P.T Review

P.T Review

*Warning: I will be discussing some spoilers about the game*

      During the Sony conference at Gamescom in Germany, they announced that a new studio had added a demo for a new horror game on the PlayStation store and that it would be available to the public following the conference. The game, called P.T, developed by 7780 Studio’s, had garnered a lot of attention from the public because it had followed Metal Gear Solid during the conference.

   
      When the game starts you wake up in a room, with a very detailed cockroach crawling around. The only choice given to the player is to walk forward through the door and thus into the game. This mechanic is masterfully done and is used quite frequently throughout the game. It forces the player to continue progression and continue to learn more about what is going on. So I walk through the door and find myself in a very narrow, almost claustrophobic hallway. I continue down the corridor trying to open any doors, but none of them open except for one at the very end of the hallway. After walking through, it loops me back to the beginning  of the hallway. This is when I realized I should not be playing this game.

   
      P.T is more or less just a puzzle game, where the player triggers certain events and those events allow for progression. Sometimes the puzzle is as simple as the player just needs to walk forward, but most of them are extremely cryptic. It makes the game very good, but sometimes the puzzles go a little too far. For example, I had to watch a walkthrough for the last few puzzles, with the exception of the very last one, I was just too scared to try and figure out for myself. The last puzzle however, is just ridiculous and really hurts the game overall. For those wondering, you have to wait until the clock strikes midnight then take ten steps and stop. With a mic plugged in, you wait for the ghost to stop making sounds then whisper "Jarith" into the microphone and stand still again until your controller stops vibrating. If done correctly, a phone will ring.  If you answer it, then you can walk out of the front door.


      Now this is not cryptic, it is simply unfair. I understand that Kojima wanted players around the world to work together to complete it, but it seems far too cryptic. I could be wrong considering players eventually did figure it out. After watching others playthrough it, I noticed some people were able to beat some of the earlier puzzles completely differently than I had.


      Do not think I disliked this game, because it is quite literally the scariest game I have ever played. I actually had to have a friend sit with me and watch me play through it. Everything about this game screams terror. So little exposition is given to the player and the player is left to decipher what happened. I love that it lets the player answer their own questions simply by playing the game. Every single sound in this game is perfectly executed and the atmosphere was spot on. From the moment I started the game, I felt extremely uncomfortable and was scared before anything had even happened. I actually had to stop playing and take a break because I almost soiled myself.

       When I found out that Kojima had scaled down the graphics of the game to make it look more like an indie game. This is extremely exciting because it is one of the best looking games I have ever played and it iss on the PS4.
   

      I am not going to give this game a score simply because it is not a full game and is a demonstration of what is to come. That being said. I am extremely excited to see what comes of this as I was thoroughly impressed. For players who are smart or lucky enough to complete the final puzzle, they were treated to a surprise. If you do not want to know what the surprise is you can stop reading, but by now I assume everybody already knows as this game has garnered a huge amount of attention. Regardless of the surprise, I believe that you should pick this game up and try it out because it is extremely well done.
   

      First of all, 7780 is not actually a new development studio, in fact it is not an old one either. We now know that the demo was created by Kojami Productions and published by Konami. So this demo was actually created by some AAA developers. At first I was not really interested in playing it, but later I had found out that it was actually a teaser for a new Silent Hill game called Silent Hills. The game is being directed by the legendary game designer Hideo Kojima and the horror guru Guillermo Del Toro, and stars Norman Reedus. The game is slated for release in 2016 and I hope that it is still cryptic, but not as much as the demo as I feel it will stop a good game from being a great game.