Review for Home Sweet Home. Game for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR and Xbox One, the video game was released on 27/09/2017 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 16/10/2018 The version for Xbox One came out on 16/10/2018
That VR technology works great with horror experiences is now a fact: the immersion offered by the viewers, together with the typical jumpscare of the genre, are the ingredients of a recipe with a sure impact. In the specific case of Home Sweet Home, some Thai spice are added to the dish - from whose folklore come the ghosts that will terrify us in the game - and clear references to Resident Evil 7, the reference point for this genre. The result is a title that certainly does not scream a miracle, but that manages to entertain and - at times and without too many pretensions - also to amuse and scare at the right point.
House bitter house
If there is one certainty in Home Sweet Home, it is that the title house is anything but sweet: fans of the genre will not struggle to recognize the many points in common between the game developed by Mastiff and a random Silent Hill ( did anyone say PT?): the protagonist Tim will move between nightmare and reality to investigate his wife - dead? Disappeared? Find out as you play - escaping deadly enemies, solving puzzles and collecting the documents and journal pages needed to piece together what happened.
In terms of the plot there is not much meat in the fire besides this, but that's enough: Home Sweet Home is based a lot on experience and delving too deeply into the stories of the anonymous protagonist would have made you lose sight of the main objective of the game or rather scare. The real problem is another: already in the description of the game on the PlayStation Store we read "series of games", meaning that the story of Home Sweet Home will not end at the end of the approximately five hours necessary to reach the credits. This means that the narrative part, although intriguing in its simplicity, will remain "hanging" waiting for a sequel, which has not yet been announced and which will most likely be based on the success of this port on console (the title is already available from the end of 2017 on PC). Without a good audience result, in other words, everything will be left unfinished.
Terrifying hide and seek
As much as Home Sweet Home can remember Resident Evil 7, in terms of gameplay it is certainly more similar to less high-sounding titles, in which the action component is less marked and a lot of exploration is worked on. Suffice it to say that it will not be possible to fight or defend yourself in any way, but only to flee and hide, in favor of a stealth mechanic that is all in all satisfying in its repetitive simplicity.
Most of the gameplay is therefore constituted by the exploration of the game world, the real core of the experience and terrifying at the right point: recalling the nightmare scenarios of The Evil Within, Amnesia and Layers Of Fear, the environment changes and amazes, destabilizing as only a nightmare can do: and so an apparently closed room with no exits expands and shows a corridor as soon as we turn our head, while what a moment before was a closed door suddenly becomes a portal towards a totally different setting.
During the exploration it is also required to use a minimum of gray matter to solve puzzles that are not overly complex but still challenging and, especially in the case of combinations, procedural: this means that for each game, in the case of a combination of a safe or a lock, the numbers will be different. The system to trace the combination will always be the same and will allow you to solve the puzzle more quickly in subsequent runs, but the impossibility of having exhaustive tutorials on solving the most complex puzzles will force you to squeeze your brains out to arrive alone. to the solution, giving the right emphasis to the level of challenge of a title which, net of exploration, owes its longevity to the presence of some funny riddle à la Professor Layton to proceed in the levels.
The defense mechanism, as we have said the only action available against enemies, is represented by hiding: a locker, a table, or simply the dark will be precious (as well as the only) allies against the enemies who will try to make your skin. Among these, inspired by Thai legends, the first antagonist you will meet stands out above all: it is a woman armed with a cutter who, with her limping gait as she extracts and retracts the blade producing the characteristic "crick" of the cutter, will make you jump on the chair on more than one occasion while hiding a few inches away praying that it passes by. Too bad that as the adventure progresses it becomes clear that the enemies are not so intelligent and that their ability to notice your presence is not always very high: you will find yourself running with a lit torch even in the presence of a dangerous antagonist, who once revealed its range and its offensive capacity it will make you much less afraid than the first meeting, taking away much of the thrill from the experience.
Unreal nightmare
The Unreal Engine 3, the graphic engine chosen by the developers to give life to their frightening creature, succeeds perfectly in its intent and returns a world of limited interactions and relatively bare of details, but equally perfect for the dark atmosphere it aims to recreate. The night that envelops the world of Home Sweet Home, where only some lights and the faint torch of the protagonist illuminate the environment during exploration, benefits from the darkness to cleverly hide the graphic poverty of some textures.
Optimization is a good thing for those who intend to savor the experience in VR - the title can be faced with the viewer or comfortably seated in front of the TV screen - which is fluid and engaging at the right point. The end result is an immersive experience without too many frills, but appreciable in its simplicity.
The audio is also excellent: the silence left by the almost absence of the soundtrack helps to form that sense of imminent danger and makes you jump on the chair at the slightest noise produced by the enemies. Obviously the best of the audio sector can be perceived in VR, when while you are hidden you can hear the steps of the monster on duty pass by.
Finally, we report the presence of various languages in the options menu. The dubbing of the few dialogues is English, and subtitles can be set in English, French or German. If you don't know one of these languages, you will miss a good part of the history, enjoying the experience in a more marginal way.
Home Sweet Home is a pleasant surprise for horror fans. It's amazing how PT still echoes in productions of this genre and how first-person survival is increasing in quantity and quality simply by taking inspiration from that teaser of the unborn Silent Hills. The PlayStation 4 port of Home Sweet Home retains all the PC features and allows you to enjoy a decent horror title based on monsters from Thai mythology. It is just a pity that it is not yet known if there will be a sequel, a fact that could leave us with a bad taste in the mouth for a story with good potential abandoned in half.
► Home Sweet Home is an Adventure-Indie-Puzzle-Simulation game for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR and Xbox One, the video game was released on 27/09/2017 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 16/10/2018 The version for Xbox One came out on 16/10/2018
