Beyond in fact the numerous crashes reported by users, which fortunately we have not found, this peculiar horror FPS suffers because of a mediocre artificial intelligence, virtually no technical optimization, basic options and, above all, the complete lack of references narratives beyond the cinematic introduction, which for a product of this kind is not a minor defect.
The only way to get an idea of the inner structure of Inner Chains is to read the synopsis on its Steam page, stormed by negative reviews: in a mysterious world, dominated by a horrifying biomechanical technology, a reigning Caste has reduced the people into slavery by imposing the worship of obscure deities. As a common person,
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Inner Chains guesses the design of the scenarios, but everything else leaves much to be desired
MONSTER WORLD
Imagine that the main objective of an independent production, even more so given the reimbursement policies offered by Steam, is to look for a start with a bang, a preliminary phase that immediately drops the player in the action after communicating some simple rules of basis.
Inner Chains does not do any of this, wasting the entire first chapter of a campaign that takes about four hours to wander the scene in a tediously slow way, with no chance of interaction, let alone experiment with fights. After the sequence of the “sacrifice” and some disappointing clash with bare hands, undermined by a collision detection to say the least approximate,
we finally get hold of our first weapon, a sort of electric rifle. We can use it, taking care to avoid its rapid overheating, to eliminate human beings reduced to slow and pathetic zombies, who drag themselves in our direction in expectation, and perhaps in hope, to be freed from their suffering.
Soon the experience reveals its soul puzzle, with horrifying switches with a human face that must be activated to ensure that certain electrical barriers go out or turn on, allowing us to pass and proceed to the next area, possibly indicated by the fluttering of pollen from plants scattered along the way, sometimes alongside monstrous living checkpoints.
There is no doubt, in short, that the artistic direction signed by Tomasz Strzalkowski exploits the “bestiary” deriving from the very inspiration of Giger’s works, but this goal remains unfortunately an end in itself, given that everything else leaves much to be desired.
WEAPONS AND LUGGAGE
The world of Inner Chains is as dangerous as horrifying: around the levels are plants that attack those who pass by, cloache on the ceilings that release poisonous bombs, huge shellfish that grab from the top who is so foolish to walk where it falls their burr and large eggs that enclose creatures capable of launching lethal balls of fire.
We then proceed slowly, although our character can run for some stretches, trying to reach in each scenario the stone boards that unlock letters of the alphabet and allow, at some point, to decipher the code that characterizes all the incisions on the walls.
To find them it is often necessary to interface with devices, which are also biomechanical and unpleasant, that envelop us in the face, giving us the vision of an area that we must reach. Then there are the enemies: not only the pathetic zombies of which we have already spoken, but also guards belonging to the ruling caste, mutants, infernal hounds and the most lethal type of all, the “tanks”, which must be eliminated by exploding the cylinders that carry on his back or trying to inflict a lot ‘of shots.
The approach to combat is very different from that of shooters like DOOM or the classic Painkiller, to stay on the theme of horror: the opponents are generally few and should be feared, as capable of killing us with a few well-aimed shots.
