Fills the gap between Alan Wake 2 and Control 2. Same kind of mind bending gameplay and really cool in-game movies

Barring my initial strange technical issues, this is mostly alright! I had been trying to play with a controller in Big Picture mode and would reach a softlock point where you needed a mouse cursor. Contacted the team directly and never heard anything, but I was able to finish it by just using mouse/keyboard on my other PC. WORTH NOTING THAT CONTROLLER MAY STILL NOT WORK.

Being an FMV title, obviously the performances are a highlight. Ben Starr in particular is really worth seeing in this, since I'd never really seen him act IRL yet.

That being said, this is quite a short experience, and a pretty basic one at that. There are some cool moments, and the atmosphere is very well built - it's really quite scary to just walk around this house. But most of the horror comes from what I would classify as 'cheap jumpscares' - that is to say, an extremely loud noise, often with something literally jumping directly towards you. I think a lot of these moments end up feeling just randomly placed to make it 'scarier,' but I honestly think had they done away with it and leaned more into 'not showing the monster,' as the kids say, it would have been far more eerie.

Story-wise, ehhhhh. This definitely falls flat. The game as a whole operates as a digital escape room for about 90% of the play time, with the remaining 10% being the FMV scenes to convey the story. The premise (the innate horror of what it takes to make it in Hollywood) has a ton of potential, but there's really very little of actual substance being said here, despite the fantastic performances from Starr and Newbon doing a good job of convincing you otherwise.

Worth playing for the performances but because that's the biggest selling point, you'd likely get the same experience watching a walkthrough, so I can't really recommend it.

Fjen