Observer review – A day in the life of Rutger Hauer.
Observer review – A day in the life of Rutger Hauer.
Title: Observer
Release date: 15th August 2017
Platforms: PS4, PC (reviewed), XBONe
Developer: Bloober Team
An intro before the intro. I’ve been doing these reviews for a little while and I’ve been trying to keep them all with the same layout and some level of consistency but, honestly, that layout had honestly gotten a little stale for me. Basically; I’m saying I wanna keep doing reviews but I want to try and change it up just a lil’- right now I’m thinking maybe a bit more free form. Anyhoo, guess we’ll find out together.
Observer is a cyberpunk game from the creatures of Layers of Fear, that game everyone wants to compare to P.T cause that was popular at the time but honestly, I’d say it had pretty unique level design that wasn’t much like P.T because Layers was about just being completely disorientated and P.T was just about the longest interconnecting house that only had one designer who got lazy after the first room so just made them all identical. Apart from that, Layers of Fear had a story that just made me think of Silent Hill 2 and P.T had, a ghost? And an Eraserhead baby. But forget about that because Bloober team (makers of Layers of Fear and Observer) are back! And they brought Rutger Hauer with a new cyberpunk adventure.
Thoughts aside on their previous work, I thought Observer was pretty good. You play as Daniel {polish name that I’m not gonna type out because I’m a lazy, filthy English man who barely understands his own language never mind the language of another} who is an Observer, an Observer is a special government agent who can jack into people’s minds, by the way get out your cyberpunk bingo cards now, and interrogate them. He’s sitting in his car when he gets a call from his mum, I don’t think it actually is but it may as well be, and she tells him to take his mind altering substances so they can stop him from going bat shit. Then his long lost son calls and basically just says ‘lol u sux bye’ so Rutger goes to investigate, and then thing, as they must to have a story, go to shit. You find a dead body who might be your son, the building then goes into lock down, and you have to find the killer and escape. Think the film Dredd without the guns.
The main story is good, not spectacular, I mean you can guess the ending right at the beginning if you’ve seen or read any well known sci-fi or cyberpunk stories. Where the game really shows off what it’s got on show is if you explore, if you ignore the main story and look around, it’s an apartment building so why not ask all the neighbours, some aren’t in or don’t answer but some do and some are just out of their minds, some seem normal but turn out to be incels, and some aren’t really actually there? There’s one conversation that I keep thinking about because I love when games try to trick and confuse the characters but also the player. In one apartment you can talk to a sex bot will answer the intercom, you have a conversation and it’s pretty funny with the bot saying things like “re-bootied” instead of rebooted, but then at the end of the conversation Rutger says something along the lines of “Well I’d say goodbye but there’s no point” because she’s a robot and they aren’t humans but then the not replies with in a very sad sort of tone “cuz that would humanise me” up until then she’d been speaking like a robot but that one line was more powerful than any line in the main story, the way the entire conversation makes you think oh this is just a joke, then it hits you with that and when Rutger questions it she says she said “please feel free to use me” which just makes you wonder if that was actually said or if it’s just Rutger losing his mind. There are loads of bits like that, such as the posters that will suddenly change and show something like a guy blowing his brains out, I’d say it’s reminiscent of They Live but at the end of the day who cares about random comparisons that don’t really hold any weight to the actual review.
How’s the gameplay?
Honestly, pretty standard for the most part you’ll be walking around an apartment complex that actually feels like the world's biggest, most maze-like, stupidly complex building in existence, and I’m still not sure if that’s good or bad; on one side it’s good because it almost makes you explore and it really makes you feel like you’re finding new stuff, but, on the other side it can be so frustrating getting lost. The other main part of the gameplay is, wait; I forgot the two different detective visions but really they’re only ever useful in like three parts of the game and they’re presented as more important but you’ll probably forget about them too. But the other part of the game that is actually a main part is jacking into people’s minds, there’s another point on Cyberpunk bingo, a little backstory first. An Observer is basically an interrogator for the police or something, their interrogations consist of going into someone’s mind and pissing around a bit and it’s apparently meant to be really effective but... Well; it’s not. In the game whenever you go into someone’s mind it turns into a Cyberpunk Layers of Fear complete with obtuse puzzles and twisting, disorienting corridors. The game does like putting things behind you, usually if you reach a dead end then you turn around and it’ll be another dead end then you turn around and surprise! The exit is there. But then they also decided to add in those absolute pace killers that are hiding from one look kill enemies, at one point you’re in an office block and there’s a monster so obviously you wait under desks while it walks past on its set path but for some reason you have this weird camera where it looks like you’re moving back and fourth so you feel like you’re not under the desk and it’s just so annoying. My only other complaint about these sections is that they go on too long, with a lot of them it starts as “oh this is cool and weird” and eventually becomes “oh that things doing something, fair”. After playing Layers of Fear it’s more weird to see the geography not constantly changing, that’s why I think Observer is a better premise for a full 10 hour, or so, game because it isn’t a constant headache of moving shit that just keeps going because loud noises only sound loud if you have occasional breaks if it’s continuous then you just grow used to it. What I’m saying here is, if you have no down time from the weird spooky twisting rooms then it just becomes the norm and something usually isn’t scary if you’re expecting it and know exactly what’s gonna happen. Observer, however, has downtime; it has parts where you can quietly walk around, experience the weird side stories then go into the twisty turny bits that, honestly, still feel like they go on a bit too long. But at least you don’t have to play it three times through to get an actual ending. Oh also side point, the game audio for the most part is pretty good, except when some screams or something loud-ish happens then they just decide to turn the volume past eleven.
Observer was enjoyable, the more I think about it in retrospect the more I seem to pick it apart with its gameplay/narrative short comings, it’s eventual downfall that is relying on the always overdone hide from the one shot monster. And now I think about it the plot really isn’t much more than a mismatch of different popular sci-fi stories even the music in one part sounds like music from Ghost in the Shell. At this point if I didn’t like the game I could claim its unoriginal and stealing all its ideas, but really it feels like it acknowledges its parts so I’ll say its more of a homage. Plus it could be worth it for visuals alone. Well, unless you have a visual based epilepsy, if you, do don’t even think about this game or you’ll definitely have seizure.
A game that is literally about a furry/10
https://soundcloud.com/dawn-of-the-winter-moon
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