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dkirschner's Blair Witch (PC)
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| [May 28, 2024 11:41:19 PM]
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Finished tonight with Patrick. We've been playing this one for the past couple months and made a push to wrap up. What is this game about? Well, you're this guy Ellis with some serious PTSD. You go into the woods looking for a missing kid, against the wishes of your wife and the sheriff, who regularly allude to your mental illness (usually in flashbacks or hallucinations). A man with childhood trauma related to woods (??), who then joined the military and got his squad killed in an ambush, "accidentally" killed a civilian, came back and became a police officer, and shot an unarmed man, is totally the one you want getting lost in the woods with the Blair Witch.
Luckily, you have a faithful canine companion, Bullet. Bullet is the best, and our biggest regret is that we gave Bullet dark colors, which made him impossible to see at night. Most of the game occurs at night. Suggestion: make Bullet the lightest color you can and give him a bright collar. Bullet searches areas for you, sniffs out items, follows trails, and is a happy, good boy. He makes you feel less alone in the woods, but also makes you feel more unnerved. Because Bullet is so lovable, you know that something bad will happen to Bullet. You just don't know what or when it will happen.
I think that the game is split into two main parts: the woods and the house. I mostly enjoyed the woods, but mostly did not enjoy the house. In the woods, you are following the trail of the kid and whoever might have abducted him. The woods become creepier the deeper you go. You get turned around. There are monsters. There is a man with a coat of human skin. It's deeply unsettling. You occasionally find a tape for your camcorder (this is the Blair Witch, after all!). Some tapes are just story tapes; watch them to get info. Other tapes are interactable. If you are looking at a spot in the environment where something happens on tape, whatever happened on tape will happen in the environment. For example, a fallen tree is blocking your path. On the tape, the tree falls. Pause the tape before the tree falls, put the camcorder away, and voila, the tree will not be fallen. You'll use this trick to get through doors, find objects, and so on. It's neat, though can be annoying when (a) you can't figure out what has changed or what you are supposed to be paying attention to, or (b) you know what you are supposed to do but you can't trigger the change because you aren't lining up in just the right way or whatever. Those are the woods. Probably 2/3 of the game. Maybe 3/4.
Then there's the house. I think this is the house from the movie, or at least a very similar house. This is where, if you weren't sure yet, Ellis descends into madness and (if you got the bad ending like us at least) becomes a terrible version of himself (again) under the Blair Witch's influence. The house segment lasted far too long, with extremely repetitive hallucinations and flashbacks, with us having to see and hear the same things we'd been seeing and hearing for the entire game, as if the game didn't think that players knew Ellis was unhinged. This was established far earlier! The house appears to have three stories, but you will go up and down roughly 50 flights of stairs. Seriously, it lasts foreeeeever, just wandering through the house, here's a flashback, there's a hallucination, here's another monster to avoid, there's the screen shaking, here's the same room you already were in 10 times ("sigh," Ellis says every time--for real, me too!), here's another text message to read, and there are the stairs yet again.
Finally, it ends. With the bad ending, Ellis is trapped. With the good ending, Ellis is freed. You will get the bad ending, but this will free you from Blair Witch. Overall, I leaned toward enjoying it. The atmosphere is great, especially the sound design. It's creepy. But it's not a psychological horror game I would easily recommend.
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dkirschner's Blair Witch (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 16 April, 2024
GameLog closed on: Tuesday 28 May, 2024 |
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