movie is quite fun to play – review of the game “Blair Witch”

The latest game of the Polish Bloober Team, known for example from horror films called Layers of Fear , premiered on August 30. Of course, we are talking about Blair Witch , a console-PC continuation of the famous series of American films about the fictional witch Blair, to which we owe the boom for scarecrows in the “found footage” convention from the turn of the previous and present decades. As all the cinematic productions devoted to witch hunting in the thickets of the Black Hills forest are behind me and I remember them rather well – except maybe the last part – I gladly grabbed the rain to go “personally” on the bushes this time.

The first impression after leaving the main menu is very positive – at first glance you can see that the creators decided to build a truly cinematic atmosphere. The plot takes off as it should, in a genre cliché from the nineties, offering a nice breeze of nostalgia. In addition, we also come across a handful of promising mechanics, from interaction with the Bullet dog, to seemingly very multifunctional elements of equipment, such as a walkie-talkie with several different frequencies or an intriguingly extensive cell phone “from the era” (after all, we are in 1996), allowing us to even run non-infringing versions of the iconic Snake and Space Invaders. Graphics can also make an impression if we decide to admire the surrounding forest,

The next hours spent in the forest will strengthen our associations with the works of the big screen even more – both the scenario solutions and some gameplay elements will clearly draw from the cliché, but rather from the cinema rather than the gaming cliché. There are timeline jumps, the immortal motive of being trapped by spatial anomalies, making each path we take lead us back to where we started, and from a direction completely different from where we went; there is also an annoying long time avoiding talking to anyone about his paranormal experiences. Nevertheless, these procedures, although clichéd and predictable, usually did not irritate me and did not provoke me to grumble about “reheated chops”, but seemed to be amusing nods to the classics of the genre.

The farther into the forest, the more schiz

While the Bloober Team undoubtedly tries to stay close to the prototypes, the weight of their story about the curse of the forest witch lies elsewhere. And probably rightly so. We are not dealing here with a group of young people brought to the Black Hills by a desire to unravel the mystery of the legendary witch or find the previous lost groups. This edition is a theater of one actor, a former soldier and policeman, chasing deep into the wilderness as much of a tangible kidnapper as possible, the victim of which just a few days ago was a young boy. As we make our way through the dark thickets, together with our trusted dog, Bullet, we will learn about our hero’s past, his dilemmas and regrets, experience hallucinations of post-war post-traumatic stress and slowly plunge into isolation and madness.

Although the rather unexpected focus of the story on this aspect works quite well – when we sit in front of the screen, we expect to discover the occult secrets of Elly Kedward, and the protagonist, who is well acquainted with the gloomy fame of the forest surrounding Burkittsville. Instead, we sit “at the controls” of a man after the passage, counting on a quick and uncomplicated search action that will allow him to repair his own reputation in the eyes of his beloved and the entire local community. We are also not sure whether Blair believes in the witch at all.

We will quickly realize that the plot has a very introspective character, which means that, as in the bushes, we move around the mind of Ellis, tired of his own existence and torn by remorse. The life adventures of our avatar are not in themselves extremely thrilling or surprising, but they give us the opportunity to understand and maybe even like him. At the same time, it is very interesting that as we progress, we will notice that both the murderous witch and the case of the missing boy are beginning to lose importance in the face of the more and more direct feeding of the forest curse on the main character and the dark corners of his soul. Such an approach to the subject certainly works well in this kind of first-person horror movie, and at the same time sheds new light on the universe started byThe Blair Witch Project , more directly showing how a haunting ghost in Black Hills interacts with the minds of its victims and manipulates them for their own use. The latter would be much more difficult to depict in another film about a group of campers terrorized by inconceivable evil powers.

The creators were the first to get lost in the dark forest

There are undoubtedly a few things that this title does really well that make my trip to the haunted forest feel quite positive. Unfortunately, as a reviewer, I feel obliged to take a closer look at the whole, and this kind of look is able to bring out numerous sins and shortcomings from the darkness of the forest night.

Above all, many of the game’s features initially seem to promise us much more than we ultimately get, which over time begins to evoke an overwhelming sense of wasted potential. Both the telephone and the walkie-talkie work in essentially the same way and are only used to activate short dialogues in specific places or plot points, and the rest of the time they remain “out of the network” and do not help us at all. Interactions with a dog’s friend turn out to be a similar shell – the pet usually copes on its own without any commands on our part, and the only real function of the option of scolding and praising him is to define the attitude of our character towards a nice animal as strict or loving. At one of the initial stages, the tutorial will scare the player with the information that

It is also problematic that production in many respects declares that it is going in some direction, and then almost immediately shoots itself in the foot in that regard. Most of the challenges presented to the player will be based on puzzles – except that the puzzles are rather few, they are easy and mostly based on the same scheme of action. The inventory is quite extensive, but the vast majority of items found have only one specific use or none at all and are only a “collectible”. As for the collectibles, in my opinion they are probably the worst implemented Blair Witch element. In order to have fun, we must remain engaged and empathize with what we see on the screen, react reliably with our hero and convincingly play the role assigned to us in the script. It is a pity that the system of secrets hidden in strange nooks and crannies is completely inconsistent with this approach. For example, if we do not want to miss one of the notes from the therapy session scattered in the forest, we will have to completely ignore the dog’s instructions in the middle of the climatic chase after the kidnapper, Bullet, and suddenly go in a completely different direction. Therefore, players wishing to find all the hidden items – whether it is for a better understanding of the nuances of the story or because of the ticking off the next achievement – can say goodbye to immersion.

The same applies to the painful linearity of the game. Bloober Team expects us to approach the virtual adventure many times – the most clear proof of this is the fact that even obtaining an unambiguous answer to the question constituting the main plot engine (What happened to the missing boy?) Will require at least one replay from us’ and. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself does not encourage such repetitions. Walking in the woods, once we know well the locations we visit, it quickly becomes monotonous; there is also a missing carrot on the horizon in the form of curiosity about what will happen next. The hopes of people who have heard about the multitude of available endings are also deceptive, and would be willing to sit back with a pad or a mouse in their hand to see another solution to Ellis’s fate. After removing this issue from the marketing envelope, we will realize that that there are only two truly different finals of our adventure (both of them, in my opinion, are not very satisfying) and they are sprinkled with only a handful of zero-one variables regarding the further fate of the side characters or their relationship to the main character. They will be given to us only in the form of minor changes to the last cutscene and the end credits with a slightly different content. In addition, the very structure of the game will strongly direct us to one of the variants of the ending of the plot; for the conditions necessary to experience the latter are very non-obvious and require us to completely ignore one of the most basic mechanics at our disposal. So let’s face it – nowadays most players will simply watch the other endings on YouTube, and check unclear elements of the story on Google,Blair Witch  another few hours of rapidly losing freshness of the game, which will not even reward them with any additional stage or alternative level completion path.

We would like to thank the Bloober Team studio for providing a reviewer copy of the game (XONE).