One of the games that were showcased on the ESGS Sony Playstation floor was the much awaited prequel to Until Dawn: The Inpatient. The Inpatient is a Playstation VR Horror game that is about a patient inside an asylum. I tried the demo myself to see if this is a game worth looking forward to.
I was already sweating when I was still waiting in line for my turn to try the game. Seeing someone else played it, it seemed harmless. The guy who played before me didn’t seem fazed with what was going on with the game. Maybe because his playthrough was very short. I think we were only given around 5 to 10 minutes to play the game. So, I’m not sure if that is enough to give me an idea of what the game really is all about. The choices are usually just two and the emotions tied to them are fixed. So you c0uld pick a choice that makes you feel confused or a choice that makes you feel proud. As to how these emotions affect the game and the overall disposition of your character though is yet to be known.
So when it was my time to play, our character is now being wheeled into his room. From there, a suspicious character gets into your room and basically tells you how to move your character. At first, the controls are easy to remember but because I was used to the controls of an FPS game I got confused along the way and kept looking behind my back. You see, the reason for this is that pulling the right trigger lets your character wheel around turning a complete 180 from where they were facing. So there were times I would randomly pull on the right trigger and my character walks to a different direction.
Anyway, after talking to this guy and telling him I didn’t mind the company, I saw this paper on the table and decided to pick it up. The game then told me to flip it over which meant I had to literally flip the controller for this to happen. I then got this weird flash of a memory and then it brought me back to reality.
The game doesn’t really give much as to what you really need to do next but it gives subtle hints for you to do so. Whenever a main quest needs to progress, an light will glow from the object of your next objective. There are cases that there are no objects for you to notice though but instead a character will urge you to follow them down a creepy corridor.
So the character was then guided by this light from the bed. This means that the character needed to sleep. So off I go into dreamland hoping that this eerie game will somehow not visit my dreams. I was wrong. The dreamland was much worse. I was standing in a corridor. A dark and creepy one at that. A guy was waiting at the end of the hallway. I slowly walked my way towards him but I was then surprised by his ghostly figure screaming right to my face. It was an instant scare, but I was forever etched in my memory. At the end of the hallways the guy was still urging me to follow him but there was a stag for some reason and it went left at the junction while the guy went right. I tried to follow the stag, when I turned left there was nothing but a dead end. I turned right and followed the guy but I wasn’t able to do so because a gate came crashing down infront of me.
And thus ended my very shortlived adventure in the halls of the asylum. What happens to the guy I will never know but it got me curious. I wanted more, I wanted to experience the whole thing. I wanted to be afraid, to be scared and just engulf the creepiness that the asylum brought. Be warned though, the game has a tendency to make you feel vertigo. Walking seems to make your character feel like they are floating in the air in a barfing kind of way.
Overall, I liked what I saw. Although the scare tactics that they pulled wasn’t enough to faze me, deep inside was internally screaming. Screaming for more, screaming for what could have been a frightful experience.
