P.T. ‘Playable Teaser’ was a great success when it came out. Suddenly, mysteriously dropping on the PS4 Platform back in 2014, P.T. rewarded diligent gamers with a teaser trailer for a new entry into the Silent Hill franchise titled Silent Hills. See what they did there? Yeah, well, in late 2016, we found out that Silent Hills was canceled. Throughout the years since there have been waves of games trying to be a successor and brings us an experience that would have the same tone and horror that P.T. brought us. Infliction is one of those games, but is it a successor to the great demo? Or is the game haunted and weighed down by its own potential?
Plot: Infliction is a first-person survival horror. It is a journey that takes you into the dark secrets of a fractured home. As you go along you are piecing together clues and trying to atone for past sins. All the while a malevolent force seeks to punish you by following you and trying to end you.
Gameplay: The game is simple: Find out why you’re stuck in this house then dive deeper into your psyche to figure out the truth. The runtime of the game is 3 hours, sometimes longer if you don’t know what to do or the game glitches and hides an item from you.
Pros: The Story is a decent one and kept me going to the finish, wanting to figure out why I was stuck in the house. The visuals were great. I loved how the game would change from a house to a hospital or mental institution out of nowhere and kept you in this maze-like hell making you second guess where you were. The best feature for me was the phone that offered an assist in the trickier moments. For instance, if you got stuck in a certain area and kept dying, a phone would magically appear and give you an idea on how to get past that area.
Cons: Too much interactivity with items. I’ve been stuck looking for keys and an idea on how to get out of an area and later realizing all of it was for nothing. Too many features that had little to no meaning to be used; the ability to hide has no real meaning, you rarely see enemies hunting you or you can just easily walk past them, along with the camera that gives you no real instruction on why you need it. Not being clear on key items like how to use, what is it for, or how to obtain it. The biggest gripe is the lighting. In some areas, the game is so dark that your flashlight is useless and there’s no option to brighten up the game; which really takes you out of the game when you can’t really see anything.
The verdict. With my time playing Infliction, I was conflicted by the frustration I had for most of the game with lighting, tons of meaningless objects, and no real straightforward motives; but with all that said I still had a bit of fun. Was it anywhere close to a P.T. successor? No, no it was not. Though I believe if this game had more time to flesh out the idea and developed a little more, I think it would have been closer to what we’ve been waiting for.
