Phasmophobia

[Sly Reflex]

I finally got around to playing the copy someone bought me.

 

Initial impressions are it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it's not particularly great either. It is early access, so things might change.

 

So what is Phasmophobia? It's a 4 player co-op game where you go ghost hunting. You get given equipment to gather evidence about the ghost you're looking for, with each bit of info narrowing down the possible suspects. If you manage to claim three bits of evidence, you've narrowed it down to one suspect. Each bit of equipment allows you to open up the possible discoveries of what type of ghost you're looking for. For instance the black light can show fingerprints. The thermometer can show freezing temperatures. The book can show ghost writing. The idea is you go and set up all the stuff, figure out where the ghost is and then use the process of elimination to decipher which type of spook you're dealing with before leaving the level. You can gain extra level up XP and cash by providing extra evidence such as photos of the ghost or any of its doings.

 

On top of this you have a mental level that degrades as you spend time investigating. As this lowers you're more likely to be targeted by the ghost. Once you reach a certain point the ghost will start attacking you, at which point you have to hide to avoid being killed.

 

The good points. The chat is really well done. You have two keys that allow you to chat with the party. One is a proximity chat and the other is the radio chat. Proxy chat cannot be interfered with, but radios can. When a ghost has had enough of your shit, your torch, the buildings electric and your coms go down or spike in and out, when you're trapped in with a ghost and you're trying to tell your friends to get the fuck out, this is pretty intense. There was one moment where I was being stalked and the others had left the building in time, but each time they tried to contact me all I received was radio static, and listening to them try to give advice by shouting through the walls while everything kicked off was really excellent. In a time where everything is party chat and discord, this game makes you want to play with the games lobby VoIP, just because it's proper grand.

 

The build up is genuinely spooky. Pinning down where the apparition is goes from being quite boring to getting quite tense. They nailed this.

 

The bad points. Man, where do I start here? There's so many.

 

The sound. Although the proximity voice stuff is really nice, the sound mixing in this game is atrocious. It's clear that the people involved in making this game have no idea how sound works, as soon as you walk into the premises it's like wearing a bucket over your head. The sound is laid on so thick it feels like I'm swimming underwater. It's really hard to decipher where sounds are coming from when you have tracked down a ghost, you can hear footsteps or knocks but the direction of which they originate is just impossible to pin down. I have no idea if this is a purposeful choice, but it's really bad. It does instill panic when a ghost hisses or shouts at you and you don't know which way to run since you could be running to or from it without really knowing where to go. It's just crap. Needs improvement across the board.

 

The looks. Usually I'm not into ripping on games for looks, as long as they offer something interesting, but this very much looks like one of those asset flip games Jim Sterling likes to wank off to. The player characters aren't great, but the way they move is super fucked. They walk like they're holding in an explosive bout of diarrhea. It really takes away from it when you're investigating this house and it's knocking and bumping, then a player limbos and hip thrusts across the screen. It's a real immersion breaker. The ghost themselves are terrifying when you only see them for a split second, but when they go on the hunt to kill people they look so shite. They're ghosts ffs, make them do scary stuff. Make them twist and contort, make them walk up the walls, make them glitch about and make the house go mad by slamming the doors over and over and flicking the lights on and off. Making them strut around the house menacingly and maybe strangle someone isn't enough. I laughed at the first one I saw and subsequently at everyone I saw hunt after this.

 

Talking to the ghost feels like a huge gimmick. There's only so many times you can say "Is anybody there?" and "Can you show me a sign?", it feels like a huge waste of time. This could potentially be a great feature, but it's just so hit and miss right now.

 

GUI and controls. Wow are these terrible. Truly. GUI is quite possibly the bare minimum they could have done. It sort of reminds me of those times where you are in a community centre or a hospital and there's those rip off big name drawings of Mickey Mouse or Fireman Sam done by out of touch adults with little to no art skills. It's awful. This shit cherry on the festering shitcake are the controls. Everything can be remapped, but the default keys are crazy. You have all these keys around WASD and you want me to press V and B for things that I need to be doing continuously? GTFO of here. All the things in the game are fiddly as fuck. Take your pick of interacting with stuff. It could be LMB, RMB, E, F or G.  A lot of this could be sorted out by sitting down and just deciding to strip it right back, since there's really no need for this many keys. It's also so convoluted. If you pick up the torch, you can click to use it, but you can also press T to use the torch. But if you swap off a torch you need to press T again to put it back on, since the item you have in your hands overrides it. It feels like they've purposely gone out of their way to make it as janky as fuck. I know it's in early access, but this stuff really needs the rough edges filing off. Take all the unnecessary bits out and make the QoL things just standard. It also has that horrible hold the LMB to open doors thing going on, because that's never been annoying or cumbersome at all.

 

I think the biggest thing gameplay wise is usually it all feels so anticlimactic. When you have got the evidence and you've narrowed it down to the specific type of ghost, you just leave. I do not feel like I resolved anything. I walked about a house, did a bit of hunting, found the room, set up, got the evidence, maybe ran away from the ghost and then left. There's no subduing the ghost or exorcising it, you just leave.

 

As a premise it has room to grow into itself. Each ghost needs a personality it follows, each area should have things that can happen. Some ghosts need to be friendly, some ghosts need to be evasive, some ghosts need to be aggressive, some ghosts need to posture. As far as I can see none of this is in the game. There's no poltergeist that flings all the kitchen cupboard doors open and throws items about the house. There's no ghosts that bangs the tv on to give you a scare. From what I've seen there's no ghosts fighting against each other for domination of an abode. All this should be here. I want to see changes to a room when I leave it and come back. Imagine you're in the kids room and you leave it, then when you go back the ghost has built out of spelling blocks "help" or "mommy?"? As it is now I've seen a handful of different ghosts and they've all reacted exactly the same. Just over 1h played and I feel I've seen everything. Make the aggressive ghosts break your video feeds. They need to fuck about with you more without relying on the hunting phase. Sometimes the scariest thing is the thing that never comes. Like when your dad went out for cigarettes and never returned, or that time when you told your significant other you loved her and she changed the subject.

 

With any luck, the dev's pile up the cash they've earned from this and reinvest it into a game we can truly point to and say "This is the best spooky game we've gotten in years", but as it is now it's nothing but a mildly diverting hollow promise.