2Dark (Xbox One, PS4, PC)

 

2Dark - (Xbox One, PS4, PC) : 

Starting up 2Dark is an unsettling experience.  As a top down, almost SNES like, retro-looking styled game you wouldn't expect the very first thing to see to be the brutal murder of your wife and kidnapping of your children.  But as the protagonist and his family experience a camping trip gone wrong, this is exactly what unfolds in front of you.  

And no, it doesn't mean that you immediately go on a mission to rescue your kids, as the next scene sets things up seven years later, where our hero has become a jaded, recovering alcoholic of a PI, who has also become somewhat of a vigilante....tracking cases where children go missing in the hope of finding a clue to the wherabouts of his long lost kids.  

In doing so, he has discovered a child trafficking ring, and so heads to various locations to track down these sick child-traffickers, rescue the kids and shut the whole thing down, one way or another.

So yes, it's all rather grim....even more so than is usual in horror games, and the fact that the game's style is sort-of nineties in design makes it seem all the more wrong and gloomy.  And everything is dark...really dark! Including the levels!

Each level works as a themed haunted house type thing, with, for example, the first being a closed down circus/theme park, and our hero, Mr. Smith, enters these buildings armed with a torch, a gun and some candy to lure kids to safety with and/or to fling at switches from a distance.  

Of course the torch requires batteries, and the gun requires bullets, so you'll need to pick extra packs of these up along the way.  But even armed with a torch, the overly dark levels can be a very dangerous place.

The floors are always filled with massive holes, that aren't easy to see, and more often than not you'll instantly die when you come across them for the first time.  Hopefully Mr. Smith will have smoked a cigarette not long before you encounter the holes, as this is how you save your progress.  Too many smokes though, and you'll have a coughing fit, which will alert the baddies! 

Ah yes...the enemies! The game would like you to pass by most of these guys stealthily, but the mechanics of 2Dark make that very difficult, so usually you'll just try to lure them to a good area where you can blast their brains out, and get them out of the way.  

As mentioned, any sound will have them hunting you down, and when you eventually find some kids, they can of course be very noisy, which makes it even harder to sneak past.  Thankfully the bad guys can also fall foul of the many traps and animals that also fill the levels, which can make things a little easier.

When you do find the kids, you'll have to lead them to safety, keeping them quiet or in one place until you clear a path.  Any enemy encounters will result in their deaths more often than not, and as mentioned, although the game wants you to be stealthy for the best scores, you'll get a lot further if you just clear out all the bad guys first.  There are bosses to fight too of course, and these can be even more tricky to dispatch...

Overall though, the game relies heavily on trial and error. It took a few goes for me to get properly involved in it, and also to make any sort of progress.  It did start to grow on me after a while, but with the very grim subject matter and the difficulty, this game won't be for everyone.  

It was created by the guy who created Alone in the Dark and Little Big Adventure, Frédérick Raynal, and I can see what he was trying to do, but by capturing the old school feel, he's also captured the old school difficulty and I fear that will put many people off.  But it does have a certain gloomy, depressing charm, if that makes sense.  I guess it's worth checking out, so long as you know what to expect going in to it....

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