You know, I really love horror games. It'd be great to play a good one for once.
Pineview Drive has had a weird journey. It started as a small, indie game on Kickstarter with decent marketing but not many details. Then it got bought up by a different group and EVENTUALLY backers got a copy of the promised game.
It wasn't exactly as promised.
Pineview was meant to be like P.T. - Reasonable graphics, suspenseful music and an interesting story with elements of Slenderman. Sounds pretty standard but that doesn't mean there's no worth to it being done well. In the end, it had none of those things.
It's a bog-standard collect the letters/keys game which manages to break most of the cardinal sins of gaming.
The pacing is arse.
It's really, really repetitive.
It looks like shit (you can have cheap graphics and still look good stylistically - this isn't that).
It's full of unmodified bought assets.
It has a serious case of telling not showing.
It introduces a MAIN STORY ELEMENT without any build-up, in the second to last chapter.
It's really, really boring.
It's really, really repetitive.
And for a horror game, worst of all: it's not even creepy, let alone scary. Jump scares, when done well, can be very effective and interesting, even adding to the story - The Evil Within 2's diner scene is a fantastic example of that. It's an easy to miss section of story but if you get into it, you get everything that makes a good jump-scare. You get the sense of unease building as things gradually hint that something is very, very wrong followed by a moments lull - until BANG! It's got you!
And anyone wanting to whine that a big company game isn't a fair comparison? Piss off, you're getting straw on the carpet. TEW2's jump-scares would work even as a 2d pixel rpg because they're very well put together. Want an indie equivalent? How about Stitched, a game made in RPG Maker that is genuinely excellent.
Pineview Drive has a system where, if you look at stuff that it thinks is scary and you move your mouse it drops your sanity meter. Does it work? Who knows!?!! There was nothing worth reacting to in this so my meter dropped a tiny bit at stuff I was not even reacting to or looking at. The one good idea and it's squandered.
A cat jumping around a corner can make someone jump but without that build-up, it's not memorable, it's not scary, it's just a thing that has happened and in Pineview's case it's even worse than that. The jump-scares have no real connection to the story and don't push the story forward.
So what is the point of this game? Find your wife, find out what happened to your wife, get into your wife's tomb. Through crappy writing she has become Schrödinger's Wife - both alive and dead, in the tomb or out of it, depending on the current chapters one sentence narration by a bored man devoid of charisma who doesn't sound like he's older than 20, let alone having lost his wife 20 years ago.
Good horror game and movie music leans into the current scene but the music here has entirely random dips and swells. You'll get a sudden sting that in most good games would mean a scary thing is occurring but that isn't what's happening here - it's simply on a timed loop. Either that or scary things are happening somewhere I'm not and the music decided to react to it and these scary things occur on a timer. Not sure which one is more pointless. Don't think I care either.
You can't really care about the characters - I had more emotional connection to the stupid music box than I did to the player character. However, I suspect that a proper critique for this game is pointless: I believe it's been made for jump-scare screaming Youtubers. Once the initial boost from it's Youtuber coverage died down the company has struggled to release another game - no extra Kickstarter money coming in.
Why they would need a Kickstarter when they're charging £14.99 for this crap is beyond my ken.
Want to play something like this but good? Try 'Dream of the Blood Moon'. It's creepy, it's interesting, the graphics aren't great but not as bad as this and IT'S FREE.
Pineview Drive is really, really repetitive.
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