This was a free game on Epic and I never considered buying it myself. But maybe I should have since this is a game by Remedy and I’ve always been a fan of their story-telling. Since I’m also a fan of the SCP website and the game is very obviously inspired by it, that’s even more reason to appreciate the setting. Many will know as being one of the first games to implement DLSS and ray-tracing. Even though my GPU technically supports the technology, the resolution looked so low to me that I just stuck with the older rendering methods.
The game takes place entirely inside a single, perhaps infinitely large building, that serves as the headquarters of a US agency called the Federal Bureau of Control. The paranormal is real, manifesting through objects imbued with weird powers that change the world and the people around them. The bureau keeps humanity safe by investigating such paranormal events and collecting the objects for safekeeping while keeping its existence a secret from the general public. You play as Jesse Faden, whose home town was the site of an altered world event when she was a child. The bureau stepped in and took control so to speak, and also took away Jesse’s brother Dylan. Jesse survived on her own, perhaps raised in orphanages and underwent therapy. But a voice inside her tells her to go to the bureau and she does so in search of her brother. When she arrives she finds the bureau under siege, most of its agents possessed by an extradimensional entity she calls the Hiss. She makes her way to the office of the bureau’s director and finds him dead, his service revolver next to him. The gun is itself a potent object of power and upon picking up she instantly takes on the mantle of director. It falls to her to fight the Hiss and uncover the secrets of the bureau.
Though ostensibly set inside the building known as the Oldest House, its paranormal nature makes it huge and there are plenty of visits to weird extradimensional spaces. That actually makes this an open-world game as you can freely traverse the many areas and floors and indeed will have to revisit some of the same areas multiple times. The game is heavily focused on combat. The revolver you start with stays with you throughout the game but it can be upgraded and can switch to different forms that are analogous to being a shotgun, a machinegun etc. But Jesse’s real weapon are her own paranormal powers. You start with a version of telekinesis that lets you grab just about anything and launch it at enemies. This is probably going to be the main mode of attack for players. She later gains other powers including shielding herself with telekinetically gathered objects, seizing control of enemies and most dramatically gaining the ability of fly. She can also claim control points in the house to stabilize nearby areas, which serve as save and fast travel points for the player.
The game doesn’t seem too challenging at the beginning when you’re mostly using the gun to shoot enemies but the difficulty ramps up once powers come into play. Enemies with telekinetic abilities of their own can kill you with a couple of thrown objects, there are enemies with rocket launchers, grenades and machineguns, swarms of explosive suiciding enemies, traditional video-game bosses and mini-bosses which are souped up regular enemies with crazy long healthbars. It can get seriously hectic at times and combined with the need to walk back after respawning at a control point, it’s no wonder there were some complaints about the game being too hard. I note that the main story is not too long and not that difficult but there are a good number of side quests. Those dramatically increase the length of the game and include some boss fights that are much harder. Once you get good enough the flow of combat feels great and is very dynamic. Jesse is always fragile enough that the best defense is to keep moving and it’s always cool when you can telekinetically grab rockets and grenades thrown at you to fling them right back.
As for the story, I’m more enamored of the setting than Jesse’s personal quest. Jesse’s story is standard fare, motivated as she is by finding Dylan who is predictably already corrupted by the Hiss. But I did like how the entity that is inside her is implied to be the player. The bureau and the lore with all of the objects of power were the highlights for me and I loved watching the instructional videos by the bureau’s head researcher. Going around picking up the notes and files of the bureau that describe what they do and they have to put up with is just great. Unfortunately while dealing with some of the objects require some puzzle solving and these are usually quite easy, by far the primary way to deal with them is through combat: simply beating them into submission. This isn’t really in keeping with the spirit of the CSP and of course is a familiar limitation of the video game as a medium for fiction.
I enjoyed this game a lot more than I thought I would and really appreciated the tie-in with the Alan Wake game. All the same, I thought that the length of the main story feels about right and the side quests make the experience longer than necessary, especially with how tedious some of them are to complete. The combat system feels really great when you master it, floating and dashing in the air about flinging objects and enemies around, but it’s not that deep. It’s not as if there are a ton of different ways you can spec your version of Jesse either. Ramping up the difficulty ever higher by having the same enemies be incredibly durable and powerful as they do in the repeatable raid encounters just isn’t that appealing. The confines of the Oldest House, cool as it is, also feels constricting after a while so I don’t have any interest in the DLCs at all.
