![]() PlayStation 5 has opened new doors for us to retell this story, allowing opportunities to add new content and features that were previously unattainable. Visit the official page for Observer: System Redux here.Everyone here at Bloober Team is thrilled to bring you our next-gen horror game, Observer: System Redux. It can be overwhelming – it takes about eight hours to complete, it only gets stranger as it goes, and you may need to take several breaks in order to escape the dark insanity of it all.īut it’s well worth exploring, even as it gives you nightmares. It’s the Eraserhead baby, the Space Odyssey stargate, and the opening of Bergman’s Persona all rolled into one. For a mainstream video game, this is about the most experimental – and therefore exciting – I’ve ever seen. Poor ole Rutger, who delivered such a memorable performance in Blade Runner, seems out of his depth here, mumbling through key dialogue and seeming generally unenthusiastic.īut that’s hardly a damning indictment of Observer. The late Rutger Hauer’s marble-mouthed performance doesn’t help either. But there are sections of Observer where I truly don’t understand where I am, what I’m doing, or why. Like, I get the grand picture, and the overarching mystery is comprehensible. For one thing, I’m still not entirely sure what’s happening at any given moment. That said, there are times when Bloober Team – and Observer – are needlessly confusing. But none of it lasts long enough to quite understand what you’re looking at, let alone capture a review-friendly screenshot. Sometimes, the game will glitch out entirely, replaced by TV “static” or a 2D image of a Gigeresque monstrosity. Enemies aren’t just big and scary they have a nasty habit of shattering into a thousand pieces and re-forming directly on your face. Hallways aren’t just dark they distort in strange ways as you walk through them. If nothing else, they are masters of atmosphere. I’m a big fan of Poland-based Bloober Team, developers of Observer and other surreal titles like Layers of Fear (our review here). The point of Observer is to throw you off-kilter. It’s slightly less difficult to navigate than it sounds, but not by much. Walls explode, shadowy figures zig-zag across the screen, and you might see a separate level architecture “superimposed” on the one you’re walking in. The screenshots hardly do it justice: it’s not until you’re running from a shadow monster while the walls shatter around you and the floor drops away, that you really come to accept the insanity.Īnd all this happens very quickly: within the space of thirty seconds, you might bounce through a dozen different landscapes from twenty different perspectives. While its opening hour superficially resembles a detective game, replete with Batman-style “Detective Vision”, it’s not long before you’re inundated with nightmarish shadow monsters, techo-organic snakes, and ever-shifting landscapes that refuse to obey the laws of physics. It’s hard to describe just how strange Observer gets. In doing so, players access the confused, disturbing jumble of thoughts and memories that live in people’s heads – Psychonauts this ain’t. But really, that’s just an excuse to throw players into a series of increasingly bizarre mindscapes, thanks to Lazarki’s ability to “hack” brains. Nominally, you star as the Rutger Hauer-voiced detective Daniel Lazarski, investigating a series of murders in a near-future apartment complex. Observer: System Redux is a marvellously confusing game. That said, for the sheer experimental audacity on display, I highly encourage even the mildly interested to check it out. Whether you find the above descriptor appealing or appalling will likely inform your interest in this game. The 2017 cyberpunk-horror-madhouse has just received a very welcome next-gen remaster, making it easily one of the most disturbing games on modern consoles. There are a handful of games that might be called Lynchian, but very few that could rightly be called Lynchian-at-his-most-surreal- The Return, Part 8-wildest. If you liked Blade Runner, and you can stomach some disturbing imagery, you’ll enjoy this. Available now for PS5 (Reviewed), PS4, Windows, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. ![]() Our review of Observer: System Redux, developed by Bloober Team.
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