Blair Witch 2019: Horror In The Woods…..
At E3 2019 we got to see the first glance of Blair Witch game, based on the famous Blair Witch franchise, developed by Blobber Team, best known for Observer and the Layers of Fear series. The Blair Witch is a Psychological Survival horror game, launched for PC and Xbox One and available on Game Pass too, Released on 30 August. The following review is based on My Gameplay on PC (Xbox Game Pass (beta)). In which, I am gonna cover all the topics that you might consider before purchasing this game and don’t worry about the spoilers, I will try to keep them as low as possible.
Beginning into the Woods
The storyline starts from Maryland’s Burkittsville Woods in 1996, shortly after the disappearance of three hapless campers in the original film, Main objective of the game is to find a missing child in the woods. You play as Ellis, a cop and ex-soldier who’s suffering from PTSD and trying to get over a recent incident at work. He started his search along with some survival items and his best friend Bullet(his pet). The bullet is the really good boy which helps you to find direction and hidden items. While I was playing literally I was just so focused on a bullet because the game provides you a very good environment that scares the crap out of you.
Gameplay
Blair Witch is not about Combat, it’s about avoiding that. we have a cell phone, walkie-talkie, a flashlight, a video camera, and a backpack, which serves as the player’s inventory and Bullet which is the best line for defense. At the start, I really get annoyed because of the lack of map but later on, I get used to it due to bullet, he is playing main role in the entire game along with you. He will alert you whenever he got any hidden item, direction and also if there is something wrong going around. Oh..! how can I forgot to talk about puzzles, to solve these puzzles you will get hints by video taps, they actually work for alternating the reality of game to solve puzzles. You can call people (primarily your ex-wife and, weirdly enough, a pizza parlor) on a cellphone, but only at specific points little tower icon left bottom corner will tell you if you have a signal. You can even play little video games on the phone.
Lost In The Forest
During the gameplay, Blair Witch will make you feel like you lost in the woods. During the entire journey, there are very fewer characters on the game or you can say countable on one hand fingers, Ellis is suffering from mental anxiety so it is important to stick to the bullet during the search. To be honest, it also applies to me, I mean during some conditions when I lost my sight to Bullet, I just constantly trying to find a way to call him near me.
My first encounter with Slender Man spirits hidden behind the tress caused loud from my mouth and a sudden shiver of fear for the next two-three minutes. I loved the way how they represented the forest and combination of soundtracks, way of showing old memories of Ellis and all of this results in interesting psychological elements that induced anxiety and fear in you. During the last movements of the game, you will think as you finished this game but suddenly you came back in and saw the letters like “No happy Ending” will remind you that you can’t finish the game without final Blair Witch encounter.
But There Are Some Problems….
Everything seems to nice until I started facing some issues during gameplay, I really appreciate their work for the game but there are several areas which need some attention. sometimes your torch flickers during the main quest and ends up from the last checkpoint and this is really annoying because you have to manually load the game if something went wrong. At some points of game everything wents dark or foggy which causes frustration rather than fear. The concept of exploring the forest is nice but it really confuses me like what are the boundaries of the game that should not be crossed. There are some puzzles that look like don’t have a connection to the story, some items offer interaction but then they not like a door opening. In some cases, I get stuck in someplace and the only way to out from that is to reload the game.
Verdict
Here is my final thought, if you love to play horror games then definitely this will not disappoint you even though it is not the scariest game but still they implemented the ideas and adopted film very well, the duration of game is not that much longer as I finished in four and a half hours. I really enjoyed this game, it contains everything that every psychological horror game should have. There are some problems as I explained above but apart from that everything is nicely crafted like the concept of pet, now the use of camcorder in the night maybe a replica of Outlast but its manipulation ability is interesting, combat areas & atmosphere is genuinely scary.
