Review for Black Mirror (2017). Game for PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Linux, the video game was released on 28/11/2017
Despite the homonymy, David Gordon is not the protagonist of the pilot of the highly anticipated fourth season of the (now) Netflix blockbuster that bears the name of Black Mirror: for that you will have to wait a few more months. Right from the start, however, you can take on the role of David, the last in the bloodline of one of the oldest families in the Scottish Highlands, in an attempt to lead him to the solution of the mysteries that gravitate around the ancestral possessions we learned about in that distant 2003, release date of the first original chapter of The Black Mirror saga.
Black Mirror, (the one we are talking about is without the "The"), is in effect a reboot of that first episode from which he draws inspiration for setting, atmosphere and scenery, at the same time marking a clear departure from the old school conception of point and click graphic adventure. An intriguing storyline, with a growing pace towards the grand finale with a bang, all packaged with modern 3D graphics: all the cards were there, what went wrong?
The very first moments of the game slam in the face without interruption the protagonists of the failure of the boys of KING Art Games e THQ Nordic. We are in a car returning from India, where we have spent almost all of our existence, headed to Scotland to meet the bureaucratic tasks resulting from the untimely death of our not overly late father. We will personify David Gordon, natural heir of one of the oldest Scottish families, whose roots are lost in the annals in a vortex of faded historicity that mixes real events with the solid and alive folklore imbued with magic characteristic of Scotland.
The car runs fast, driven by the family butler, one of the few figures with whom we will be able to interact in our adventure and who will make up the genealogical web worthy of the worst game in Cluedo: to continue, however, we just have to open an embellished wooden box. to discover inside a cautionary letter from our mother and a pair of cryptic trinkets left by the late John Gordon. So far so good, if only to simply point the cursor towards the box and proceed in the most obvious of muscular memories to recover its contents we realize how difficult, cumbersome and unintuitive the system of interaction with the background elements can be.
So we get out of the car and an elderly lady welcomes us in what is the most classic of the stereotypes of a gloomy imposing manor. Our overnight stay at the Black Mirror has officially begun, humid, dilapidated and gothic residence of the Gordons, hub of myths and mysterious legends. Shortly thereafter we will find ourselves discovering and facing our past, bringing to light the most hidden secrets of the Gordon family in a book of incest, murder, madness, spiritualism and redemption.
It is no coincidence that we are in 1926, in a setting that winks at the masters of the mystery EA Poe, HP Lovecraft and H. Walpole: in the large family library of the Gordons we will have the opportunity to read an extract of Otranto Castle and the temptation to ignore the warnings of Nietzsche that we find in a prophetic passage from Beyond Good and Evil will be very strong. But still unconscious of what awaits us on the horizon, if still not sufficiently bothered by the slow pace of David Gordon, we will probably end up continuing and entering the thick path of no return.
The enthusiasm of having recognized some of the greatest authors of the occult in the first moments of the game vanishes in no time: the entire manor, composed of a not too large number of rooms considering that it represents a good part of the setting of the five chapters that make up the game, in no way represent a challenge but only a structural impediment.
Un inaccurate character control system, which will relentlessly stop in the vicinity of almost any scenic element will lead you to frustration unless you say it. To break the rhythm of what could have been a dozen interesting and enjoyable hours of play are the infinite recurring loading times between one room and another of the manor. We will spend an absolutely too large amount of time waiting to pass from the institutional room to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the garden, from the garden to the greenhouse, to then return to the kitchen and discover that following a trivial controlled interaction it is now possible to collect an object of game not previously interactable, but always scenically present.
The absence of a map also does not contribute to the compensation of biblical loading times: we will soon realize that the meager and extremely intuitive puzzles that make up the point and click adventure they are not enough to justify the gaming experience. There are also drastic and impressive drops in framerate that accompany sterile dialogues and that in almost all the selections will be ends in themselves without leading to multiple scenarios, options or endings. Even the interface catches the eye unprepared, daughter of which it is a job that seems unfinished, barely worthy of an alpha version.
If we can attribute the sufficiency to the English dubbing, it will take a few minutes to realize the bad job put in place while compiling the subtitles, which are lame and often a mix of English sentences, when not downright truncated or absolutely inconsistent. It does not help the camera, which despite the imprecision and the improbable physics of movement does not have among the settings those dedicated to calibrating the sensitivity: the only result it achieves is to focus the spotlight on the very little hidden limits, as technical as they are. graphs of the overall gaming experience. The only situations of pale action are represented by a series of quick time events where we will have to literally press a total of two buttons or move an analog stick: one wonders how they ended up in the final version of the game.
The whole mystical and horror game experience is thus reduced to wandering from room to room in an unintuitive way, guided by small circles that as the plot continues will highlight the interacting elements from time to time. The endless waits will lead you to forget even what your next goal is, and the game won't come to your rescue with well-constructed menus and journals. David Gordon will have to face and defeat the curse that has weighed on his family name since time immemorial and can only count on us: uIt is a pity that his shareable crusade has not found a better channel of resolution.
Coming from the anything but negative experience of The Dwarves, the guys at KING Art Games this time fail across the board. And whoever writes to you has nevertheless taken care to conclude the adventure, platinizing the game in Havana, hoping to find a glimmer of light, a foothold or a different perspective. THQ Nordic gives us an immature product and loses a valid opportunity to update and honor that evergreen setting and literary life, daughters of the great masters of horror and the occult: the use of a 3D graphic engine and narrative independence from the first chapter of the original series The Black Mirror of 2003 that could have conveyed into a product of a very different quality and thickness.
► Black Mirror (2017) is a Graphic Adventure game developed by KING Art Games and published by THQ Nordic for PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Linux, the game was released on 28/11/2017
