DYING: REBORN
Deserves confinement
Let me fess up: escape rooms terrify me. I won’t get in a lift, let alone an elaborate bunker that stays magically locked until you solve a series of convoluted conundrums. On the surface, this should make me a strange person to review a horror game set around a set of escape rooms… virtual reality escape rooms. *gulp*
But it’s not my hatred of small spaces that ruins Dying: Reborn. No, it’s because this is a laughably low-budget, infuriatingly obtuse experience. 1 Audio levels are cringingly uneven, moving around in 45° increments is a chore, and puzzles make no sense. I may not be a Mensa member, but I got through Portal 2 without this much trouble.
After waking in a room riddled with bugs, an ornate piano and a CRT telly, lead character Matthew2 must escape his creepy confines using nowt but a brolly, half a screwdriver, an antique penny, and two scraps of paper. Obviously. Now, if these disparate items combined to inventive effect, that would be fine. Trouble is, you just end up wandering aimlessly, spamming q in the hopes your equipped item reacts to something in the environment.
The game’s internal logic is so obscure, it deflates any sense of enthusiasm to solve challenges. Why do I need to scrub this wall to read the demented scribbles of a child? Why you do keep giving me coins? Where is the other half of this bloody screwdriver?!
The business model is also unsavoury, asking you to buy the PS VR version separately from the standard PS4 game. And this edition only contains three of the full title’s six levels. (Is that worse?) Not buying this would be the ultimate lucky escape. Dave Meikleham