HERE THEY LIE
And up you jump…
Here They Lie manages to give me actual nightmares. I suspect the creators of the game will take that as a compliment, given the disturbing, dreamlike nature of the world, and the horrifying impossibility of the events and inhabitants that populate it. As psychological horror games go, this is about as weird as it gets, the madness magnified exponentially by the fact it’s in VR and you’re therefore inside the nightmare, living it. Sadly, Here They Lie also makes me feel nauseous, aimless, and a little bored towards the end. The premise is unclear from the start (and I won’t spoil anything), but you’re a bald chap in a suit, looking for a woman in a yellow dress called Dana. You two used to be together, but something happened to break up the happy couple and now you’re alone inside a bizarre city. Or are you? Every so often you’ll catch glimpses of Dana and even interact with her – she’s a beautiful island of bright yellow in the game’s otherwise drab and deliberately unreal environment – but for the most part this is a lonely, unsettling exploration.
Interactions are very lighttouch: open a door, read a note, mess with a bin, and so on. You could describe it as a walking simulator, except you’re constantly tormented by horrifying creatures and visions. There are a few stealth sections and you can die, but that’s as far as traditional gameplay elements go. In fact, the stuff you can do is poorly explained – I don’t even realise there is a torch or a sprint button until I’ve been playing for about two hours.
Though the world invites parallels with Silent Hill, Here They Lie lacks character or context. The notes you read are (brilliantly) disturbing, and the phone calls you get from a random stranger add to the sensation of weirdness, but it all still feels empty and a little aimless as you glide through the nightmare alone.
SCARED SICK
And that gliding through is, unfortunately, rather unpleasant. The fact you feel uncomfortable and scared is a testament to the game’s horror. However, because of the way Here They Lie uses motion (movement on the left stick, 45 degree rotations on the right), all but the strongest of constitution may find themselves feeling very queasy, very quickly. And that combination of sickness and scares makes every minute of this game very tough to play.
Persist until the bitter end and there are some answers to be had, even if the story and setting start to repeat the same tricks towards the close. There are wonderfully horrifying moments and some lovely little details, but they’re too few and far between – and getting to them is an exercise in resilience rather than pleasure. This is most definitely the dark side of virtual reality.
“YOU’RE CONSTANTLY TORMENTED BY HORRIFYING CREATURES AND VISIONS.”