The Medium for SX looks like a next gen version of your classic 90s PC point and click adventure game. It’s just far scarier. But it seems like a lot of them, you got a female protagonist who walks around casually looking at thing that she can’t fix and going “I can’t do that right now” while you figure out what was either a very easy puzzle or a super convoluted puzzle. There’s no in-between with those old adventure games.
The most egregious example I always think of is the bartending puzzle in Syberia. You need to make some old lady her favorite cocktail so she can sing because reasons. But the bartending machine is hooked up to a freaking PIANO. And corresponding notes activated dispensers that you had to fill manually, and you’d only know what dispensed what if you can read SHEET MUSIC.
The Longest Journey, a definitive P&C classic has it’s fair share of obtuse puzzles, but there comes a point where you try to leave your city for another and the amount of weird crap it puts you through defies logic. You have to distract a gay policeman coz reasons. You have to fish a thing out of the water with a deflated floating ring and a stick because reasons. You have to mess with the electricity in the rail system, also coz reasons, it’s absurd.
The Observer, on the other hand, is a wholly new experience. Jacking into the minds of dying people to rice their traumas is harrowing. I played the original, but the System Redux version brings not only visual upgrades, but additional content. There’s extra missions, new “interrogations” and some reshaped gameplay settings. My only concern is I don’t know how they managed to cobble this content together considering well…
Rutgers Hauer, who plays the main character Daniel Lazarski, has unfortunately passed away. How do they pull off the new content? Was this some cut content being added back in? Or are they using some creativity to get around that? Icd like to find out soon. The game is available NOW but I’d prefer to wait til I have a Series X to play it. My PC can handle editing 4K videos, but 4K gameplay is a different story and my rig couldn’t keep up with the original without some serious frame drop.
Bloober has really cut out a name for themselves. Their foray into horror games is a sort of unceremonious passing of the torch from Frictional Games, makers of the Amnesia games. With Layers of Fear 1 & 2, Blair Witch, and these two other titles, I eagerly await getting my hands on them. Hopefully soon.
Should I play Observer System Redux? Yes, yes you should.
It presents a horrifying, and entirely plausible vision of our future. Where every person who’s poor lives in tiny apartments that used to be single rooms in an old buiding. Every body stays in their apartments and keeps themselves entertained with whatever VR experience, game, or show. People don’t want to talk, they don’t want to interact, and they are all deranged. Living in a world like this is an absolute terror on its own right.
Observer System Redux is available for Xbox Series X and is sadly not compatible with older systems, even the Xbox One X.