I am somewhat loathe to say that I've now played P.T. because I haven't, which is kind of the whole point of our Emulator Hour articles. That we're publically saying that we've played an emulated game or at the very least, played a game on an emulator for any number of reasons. The reason for playing an adapted and rebuilt version of P.T. the way that I have is because the original P.T. was first made available on August 12, 2014, and was pulled from the PlayStation online store after a falling out between Hideo Kojima and Konami was made permanently unavailable as of May 2015. But hooooooly shit did it make an impression. I did not have a PlayStation 4 at the time that P.T. was available and I'm sure as hell not going to fork over $750 for a 10-year-old console that supposedly has the playable teaser installed on it.
For several years I'd searched for an emulated version of P.T., but most of my searches led me to Unreal PT, but only in name as most of the links I came across were more than six months old and dead. Then I read an article (I sadly can't find the article or the article that I had written about the article) going over what they (who're they?) felt were the best horror games of all time that everyone should play, and naturally P.T. was on that list, which irked me a bit because of the uber-scarcity of the original game files. That'd be like saying that The Day the Clown Cried is the best movie of all time that everyone should see before they die. But find a downloadable version of Unreal P.T. I did, and play it I did. Kind of.
Very quickly, before I get into actually talking about the game, I want to preface that I know that there are two semi-available emulated ports of P.T. There's Unreal PT that I have played, and the 'closer to the source material' P.T. Emulation 1.4 which is locked behind a Patreon paywall. Between those two available ports, Unreal P.T. has the greatest number of differences such as missing animations, missing assets, and is potentially unbeatable. So with all of that in mind, let's get to Unreal P.T.
Attempt #1
This was technically my second attempt playing Unreal PT, but that first time was mainly to see if the game would run on my laptop, and let me tell you, in this case, 18 frames per second was about what I was expecting. What my point is in sharing this clip, is that I went into this without having looked anything up, although I did know, possibly through common societal knowledge that the game had something to do with a hallway and a creepy-ass woman. I also read a while ago that the creepy woman is supposedly behind you the entire time from a game-dev standpoint and so I kept thinking that she was going to show up, which is why I kept turning around in my Attempt #2 and #3 videos, expecting her to be at the end of the hallway.
Despite not knowing how to open the door on the second loop, what threw me the most was that the door-opening mechanic was just, "walk into door and it will either open or it won't." Maybe I'm just too used to modern first-person survival-horror walking sims where you have to click on the door to open it or press a button to trigger a door-opening action, but this just felt like I was doing something wrong. That and not knowing what I was supposed to be looking for. Like a picture on the ground, but we'll get to that in Attempt #2. I feel like at the 9:40 mark you can feel me really getting frustrated.
Attempt #2
Before jumping into the game this time, I did look up a walkthrough, which was where I found out about the picture on the ground in the second loop (or is it the first loop?). However, I misremembered what I read because I thought that this had something to do with the series of pictures you collected during one of the later loops. But upon zooming in (thanks to the RMB cue) this opened up the door to allow me to proceed through to the next loop.
During whatever-loop-that-is at the 07:14 mark, I noticed my frames per second dropped from 15-18 down to 9. Normally this would likely mean that the game would be unplayable, but possibly because I was already used to a sub-20 fps, this didn't bother me too much. I could still play and feel that the game wasn't absolutely broken. It's not running great, but at least it's running. And then I accidentally shortcutted one of the more iconic shots in the entire game, when you round the corner and see the woman standing at the end of the hallway, all because I rounded the corner too quickly and didn't stop soon enough. But maybe that makes the event creepier since you only see her for a split second before the lights go out? Maybe?
Just a few additional notes on Attempt #2. Nope, do not like that bathroom one bit. At the 10:40 mark, I paused the game because I was playing it at work on my lunch break, and at the time, there was a medication delivery that I had to handle, so I ended up cutting out about four minutes of pause screen. That new modified radio broadcast in the second to last loop was damn creepy, as in goosebumps and all when the voice started repeating the numbers and then again during the last loop when the voice says, "Look behind you. I said, look behind you." And that jump scare at 14:55 legitimately got me. Then I decided that I should turn the lights back on in my office and go back to work.
Attempt #3
This one was the doozy. I reread a walkthrough before playing, and referenced a couple during the repeating red hallway sequence to find the hole in the wall, and once your flashlight starts to change colors each loop. I think this might be as far as you can get in Unreal PT based on some of what I've read about this port's limitations, and I'm kinda okay with that. The solution feels like it's on the level of Lucasfilm Games' point-and-click level of obscurity what with the number of steps into the hallway, and even having to speak a certain phrase or word for the front door to finally unlock; although I also read that that solution doesn't exist in either Unreal PT or PT Emulation 1.4, so there's that too.
The attempt had a lot of good moments in it, from seeing words appear on walls on subsequent loops, to even the amount of frustration of the red looping hallways and actually thinking that the foyer was some level of relief because it was something different. The white screen of death was nice and in a way felt akin to the blue screen of death in Eternal Darkness. Also somewhat being able to piece together the story of what I thought was going on was genuinely unsettling but still a fun realization; although I obviously don't know everything because I didn't see what happened immediately before the player is graced with Norman Reedus' beautifully grossly mug. I'm also not sure what to make of the bloody talking bag in the garage after respawning the post-white screen.
I don't think that I can come away saying that I've now played P.T. for all of the reasons I mentioned way up there at the top, but I can say that I've played through the majority of Unreal PT, which might be all that will ever be available until Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro are able to wrestle their vision away from Konami's copyright lawyers. Who knows. Either way, this was a fun emulated port of a delisted playable teaser for a game that was canceled nine years ago because someone's ego was purportedly bruised.
P.S. I listed InvertedEarthTheory as a publisher at the top because they are currently the only way I know of to download and play Unreal PT.
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