The Inpatient Review


As PSVR goes, I'm still relatively new. Most people loved Until Dawn on its original release, plus it was an Trophy hunters dream of being one of the easiest platinum trophies going.

It was solely a teen horror though, a romp in silliness and gore, that was designed to make you jump rather than give you actual chills. The prequel changes things up a bit. Set in the asylum that Mike visits during Until Dawn, you take on the role of a new patient at the sanitarium. It differs from the original game a lot, obviously because of VR but in lots of other ways too.

Characters seem a lot more well thought out and driven in this game, there are some generic people here and there, but most are given a purpose. The whole thing is set in and around what actually closed the asylum, as well how the inmates interacted with eachother.


The story itself will be fairly obvious to work out anyway, if you've played Until Dawn, but essentially you end up fighting for survival. With a PS4 DS controller, the movement can feel a bit clunky, and sometimes disorientating. Things are improved slightly with the updated move controllers, plus it's alot more fun.

Supermassive have done much better with this tech than with their last outing too. Rush of Blood was so generic, it almost made your brain hurt, they've streamlined the movement to make it feel alot more free for the player, even though you're trapped in a cell on screen. Your hands don't get confused on an DS controller either, as they end up like on Rush of Blood. This is a REAL tech demo. A real show case of how PSVR can be. This is only heightened by the atmosphere given off by your surroundings. Often creepy and somehow managing to drain you of energy and making you feel almost alone is absolutely brilliant. Turning the volume up on the headset is also key to the immersion that Rush of Blood fell short of.



The dream sequences are particularly good and these often change the course of the story, along with the options of dialogue. Sometimes this will be a great help to you, other times, not so much. Even better is the game makes use of the PSCamera's voice functionality, rather than just recording your voice on playback. You don't have to use the controller, say the phrase that pops up on screen out loud to choose it. The immersion is rounded off by this alone. So far I've yet to play an PSVR game that totally takes you out of the real world so much.

It's hard to say how Supermassive will be able to follow this up, but this studio alone is managing to lead the charge to VR dominance and put Sony front and centre in market.

Summary:
The best atmosphere in a game so far, horror is the absolute complete package for VR and Supermassive have got this attempt almost spot on, after the terrible Rush of Blood.

Overal : 4.5/5
Story: 4/5
Graphics: 4/5
Sound: 3.5/5
Immersion: 5/5

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