Developer: Nekcom
Publisher: Oasis Games
Release date: March 14, 2017
Platforms: PS4 (reviewed), PSVR, Playstation Vita
The first film in the Saw franchise put its characters in a frightening situation. They woke up in a room, and were forced by an entity to endure a series of diabolical puzzles as punishment for their sins. Of course, done right, this could truly be an interesting premise to base a game upon. Waking up trapped somewhere, not knowing why or who put you there, could be an unnerving experience. Add to that puzzles you need to solve to aid in your escape, and you could have the makings of a unique horror game. The folks at developer Nekcom seemed to think this was a good idea. Unfortunately, their attempt at this, the new horror puzzle game Dying Reborn, is dead on arrival.
The game takes place in first person, and has you playing Matthew, who arrives in Harbour Town looking for a woman named Shirley. Matthew gets captured and put in a room by a mysterious man wearing a fish head (Why? Who knows? Someone thought it might be creepy, apparently). Matthew needs to solve puzzles to get out of the room and make his way through the Harbour Town Hotel, try to stay alive and rescue Shirley. Along the way, the fish head guy communicates through the TV, as does a mysterious woman named Connie. Matthew moves from room to room, uncovering clues and encountering odd images along the way. In this, the game does create a moderately creepy atmosphere.
Sadly, it’s the only thing positive I can say about the game. Puzzles require you to search around the room you’re in for items and clues to complete puzzles so you can move on and hopefully gain some answers. The puzzles veer from the very simple to the extremely obtuse. Solutions rarely feel clever and more often give that “Are you kidding me?” feeling. There’s more frustration than fun in solving these tasks. And that could be forgiven if we had a solid story and characters to pull us through. But nope, we don’t have that here. The voice acting is downright horrendous. The actors were obviously reading off cards, and even pause unnaturally as one card was taken away to reveal the next. Since you never even see hands (until a final cut scene), Matthew only exists as a disembodied voice. He has no likeable personality, and comes across more as a whiny brat. Connie never grabs interest, and the fish head guy doesn’t make for a compelling villain. Motives never really seem to be explained (and what is explained is cliched horror stuff). Every now and then the music will hit a sharp note or something flies through a glass window. The attempts at jump scares are ineffective, so there’s not even that to recommend this game for.
Mercifully, if you’re good at figuring at the puzzles, Dying Reborn is at most a 2-3 hour experience. For those who get stuck, things could take a little longer. Provided you just don’t quit out of frustration or no longer caring. The game never delivers on the great payoff it needed to make this thing seem all worthwhile. And then there’s the loading screens with the groan inducing pun “Loadying”, which failed to even give this travesty some sort of twisted humor. The premise for this game was a sound one, and Nekcom does at least succeed in giving it a somewhat creepy atmosphere. But everything else fails here. There are far better horror games with puzzles out there to play, rather than wasting your time with this.
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