Flawed, but...impressive for a game mostly made by one guy. Soundtrack included!

From a spooky early sequence that closely emulates the visual approach of the original Silent Hill's prologue - i.e. highly cinematic "fixed" camera angles, combined with the added atmosphere of constant camera movement - it's clear this is going to be a trip down Memory Lane. A somewhat more futuristic Memory Lane than either the Silent Hill or Resident Evil franchises - and a slightly more bleak and British one! - but a third-person survival horror game very much in the "old-school" style, nonetheless. (Read: heavy resource management, manual saves using a household item - a telephone, in this case - lots of spamming of perimeters to ensure you're searching each area as thoroughly as possible, no end of locked or otherwise barred doors, eerie radio noises when a monster is near, highly manipulative yet effective scare techniques...heck, there's even sections where you run through decrepit streets, avoiding monsters galore a la Silent Hill...albeit to the power of ten!)

Graphics and sound are mostly very good - even if our heroine doesn't always look like her feet are firmly connecting with the ground! - and the maps are pretty excellent once you adjust to their especially sci-fi-ish nature (the same goes for Menu/Inventory screens, and the constant in-game pop-up displays). And while the game itself recommends, multiple times, that you use a controller...I personally had no issues with keyboard and mouse. And the weapons are definitely fun - road sign doubling as a "makeshift axe", anyone? - but a bit awkward and unpredictable to use at times, due to pedantic aiming and a surprising variety of "moves" (all just one button; yet your character rarely attacks the same way twice in a row, instead cycling through a few distinct approaches per item)!

One regard in which traditional survival horror buffs might find this game slightly less generous: it's not necessarily clear which items can be picked up/interacted with until you're right on top of them (unlike, say, the blatantly glittering items we're used to in RE games). Not a huge problem indoors - see "spamming of perimeters", above! - but in wide open areas filled with enemies and no end of miscellaneous debris, you really do have a good chance of bypassing something useful unless you're patient enough to systematically fight everything in sight, search around...then, presumably, go back to your last save should you determine you just wasted a bunch of ammo or healing for no good reason! I lucked upon quite a few bonus finds - including ones that contribute to mere Achievement-scoring - yet can't help but wonder how many things I managed to miss...which probably doesn't sound like a biggie to survival horror non-vets, but for those of us who like to explore every inch of a map, "just in case"...*

And the story is nothing I'm gonna rave about, but it serves its purpose passably...for a game. (Though many may find the ending a tad abrupt, not least 'cause it lacks anything that proves - at least on "Intended Difficulty" - to be a significant final boss fight, provided you have a mere handful of shotgun shells remaining! And yes: there is a hidden climax that pays tribute to Silent Hill 2's infamous "dog" ending, as well as an unlockable first-person mode for future playthroughs...and another mode where you idiotically walk around with an oversized HEAD!!)

I'm guessing, by now, that you're wondering about that thing so many gamers obsess about nowadays: the length. The good news is that - for people like me who don't want their horror games to drag - it's probably under five hours' long (unless you really take your time or get seriously stuck at some point). The bad news is that - for people who DO demand that the games they fork over even moderate amounts of cash for last at least ten or twenty hours - well, it doesn't. So for those in the latter category, sure: I would strongly recommend waiting on a sale. For peeps in the former category, or those with bags of money hanging off every inch of their belts...WHAT THE FLIP ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! (And there are, as I mentioned, multiple "modes" to replay through with, as well as multiple Difficulty levels. And more than one ending, depending on decisions made throughout the game. So there is, at the least, some definite replayability...though you'd still be hard-pressed to get more than fifteen, twenty hours out of it, total.)

Almost as good, overall, as 2022's Signalis: another recent game to bring a futuristic dystopian sci-fi setting to a mostly traditional "survival horror" approach. Oh: and if you think you've struck a bug, or somehow badly screwed up, in the sewer section? It seems people have all sorts of "different" experiences down there (based, it seems, on the undercutting of design expectations we gamers have grown to know and love)! My advice: just go with the flow, and see where you wind up...

Verdict: 8/10.

(* For what it's worth: on my first playthrough, I got 55% of Achievements. So I clearly missed a bit, but maybe not that much. Never did find a bow to go with that quiver of arrows, though!)

(PS If you enjoyed this review, feel free to check out my two Curator pages: http://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/curator/9284586-ReviewsJustfortheHELLofit/
http://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/curator/10868048-Truly-Horrible-Horror-Games/?appid=398210
Cheers!)