An unsatisfying Silent Hill clone to paint by number that is horrible in a bad way.
At first glance, it seems that Stray Souls has everything that a horror fan would want. In fact, its infernal creatures, the cult of the townspeople and the secretly empty main street with a malfunctioning fog machine are all that Fans of Silent Hill, in particular, can wish for, which are shamelessly inspired by the iconic Konami horror series. But despite an effectively unsettling opening, just about everything else – from boring actions and worthy conversations to uninspired boss actions and a long, long list of bugs and glitches – can’t deliver. In the end, the most impressive thing about Stray Souls is how much it manages to miss this Inspiration in almost every way.
Stray Souls takes you to Aspen Falls, a discreet American city that – prepare for this surprise-hides a terrible secret. Their journey centers on the newly resettled Daniel, who moved to the community after inheriting a quaint, albeit run-down, home from a grandmother he didn’t even know he had. While he is involved in his neighbors and the legacy of his adorable, certainly not in anything shady, long-lost grandmother, you get to know the sinister (although painfully predictable) past of Aspen Falls through boring actions. excessively long exhibition repositories and city dwellers who really should stop writing everything down and leave evidence of their darkest secrets lying around for everyone to find.
And yet, this city can sometimes be filled with wonderful details, and Stray Souls manages to open with a bang – literally. Without spoiling anything, the opening sequence is breathtaking in all the right ways, a deliciously dark (and very bloody) way of setting the stage for what might follow. But for every positive of Stray Souls, there are 20 negatives, and it doesn’t take long before its clear promise begins to dissipate.
I really cared about Daniel… first, anyway. But it’s hard to accept it for the ordinary guy he claims to be when he doesn’t seem to react convincingly or plausibly to the horrors around him, and even harder to understand him or his choices. For example: when his partner and new neighbor Martha reveals that she has brought a gun to protect her, he panics and insists that he has never held one before. But when he pulls it out thirty seconds after to face a scary shadow in the distance, he struts around the place like Leon Kennedy, making his way out of harmful as if he had just returned from two tours in an active debate zone. after, he shouts worthy one-liners like “I have a ball with your name on it here!”when nervous creatures come out of the forest to action him, he simply continues with his day instead of immediately calling poor Martha – who is alone without a weapon elsewhere in the forest – to let her know what just happened.
I’m afraid Martha is also boring and unconvincing, and their relationship – which turns into embarrassing jokes and all-too-familiar banter just minutes after they first meet – seems just as inauthentic. You will quickly find that their proximity goes beyond the simple geographical location, but even that is not enough to explain why these characters behave the way they do. And although I enjoy learning more about their discoveries through their conversations, rather than having to rely solely on incurably long deposits of knowledge in strategically placed notes and journals, Martha ultimately seems superficial, predictable and … Well, a little useless overall, really. She will even appear and disappear at will, apparently able to make her voice heard in such a way that even if she is nowhere to be found, she can continue a conversation as if she were right next to you.
Although he wears his love for Silent Hill so proudly on his sleeve, it feels like Stray Souls is not found a lot of what makes these games so memorable. It can sometimes sound like this, thanks in large part to the dreamy and dreary score by Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka–there’s no denying that you get scared when the music starts to signal that a action is underway. But the action itself is floating and uneven, not least because our Danny is swinging all over the place while looking at the sights, which makes it unnecessarily difficult to land a strike at the monsters coming towards you. And although these monsters look cool, their conceptions seem disparate and separate from everything that happens around them, ignoring that the enemies of Silent Hill are often thoughtfully linked (even if only vaguely) to the general themes of the series.
The action is further hampered by the lack of an inventory system, which means that there is no way to carry the notes and clues that you have taken, nor is there room for additional health items. In general, it doesn’t matter because the actions are pathetically slow, but a few close experiences with bosses became particularly frustrating when there was no health pickup to be found, forcing me and Daniel to take a midnight walk (another scary forest with minimal health and no chance of healing. And yet, apart from those few moments when there is suddenly not enough healing, most of the time you will pbody by dozens of identical ammo boxes and health boxes that you will never really use.
Speaking of which: in trouble? Feeling a little overwhelmed? Keep running. The enemy AI is ridiculously poor, it often doesn’t seem to get through a door to get to you, and if you move your enemies far enough away from their original spawn point, they will literally spontaneously combust.
There are also a handful of dialogue options, but what impact they have on the story being told, if any, is unclear. For example, after a after-night Accident with Martha – perhaps the only sensible thing Daniel does in the whole game – they inexplicably decide to go to a cemetery to help him “discover more information about his secret past”, enjoying a long conversation about the true fate of his family along the way. Daniel can respond to these revelations in one of two equally meaningless ways: “Is this your seriousness? Who told you that?”or “yes, all right, Martie.”But Martha’s answer could have been followed by one or the other, which makes me wonder why you are given such useless choices as these in the first place.