As a fan of that storytelling niche wherein sci-fi and horror meet, one would think Signalis is a perfect fit for me. Yet, for reasons I will try to elaborate on, this indie title completely failed to garner my interest. It's especially odd considering a similar game that came out less than a month prior, Scorn, was a very enjoyable experience for me. What could be so different as to divide these two games into the wholly separate categories of "like" and "dislike" in my brain?
Certainly the visual differences are one thing. Signalis is very anime inspired, so much so it's fairly easy to spot the influences - "Ghost in the Shell", "Blame!" and "Evangelion" being the most obvious examples. While there are some first-person sections, the majority of the game is played from a fixed isometric perspective. It's a rather baffling choice given that every entity and object is 3D rendered. Why not use more dynamic camera placement and movement like the classic survival horror games Signalis seeks to emulate?
One comment I read recently online criticized Signalis for being too much like a Silent Hill cover band; not a homage, so much as a direct copy. There is most definitely a lot of Silent Hill baked into the game, but some Resident Evil is sprinkled in too. A strict six item inventory limit and pocket-dimension storage containers are the most obvious examples, but torching corpses to prevent revival (as well as some puzzles) harken directly back to the RE1 remake. The thing is Silent Hill and Resident Evil are two great flavors that don't really go well together despite both being popular entries in the survival horror subgenre.
Compounding the problem is a strange decision on the part of the developers to make basic utility items like the flashlight and camera take up inventory slots, not to mention some weirdly restrictive limits on ammo stacking. Other issues include difficult to trigger (or outright hidden) interaction prompts, and an overly obtuse plot. Just to clarify, I'm not against unconventional forms of storytelling. However, I do feel like a player should have a through line to latch onto provided they take notice of the broad strokes. Signalis doesn't do this though, choosing instead to dump a bunch of misleading thematic elements into a chronological/POV blender.
Despite all those criticisms, the game seems to have been received well on Steam in addition to more official review outlets. Honestly, it makes me wonder if I'm missing something fundamental. Maybe it's just the overall vibe that people find appealing...and since my answer to the first two questions asked at the beginning of this blog post are "no", I can only conclude that I must not be tuned into the frequency this game is broadcasting on.
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