A blow to wake her up from her bed, two shots to lift her up from the dead. With these very unfriendly words, Do not Knock Twice was presented to the world, a film that arrived in Italy in the middle of summer with the title Non Bussate a Quella Porta.
Interpreted by Katee Sackhoff of Battlestar Galactica, the film belongs as you have guessed to the horror genre, even before Resident Evil 7 among the most popular for the use of virtual reality in videogame.
To the boys of Wales Interactive, Soul Axiom development team, the task of bringing us personally into the nightmare of a metropolitan legend linked to a demonic witch, available right now for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Even if you do not have a viewer, you can in fact play Do not Knock Twice: but is it worth it?
KNOCK KNOCK!
Do not Knock Twice’s plot revolves around a mother’s search for her daughter, devoured by feelings of guilt for being the cause of the forced dismissal of the young girl who had been there before. If you have seen the film you will surely know more than we do on the subject, since in the videogame there are not too many preambles before putting us where the whole story takes place.
In possession of very few elements that push us to do so, let’s start exploring the house in which Do not Knock Twice is set, as per the tradition of the horror genre enclosed in the sinister walls of an old house, located this time in Wales. If in the film the director Caradog W. James tried to insert the conflictual relationship between mother and daughter at the center of the story, in the
Do not Knock Twice videogame this element is only hinted, letting the player possibly to deepen a little the question. Going around the house of the witch, it is indeed possible to find documents of various kinds that tell us something more about both the personal story of Jess and Chloe, and the extent to which they have to do.
THE’With such a classic setting, one should have undoubtedly done something more in terms of narrative elements: as it is, the game prevents you from successfully sinking into the part , asking us to trust in the phone call “mother and daughter against supernatural creature” “to live a scary experience in virtual reality. As we are about to see, unfortunately, Do not Knock Twice also fails from this point of view.
PLAYSTATION TROPHIES 4
Trophy hunters can find bread for their teeth with Do not Knock Twice. In fact, the game offers a total of twenty-nine objectives, one of which is Platinum, five Gold, fourteen Silver and nine Bronze.
Their nature naturally starts from the completion of the various “chapters” of which history is composed, to move on to some collectible objects and other types of hidden elements. To get all the Trophies, you must complete the game at least a couple of times.
I’M THE BAD WOLF!
The demonic creature that persecutes the protagonists of Do not Knock Twice manages to be a scarecrow only in the initial phase, above all because the player still has no idea what to expect. The game soon makes things clear by serving the first of the so-called “jump scare”, that is to say the unexpected events of which the horror genre has always been stuffed.
An expedient to scare not necessarily bad, but which should not be abused: this is what Wales Interactive does, so trying to put the fear on those who are with the helmet in the head.
There is no doubt that in an immersive environment like that of virtual reality, the classic jump takes on another effect, but to be credible it needs to be supported by other dynamics that make the experience truly terrifying. This unfortunately does not happen in Do not Knock Twice, where the first minutes of play are over, everything becomes phone call: the presence that we constantly hear behind our backs no longer scares us,
just as we know very well where the next door slam awaits us or the lightning coming through the window. The absence of noteworthy puzzles also makes Do not Knock Twice a merely exploratory experience, as well as the fact that the witch actually never tries to harm our lives – if not by blowing up the coronary arteries. Depending on the time taken to dwell on the elements that are gradually, the duration is around two hours and a little bit.
