★★☆☆☆ – Meh!
Claire is alone, lost, and hunted. Aided by her dog and armed only with a flashlight, Claire must conquer her fear and find her comatose mother. However, there are others lost in the darkness.
Platforms: PS4, XONE, VITA
Playtime: 5-6 Hours
Genre: Horror, Adventure
At first glance, ‘Claire’ shines with its stellar, retro art direction and promises a nostalgic side-scrolling survival-horror experience. Unfortunately, this is not entirely the case.
The story is clearly inspired by other psychological-survival horror titles like Silent Hill. But unlike these games, what was once an encouraging premise rapidly descends into the whimsical, raising more questions than it can answer. Even if the game does boast six different endings, most players will not venture into a second playthrough, let alone six.
The gameplay offers no combat and the player spends the majority of the game traversing and charting a course through its perplexing layout of maps. This is where the bulk of the fun is to be had, but even this rapidly transforms into tedium due to some poor design choices, especially towards the last few hours of the game. And on top of that, the game is buggy as hell. Constant reboots required as the game unexpectedly crashes or doors become inaccessible resulting in mandatory force quits.
Ultimately, the negatives far outweigh any exceptional attributes this game might offer and what results is a below average and hardly frightening, direct-to-VHS title.
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