Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife
Who you gonna call? No, not them!
FORMAT PSVR / ETA LATE 2021 / PUB FAST TRAVEL GAMES / DEV FAST TRAVEL GAMES / PLAYERS 1
You could compare the beginning of this VR horror with the opening of Hollywood you see is a dead body, who turns out to be your character, photographer Ed Miller. The comparison becomes even more apt when it turns out he also met his untimely demise within a decadent Hollywood mansion, at the hands of something more sinister than Norma Desmond.
The setup is close to that of the 1994 World Of Darkness tabletop game it’s based on (it’s part of the same family as Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse). In Wraith, the recently business wandering an afterlife version of their past life known as the Shadowland. We’re going hands-on with Afterlife, and are exploring the Barclay Mansion, the site of a seance which went horribly wrong, killing everyone involved – us included. It’s a grand, opulent space, but stands out from other creepy videogame mansions thanks to its modern architecture, while its walls are adorned with posters harking back to the illustrious career of retired movie producer Howard Barclay, its owner.
As you’d expect, the mansion has many doors leading to intriguing new areas to investigation. There are keys to open locked doors yet it’s frustrating that more often than not our path is blocked until we’ve reached an arbitrary point in the story, when a door magically swings open for us to walk through. (Despite being a ghost, we can’t simply walk through walls.)
SHATTERED MEMORIES
The way Wraith tells its story doesn’t exactly play to PSVR’s strengths, featuring memories that feel too much like cutscenes. We can walk around while these play out but it doesn’t immerse us in the moment, while interactivity is limited to a few scant objects (we discover we can smash some vodka bottles). Most memories trigger the moment we’re in proximity, although a few fragments linger until we’ve recovered Miller’s old camera, which we then snap to activate, acting as little more than a sinister voice that echoes inside our head during these moments, which serves as both a hint and hindrance. more functional since it enables us to see in the dark (so of course it is hidden in a pitch-black room). We can although we don’t get to test its value as a defensive weapon, Project-Zero-style. We do learn, however, that we can use the bulb’s light to burn away vines in our path, though that uses up Pathos energy Another stat to pay attention to is health, or rather Corpus, which in keeping with the photography theme is
SHADOW PLAY
Our Corpus level doesn’t really matter during our hands-on as the malevolent spectres we encounter aren’t much of a threat. While one room has a closet that can feasibly work as a hiding spot, the spectres confront appear in areas directly in our way; we mainly sneak our way around them (on the few occasions we succumb to an instant-fail, everything fades to black and we’re returned to our last save point). Some of the spectres are particularly eerie, such as a hanging man who spawns at various points in the mansion, but there’s nothing to make our hair stand on end like in Alien: Isolation or Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Likewise, the darkly lit corridors where it’s not clear what’s around the corner give us a feeling of unease, but what we can do about it is limited. Beyond the scripted sequences, we’re hoping for more agency in how we can overcome Afterlife’s dangers, whether it’s a tense game of hide-and-seek or some semblance of spectral combat. Still, we’re intrigued to see what lies behind the other doors in this mansion and what occult matters Barclay and his entourage dabbled in. This world could just do with a bit more, well, life.
IMPRESSIONS
“WE FIND THERE’S A RIGID LINEARITY TO OUR INVESTIGATION.”
Afterlife’s got lots of atmosphere thanks to creepy audio, and there are surely more mysteries to explore in the mansion. Hopefully, the final game ups the scares and doesn’t stick so tightly to its script.