Observer

Jacked in, freaked out

PC, PS4, XO | $44.95 OOBSERVER-GAME.COM

Bloober Team’s last psychological horror, LayersOfFear, hid its scares behind you. Observer confronts you with the cruelty of its cyberpunk dystopia from the outset. The titular observer, Daniel Lazarski heads to a rundown apartment complex to find his son. First he finds a body, then a plague warning sees the complex put on lockdown. And things only get worse.

Ostensibly, this is a detective game. You traipse between crime scenes, finding clues and jacking into the corrupted memories of augmented victims to understand their last moments. It’s wellrealised, and exceedingly creepy.

Around half the doors in the single complex you explore have someone behind them, ready to have a (usually horrible) chat. We learn two sides of this world’s morality from an augment-clean religious fundamentalist and a chilling pleasure robot, its history from tossed-aside war veterans, and its day-today life from stressed dads. On rare occasions these lead to side-quests, which arguably contain Observer’s best moments, and a story that feels much bigger than most Triple-As will manage this year. Hal Tarrare