Systems: Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: January 30, 2018
Publisher: Darril Arts
Developer: Stormind Games
I admittedly did not know much before going into Remothered: Tormented Fathers, and what I knew was from one of the release trailers on the eShop. I knew about Clock Tower as a survival horror game but have not played it. So I watch this trailer featuring all of this third-person survivaliness and am genuinely taken with how much I love a lot of what I saw. What the trailer does not show you, are many of the game mechanics and the underlying way in which the game operates once you get to Chapter 3.
The first two chapters were fine, depending on what you are looking for in a survival horror game. There was a fair amount of set-up as far as the characters go and revealing the mystery about Celeste Felton, the adopted daughter of Dr. Richard Felton back in 1981. There is a lot of walking since the playable character of Rosemary Reed is wearing sensible heels, although she can break into a bit of a slow sprint with the press of the R shoulder button. But Rosemary essentially walks from her parked car down a forested dirt road to the house of Dr. Felton, walks around the grounds of the house, walks around the house after being let inside, and walks back through the house after being escorted outside and waiting until night when Dr. Felton's nurse leaves. Then she walks around inside until you are discovered at the end of Chapter 2.
Then Chapter 3 starts, where you are being stalked around the house. You can sneakily creep through hallways and rooms, but if the stalker [unnamed for the moment to reduce spoilers] sees you, they sprint like a madman armed with a sickle, which they are. Once spotted you have only a couple of options, and none of them are good. You can run away, but since you're wearing those sensible heels, your running speed is slower than your stalkers. If you do manage to make it to another room you had better hope that there is a closet to hide in or a bed/couch to hide under before a slightly confusing mini-game (of sorts) starts which decides if your rapid breathing causes you to be found. You can throw a distractionary object at the stalker, but the throwing mechanic is cumbersome since you have to essentially cock your arm back with the ZL trigger then release with the ZR trigger, and even then, hope you hit your target.
Once you are caught, because you will likely be caught, one of two things will happen. Either you will be hit with the sickle taking damage but not killing you, and I think you can take up to three hits before you are killed; oh, and your overall speed also decreases after every hit too, so there's that to worry about too. The other thing is that you enter a QTE where you button-mash your way to safety where you use up your one equipable defense weapon (which is different than your distraction items), which gives you a handful of seconds to run away to try and hide somewhere else.
Knowing what I know now in Chapter 3, I understand the unspoken emphasis on giving the player nearly unfettered access to a large portion of the house in the first two chapters, and why it is up to you to actually find the people you need to talk to instead of having them come directly to you. The purpose is to have the player familiarize themself with the layout of the house. To note where hallways and staircases lead. Where there is an abundance of items used for distractionary purposes. Where the dumb waiter is located on each floor even though it is currently not in use. At the time, in Chapters 1 and 2, I was confused as to why there were so many objects littered around the house that were labeled as a distractionary item and what that really meant. I could open a drawer and see a pair of knitting needles, or more often than not, nothing at all. There was also no one immediately around to talk to or interact with until I found Dr. Felton up in his study. Had I only known that I should have been creating a mental map of the layout of the house?
At the point where I am in the game, there is zero horror about trying to sneak around this mansion away from the stalker. There is no terror when I hear them running and the screen goes red to let me know that I have been spotted. There is no fear about trying to escape. There is only annoyance as I wait to be killed so I can start over again trying to get to the door on the first floor because that is where the key I picked up out of a bathrobe will work. I have tried many times with little success in trying to create distractions like setting a clock alarm to go off to draw the attention of the stalker so that I can get around their location, only to have them seemingly spawn right outside the door of the room I was in and start attacking me. This isn't fun, and not in the way survival-horror games are supposed to be fun.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
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