Once upon a time there was a great war against the monstrous Eastern hordes, and to power in devastated Poland came Chiron Corporation, which produced cybernetic implants.
Chiron is now fully replace a government institutions and replacing them with corporate, terribly inefficient and soaked senseless bureaucracy. This level Observer world is drawn very schematically, all this – stamps, which did not even come up with a normal backgrounds.
But there is also the “underworld” of the lower class society S. And it demonstrates the Observer with maximum attention to detail.
The entire game takes place within the apartment building, which was built, it seems, even in times of developed socialism. It turns «Half-Life 2 effect”, where the historic architecture spiked minced, gloomy buildings aliens.
Only in the Observer the wall, remembering Stalin’s repressions, caked with a variety of “cultural layers” of all the equipment is clearly a very important purpose, but shabby and if assembled in the garage. It is this, what should be in the lower ranks of the totalitarian society.
Still Bloober based in Krakow and in Poland is still alive the memory of the authoritarian past. In this regard, even the most talented game designer gives mediocre, but who lived in the former ATS countries. Except Lucas Pope (Papers, Please), of course.
The main characters in the Observer – this door. Wood, plasterboard, metal, rough, but always imbued with wiring, security devices and intercom. It is through them the main character – Daniel Lazarski – communicates with the inhabitants of the house.
Only a few people he meets are not behind the door, of which only one is alive. Drug addicts and dealers, rot in their dens old, cowardly informers and simply doomed citizens.
Talk with them a short but succinct Observer manages several remarks to describe the person with whom you converse – and the door does not need to look.
The game works flawlessly with confined space. Dan Lazarski locked in tight corridors with dim light, his interlocutors do not leave their cozy refuge, thus creating the most subtle sense of tightness protects. Remember how you and your friends as a child were digging tunnels in snowdrifts – that something similar feeling, but diluted with anxiety.
Another feeling that is hard to capture and describe – a vague reluctance to leave this place. Such attachment once called mansion Scratches Sheet, it envelops like a blanket, and then threw it under the blanket of a spider.
Initially Detective Daniel Lazarski seems stereotypical character at the intersection of film noir and cyberpunk. He – our guide in a strange world, where the locals tell all secret. Generally Lazarski runs on Chiron, but not very happy about it, just accept as a sad necessity.
He was given a bunch of necessary implants (which he did not ask!), The car and the broadest powers, but most importantly – Dan allowed to connect to other people’s consciousness. His position observer (Observer) exactly it means.
Bloober Team like nightmares. They make excellent to create the dark corridors of the subconscious. Layers of Fear is almost entirely composed of such and Bloober had to make sacrifices, because Observer most of the time necessary to carry out in reality.
While it does not merge into the wrong dive Lazarski brains – there is no spoiler, at the first visit to the consciousness of others you will instantly predict such an outcome. This is where the hero and ceases to seem a set of dies, because it – it just all those whose minds Lazarski visited.
las, here Observer goes too far. Nightmares last long, for too long, the value of information totally disproportionate to the time spent mined there.
In fact, Dan is free to go wherever he wants, and to investigate any end, and nightmares have only one right way, often non-obvious, and sometimes the game in general leads to a primitive stealth.
There are only three episodes, one of them – in reality, but in each of them as though the truck katish on ribbed surface: all the annoying, but nowhere to go.
Finally, there are abundant Screamer, and very vulgar. Why do they put in – a good question, because the suspense is pumped serious and without sharp sounds ugly and rye.
