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House of Ashes Review | PC Gamers
need to know
What is it? The third part of the horror anthology takes place this time in an ancient Sumerian temple.
Expect to pay GBP 25 / USD 30
Developer Mega game
Publisher Bandai Namco
freed October 22
Review date GTX 1080 Ti, Intel i7-8086K, 16GB RAM
multiplayer game Yes
Associate Official website
“Black Phase Anthology” is a series that is fascinated by the horror of the movie. Its setting, each item spun new yarn, let Supermassive cast a big net. Following the issue of the Medan’s ghost ship and the witch of Little Hope, we now find ourselves in the House of Ashes exploring the Sumerian Temple with Marines and CIA agents. The transition from civilians and jump scares to soldiers and gunfights was an important transition that made me pause at first, but the anthology became stronger as a result.
Soldiers perform missions and discover something scary or supernatural. Of course, this is a classic genre metaphor, and it produces some of my favorites, from aliens to dog soldiers. But for a series that owes more to adventure games than action games, heavily armed jarheads seem to be a strange choice. However, I shouldn’t worry, because it turns out that the creepy bat-like opponents in “House of Ashes” don’t care about bullets.
This does not stop the Marines, or the pair of Iraqi Republic Guards who fell into the Sumer Temple with them from consuming a lot of ammunition. There are explosives. When they didn’t shoot the monster helplessly, they were shooting at each other. There are many long and gorgeous QTEs, and they are listed as the most interesting and certainly the most exquisite in Supermassive.
Bring a big stick
Salim, one of the Republican Guards, is playable and he is featured in most top brawls. He put his hand on a big metal rod very early, I swear it must be full of some mysterious power, boy, did he make good use of it, save lives, pierce monsters and throw it like a javelin-honestly , He is very good at Avengers should fire Hawkeye and hire this guy. In addition to being a bastard, Salim also provided us with a key Iraqi perspective, balancing the Americans’ initial fanatical attitude.
Although the monsters in the House of Ash like to lurk in the dark, Supermassive didn’t stop them too much. They will show up soon, and you will often see them from then on, especially their terrible claws, which keep crawling out of the cracks in the door. They ticked the boxes of all movie monsters: they looked disgusting, they made creepy sounds, they laughed at bullets, but they had some obvious weaknesses, and survivors would naturally learn to take advantage of these weaknesses.
Although it pays more attention to vivid action scenes, “House of Ashes” leaves a lot of room for criticism of the Iraq war, personal confrontation and even the doomed love triangle. All this is horrible material, fueling tensions and creating potential betrayals. You will have some chances to really mess up your “allies” at critical moments, or you can try to make everyone a BFF. You are the one who makes the choice, but it’s hard not to be attracted by the character’s feelings. Their personalities and relationships were established very early, and I found myself doing something meaningful to them instead of making smart phone calls.
Take the analogy of survivors being injured or infected as an example. House of Ashes likes this very much. In particular, there is an example in which my partner and I deliberately made such obvious wrong choices time and time again.The game keeps giving us the opportunity to kill or leave one obviously It will bring disaster, but after hearing the Marine Corps chatter about never leaving anyone behind, the wrong choice is clearly the winner. Terror is to create disaster. A horror movie in which everyone makes rational decisions is a boring horror movie.
Surprisingly, I only succeeded with the death of one protagonist. Eric, the U.S. Air Force colonel in charge of this operation failed to survive, but he failed a bit. He was an insecure “good guy”, so it didn’t matter. House of Ashes pointed out the horrible trick. If you don’t support them to let them live, then you are happy to support them to die. It’s not that I planned Eric’s death, it was sealed after an earlier wrong decision.
fast and convenient
Failure to pass the QTE will have consequences, but this is not how Eric died. In fact, I succeeded in getting him to make the last heroic act. Choice can determine whose life or death is better than dexterity. Although they are fierce, QTE is still very simple, and will give you a lot of warnings in advance, let you prepare for their coming, and even let you know the type of upcoming QTE.
Little Hope is where Supermassive started to add this useful context, but House of Ashes continues to use this approach, even if it is just a few small things, such as clarifying when the interaction will push the scene forward. You know not to touch it until you finish exploring. This is especially beneficial in cooperatives, so you won’t prevent their friends from viewing more reliefs of Sumerian demons or excerpts from the 1930s diary.
The unfortunate quintet became a group of amateur archaeologists, and the soldiers followed in the footsteps of the ancient expedition. The House of Ashes continues the anthology’s love of real myths and historical events, this time intoxicated by Mesopotamian legends and “The Curse of Akkad”, which is a song that details the Akkadian Empire in Naram Emperor Sim declared himself a god and plundered a temple. In this poem, the gods retaliate against ol’Naram-Sim for the Gutian invasion. However, in the prologue of the House of Ashes, Gutian’s problem is far less than that of the underground vampire monster.
A Sumerian temple is a little more magnificent than a small New England town or a rusty ship, and its core is mysterious-what are these beasts? ——Meaning that I am very eager to get my hands on any file, tablet or diary. Throughout the process, my archaeologist colleague and I have been arguing-which is another reason why you really need to try this with at least one person-it has a lot of tricks you want to know.
Separation anxiety
From a mechanical point of view, there is almost nothing new here, but it is a slightly stronger collaborative experience. Three modes are provided again, allowing you to play alone, up to four friends (share a controller) or share the story mode with another person. The previous shared story mode allowed you to play everyone, but this time you need to take care of specific characters. This makes sense, because Rachel—a CIA field officer and Eric’s separated wife—had a long period of time with Salim, and they were alone. If you did not control them in their single-player adventure, it would be embarrassing to try to play one of them because you will lack important background about what they see and do.
This allows my partner and I to have a greater sense of belonging to the role, and it makes the role play easier to be consistent. This also means that you really need to rely on your partner to fill your vacancies, because you often find yourself separated and doing completely different things. Once, when my friend and Rachel were with Rachel, I was tacitly aware of interpersonal relationships, all the way to her eyes in the lake of blood. One of us is more stressed than the other.
I just hope the camera is better. There are many dark, narrow corridors, and the camera will zoom in to your shoulder, allowing your character to occupy half of the screen. Sometimes it obviously tries to evoke a shooter, but it is too ethereal and bulky to work. At least you can slowly explore the more spacious rooms of the temple, and to get good film shots, it is always working. It provides you with some good excuses to click the screenshot button. Unfortunately, some of my best people are firmly in the realm of spoilers.
It might be a mistake to start my first game at 10pm, because it kept me hanging on its hook until I climbed out of the Sumer Temple at dawn. Of course, I have to spend another 30 minutes dissecting it with my friends. The final scene becomes very crazy and easily becomes the best reward Supermassive has built so far, but the journey to get there is also very compelling. Like many horror movies, it swings on the dangerous wire between stupidity and coolness. It doesn’t always fall on the right side, but it’s still very interesting, even if it makes you moan.