Total Twinsanity.
The survival horror genre has seen a wealth of influential titles such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Alone in the Dark. These games, among several others, have often be replicated in some form or fashion by new studios looking to create something from those inspirations. While some have shamelessly copied them almost entirely, others have adapted them alongside new mechanics and gameplay systems to create something new. While Tormented Souls certainly looks to pull from several games of the past, it often brings several outdated elements along for the ride.
Now, I mentioned Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Alone in the Dark for a reason. While Tormented Souls certainly looks to pull more from the original Resident Evil than that of the others, their inspirations are nonetheless everywhere you see. As you explore the Wildberger Hospital, you’ll encounter darkly lit rooms, puzzle-centric doors, and various other means to progress through a series of odd and complex items. While not every puzzle is a home run, especially as some solutions are a bit obtuse for their own good, Dual Effect and Abstract Digital nonetheless have put together a fairly well-woven love letter to the survival horror games of the past.
As Caroline Walker, the story that follows is one that dives a lot into cult rituals and summoning; one that involves the use of twins in order to fulfill a long-standing prophecy. While some of the story revolves around conversations you’ll have with a few characters, nearly everything that will aid in telling the game’s story is found in journals or bits of pieces of a diary you’ll find early on, that and Caroline talking to herself as she records her journey. Some elements of the story itself is not anything we haven’t seen before and it can get a bit convoluted and predictable in some ways, but overall it does its job at keeping you engaged. I will say that some aspects of what you’re tasked with doing towards the end of the game does allow it to end in a very interesting way, a conclusion that I honestly didn’t see coming.
However; the presentation is where the game stumbles more so than it ever achieves. When Resident Evil was released on the PlayStation back in 1996, voice acting was very much in its infancy. Lines like “You were almost a Jill sandwich” and “You, the master of unlocking” were hilarious at the time, but since then, we’ve had performances that are awe-inspiring, emotionally charged and a few that rival other mediums. However; the acting in Tormented Souls is somehow worse, and I’m not sure if it’s intentional, or that the actress that voices Caroline was just unsure exactly what to do. Combine this with a script that doesn’t always feel competently written, and you start to wonder just what went wrong here.
The core gameplay is what you expect from a game being pulled from so many different inspirations. You use a variety of items to solves puzzles as you explore the hospital, wielding a lighter to avoid the pits of darkness around you, and even despite being able to operate a generator to illuminate much of the hospital, you’ll constantly be switching back to that lighter for safety as you can die if exposed to too much darkness. You’ll wield a nail gun at first, upgrading to a make-shift shotgun, but as always, ammo will be scarce, so you’ll often have to pick your battles. Since you cannot equip the lighter and a gun at the same time, you’ll have to rely on visible light sources, candles to light, and then luring the creatures out of the dark, at least until you find a certain weapon later on. but even so, this light versus dark system plays into the bulk of the adventure.
While the guns you have are decent enough to aim, the nail gun, in particular, feels vastly too weak in most instances. Enemies, which are grotesque mutations of what once was human, merged with some form of metal apparatus, can hit for some pretty hefty damage, and while you’ll have medkits and morphine to survive most injuries, I wish the nail gun didn’t take nearly seven shots to down even the most basic enemies. The game can also feel rather clunky in its movement, and the fixed angles can make dodging these grotesque creatures a bit of an annoyance when it keeps swapping your view angle if you get too close to certain areas of the screen.
Despite the camera angle hang-ups, the overall aesthetic to the environments fit the bill extremely well with well-crafted and appropriately lit rooms and hallways. Despite the game taking place largely in a hospital, there is more than enough variety in the locations as you backtrack from location to location once you’ve earned or discovered a particular item or two. You’ll have the typical moments where you cannot progress until you have done something to push you forward, such as heading back to the generator to cut the power so that you can traverse an electrically charged body of water. In this instance, the backtracking is tolerable, as this opens a shortcut a few rooms later. The backtracking isn’t obscene by any means, but get used to traversing a few locations over and over again as you’ll see them pretty damn often.
One of the ways in which Tormented Souls cleverly uses its puzzles is by having Caroline travel backward in time. This allows her to interact with people and items at pre-determined points in the past. This plays a huge part in the story as Caroline can actually affect the past and not just be a passenger meant to witness events as they unfold. When Caroline discovers a young girl in a cell, one that was only accessible after solving a puzzle, you apply acid to the lock on her cell, allowing her to escape a few days later once the acid has taken effect. This event leads to something big much later on, but revisit that day with lock-cutters, and well, it changes how this scene originally transpired.
Tormented Souls can certainly look to entertain fans of the classic survival horror games, fused with mechanics and gameplay systems of the era. While modern gamers may not fully embrace a lot of its outdated designs, I still think there is a solid enough game here that shows tremendous promise for a potential franchise. It’s certainly rough in some places with some clunky and stiff character movement and its painful voicework, but if you look at this as being a tribute to what Resident Evil and Silent Hill first started out as, then there is some charm to what has been done here to satisfy that era of gaming.
Developer - Dual Effect & Abstract Digital. Publisher - PQube Limited. Released - Sept 6th, 2021. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS4/PS5, Nintendo Switch, Windows PC. Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mild Language, Nudity. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.