DreadOut 2 Review (|PeleQ|)
This game fu****g sucks a*s through a paper straw.
Look, the first game was "jarring" to say the least. The demo for the first game was very, very solid and creepy. The full game was much worse in comparison, but at the end of the day despite the jankiness i sincerely enjoyed it. It had some really cool ghosts and solid ideas, some not so much, and it treated about a culture we don't get enough of in games.
This game however? I have no idea why it exists to be entirely honest with you. Boy, where do I start...
Looking at the reviews of many other people - combat seems to be the gripe of a lot of people, and rightfully so. The combat (yes, there's actual combat here, for whatever reason) is very simple, like painfully simple. The issue here is that there is no blocking or dodging, so once an entity takes a swing at you - you take it like a good bi**h. Way to make it even more fun is (especially by the end-game) the situations where they spawn a lot of enemies (plus enviromental fu****g hazards) at once, and suddenly you end up in a situation where you have to take 17 hits for free because you walked into a tentacle and are now locked in animation, in that time 3 enemies swarm you, each slapping your cheeks like there's no tomorrow, one of them happens to land a hit on you at the end of the stun animation, so now you collapse on the floor, as you get up another tentacle happens to spawn over your head, now you're grabbed again and so on and on. I'm sure you see how this can be a problem when the game spawns 10 enemies at once along with those stupid tentacles...
Similar situation is the boss fights... Yes, boss fights - and I'm aware the first game had them as well, but they at least tried to get creative, here youre basically playing a budget version of Elden Ring, except you physically can't avoid getting hit, and you have to spam a 3-4 attacks combo until they drop dead. Fun. Say you meet a new boss, it takes you a minute or two to figure out their movement and combos, great now you know exactly how and when to attack, repeat the cycle for 5 minutes until the boss fight is over. But yes, the issue - you can once again just endlessly get stunlocked, because certain bosses can figure out a pattern of attacks that is timed perfectly to land every hit the nanosecond your stun animation ends. I had a fight where I got kicked in the face, got up and instantly got kicked again, just to get up and - you guessed it: get kicked in the face again!
Come to think of it - why does a game like DreadOut need melee combat anyway? What is this trying to be?
Some of the enemies here are pretty cool and creepy, at least on paper, because in the actual game they feel pretty lackluster.
The music is alright, nothing very memorable but I thought it sounded nice. They also used some tracks from the 1st game here which I always liked back in the day. Not for or against the idea, just an observation.
Speaking of audio, for whatever reason the NPC's are mostly mute (not a uncommon tactic) but then sometimes they will speak Indonesian, well - mostly verbally say a word or two for the entire dialogue, but other times they just switch to english, sometimes mid sentence?
In regards to the story - I could not tell you what this is about, it completely flew over my head. The game wasn't very fun OR interesting enough to grab my attention.
Oh, and another issue I had with this game is the "sprint" which lasts (I kid you not) 1 second.
This is a semi-open game with multiple, fairly sizeable locations (I personally think it hurts the game, I see no need or reason to keep this kind of a game so freeroam) and it hurts my soul to run around the town, sometimes not knowing what I'm looking for, going into every alley and every corner, that go for much longer than they should be, to end up being a dead end anyway. This would be a mild annoyance, if it wasn't for the fact the sprint lasts for a literal 1 second xd
To add to this, you will often find yourself running back and forth because you couldn't interact with an object prior to interacting with a different object first, even if it's painfully obvious before you even find out why you may need it. It just feels needless and very easily solveable.