As someone who is always on the lookout for a new interesting horror game, I’ve come across some nice gems. Signalis was my personal game of the year last year, whilst MADiSON terrified me to the core. Anthology of Fear released earlier this year on PC and just hit PlayStation 5, so I just had to check it out. Unfortunately, despite some potential, I find this impossible to recommend.
The horror!
You play as Ethan who is looking for his brother who mysteriously vanished. After receiving a tip that his brother’s disappearance is linked to an abandoned medical facility, Ethan heads over there to uncover the truth. As he explores the abandoned facility, he discovers a series of files and video tapes that hides disturbing experiments that happened at the facility. It sounds like an intriguing premise, but honestly, Anthology of Fear doesn’t do a great job of telling its own story. It keeps things intentionally vague to an almost frustrating degree, throwing disturbing themes into the mix without much thought or reason.
So with the story being underwhelming, does the gameplay and horror experience at least hold up? Not exactly. Anthology of Fear is more of a walking simulator with light horror elements than a full on horror game. For the most part you will be exploring empty environments and gathering clues for each of the playable characters.
A little bit of PTsd.
All you end up doing is walk down the same hallways, reach the end, interact with an object, and then backtrack. That’s it for the vast majority of the two to three hour story. Simple puzzles do occasionally show up, which mostly consist of collecting a few statues around the environment and putting them in the correct spot.
The lacklustre gameplay would be forgiven if it was actually scary, but unfortunately, this is barely a horror game. Whilst the environments can have an eerie atmosphere to them, it completely fails to immerse the player into the world. Outside of maybe one jumpscare, there is absolutely nothing here. Instead, any attempt at a good scare ends up being predictable at best and laughable at worst. The few creatures that you will encounter don’t really do much and are really easy to deal with.
Playing on the PlayStation 5 version, I was really disappointed with just how bad this game can look at times. Whilst it can often look decent enough with a moody atmosphere, far too many times did I notice flat and unfinished textures that are completely illegible. Another annoying part is every time you interact with something, subtitles come up with letterboxing, for some reason. I also encountered a few moments where the framerate just tanked.
Maybe the fear is in the low quality textures.
Sound design isn’t that much better either, with mediocre voice acting, albeit without much of it to be found across the entire game. It does an okay job with its environments, but that’s about it. Attempted jumpscares are often accompanied by sudden loud noises that completely fail to make one gasp. At best, the sound design here can be called unremarkable.
Anthology of Fear is one of the most mind-numbing and unremarkable horror games that I’ve played this year. It’s nothing more than a walking simulator, with very few actual moments of tension or effective scares. Not to mention a story that only serves to frustrate and confuse. There are so many better choices out there, so I recommend steering clear of this one.
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A moody atmosphere let down by horrendous textures on the PS5 version. |
Walking and more walking. Not much else. |
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If there’s something positive to say it’s about how unremarkable the sound is. |
A walking simulator with a bad story and basically no gameplay. |
Anthology of Fear is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
Reviewed on PS5.
A copy of Anthology of Fear was provided by the publisher.
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