In 2016 the Polish studio Bloober team, known for the dilogy of psychological horror Layers of Fear and recent Blair witch, released another horror film called Observer, but already in a new cyberpunk setting. In general, the game was warmly received by critics and players, and you can familiarize yourself with our review somewhere nearby… Today before us Observer: System Redux – remaster timed to coincide with the release of new generation systems Xbox Series X | S and Playstation 5… The developers got a great chance to work where mistakes were made, and the available power of fresh gaming platforms removes the technical limitations that the team faced in 2016. What happened and what still raises questions – we will tell in our review.
First of all, let’s remember what the game is. Observer is a psychological cyberpunk horror story based on the fate of Daniel Lazarski, a Krakow police officer who arrived at a residential building in the city in search of his son. On the spot, Dan discovers that a killer is wielding the building, brutally cracking down on his victims, and the building, as soon as our hero steps on the threshold, is quarantined, completely isolating the officer from the outside world. Now Daniel and, accordingly, the player, will have to comb the entire house, along the way exploring locations in search of clues and clues, as well as talking with a few residents.
In a nutshell, Observer is a screamer game simulator. The gameplay is entirely based on the exploration of locations and solving simple puzzles. Along the way, you will also encounter side tasks that you will receive from the residents of the house, reading someone else’s mail in the computers they meet, or simply getting into one or another location. At the same time, the remaster offers new side effects that were not in the original.
However, we cannot say that the quests in the game are really interesting and memorable. In most cases, you need to go to another apartment, study the location, talk to one of the tenants (by all means through a closed door – the developers, apparently, cover up their unwillingness to work on additional character models and animations) or read someone else’s mail.
Quests (both side and parts of the story quest) stand apart, which lead the protagonist to the need to penetrate other people’s memories. The fact is that Daniel is not just a police officer, but the very Observer who has the opportunity to connect to a brain implant and thus immerse himself in the consciousness of the wearer. It looks like a different degree of surrealism trip, during which you will see the defining moments in the fate of the character under study. By the end of such stages, a more or less clear picture is built in front of the player about what exactly happened.
