Ad Infinitum Review (K0rrup73d)
Short Review: Ad Infinitum is a gothic horror puzzle game utilizing elements of WWI which is visually strunning but falls short in its mediocre execution. The war moments are underwhelming, horror is lackluster to the point of really just being as aesthetic, and suffers from a buggy checkpoint save system.
Long Review: This game was a real let down because it looked really interesting but just ended up failing to keep me engaged. As I said above, the game looks great but it fails to capture the scale of WWI in its war moments and has such a lackluster use of horror it really just felt like an aesthetic. To its core it is a puzzle game which are pretty good but the game has two issues: 1. The game doesn't track what objectives you've completed properly; as an example there is a part where you have to pick up a phone to trigger the next objective, but if you complete that objective and pick up the phone again it will overwrite whatever objective you're on and replace it with the objective it triggers (this sort of issue happens a lot). 2. The game gives no guidance. Now, some of you may be saying "good I like a challenge" and maybe my brain is smoother than yours, but for the average gamer I'll say this, there is a skill to giving the player JUST enough guidance to keep them on the right path without telling them what to do; this game has not mastered that. Instead, you are given a vague objective and a huge open house to try and find that objective; for instance, at one point I had to open a "blue door", and I ran around for 20 minutes looking for a door I hadn't seen before. In the end, the game didn't capture me with its story or writing, I wasn't immersed or in anyway scared/fearful of its horror, and with the boredom that came with trying to figure out where to go next, I just wasn't compelled to continue.
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And that's really what it came down to, I wasn't compelled to finish it. There are some games I give a negative review on but I still stuck through finishing it because I was invested, like Amnesia: Rebirth, but i just wasn't compelled by this game to finish it.