The Haunted Hoard: Infliction: Extended Cut (PS4)

Infliction: Extended Cut seems to have a poor idea of what makes being in danger terrifying. The uncertainty of survival, the suddenness of the threat so you can’t prepare for it, and the hesitation caused by mistaking other sounds or sights for something out to get you really helps to build up that sense of dread and fear you’ll be caught off-guard by something horrific. However, this first-person horror game only really seems to understand the atmospheric elements surrounding dread as its payoffs end up becoming predictable or annoying rather than bursts of adrenaline, and being a fairly short experience, it has barely anything else to give it a leg to stand on.

 

The game begins with you driving home, the player given some time to walk through the empty two story home of the protagonist on a dark and eerie night. The household is actually quite effective in its design, believably populated with objects but also able to look foreboding when the lights are out or things are out of place. Oddly enough, a lot of the objects in the cabinets and on shelves are very high fidelity objects. You can pick up even the most insignificant objects to examine them despite it never mattering, and while there are books you can read little bits of that somewhat connect to ideas found later on, its a bit more unusual that a can of corn can look far better than the characters and vengeful spirits you’ll encounter. The true horror kicks off when you uncover a video of your wife being murdered, although the character models in the video look oddly smooth and basic to the point it is almost comedic. This unfortunately carries over to the vengeful spirit of your wife who now haunts the house, her attempts at deforming her mouth or specific attacks like stomping on you looking rigid or weird in ways that are silly rather than scary.

After uncovering your wife’s awful fate, you’ll be trapped in your house as it changes shape to help you get closer to figuring out why she died and how you can free her from her suffering. Unfortunately, the game puts forth a lot of the pertinent information too early and then putters around without much new to say, there being a decent development or two but you’re not unraveling too much in your search for the items needed to perform a ritual. The notes you find around the house don’t fail in their job necessarily, the buildup is what lets them down on top of the voice over showing that the voice actress playing your wife isn’t the best at expressing the required emotions for a dark story. Unfortunately, this game’s plot isn’t really compelling enough to motivate the exploration of your constantly changing household, and the horror doesn’t exactly pick up the slack.

 

For the most part in Infliction: Extended Cut, you’re helpless. You can’t even run, the player meant to walk around in areas looking for the right items or notes to trigger some story progression. This is where one of the game’s failings in presenting a sense of danger arises. Early on when you haven’t caught on to the formula that eventually settles in, things can be tense and there is a good use of strange noises and unexplained movements to keep you on edge. However, most of the time the only way this will pay off is when you complete an objective, your wife appears suddenly and kills you. This is a necessary part of the game’s structure, the game needing to alter the house’s layout and it doesn’t want you running around in the previous form it assumed. A grisly sight may be added to the foyer, previously locked rooms open up, and even the layout can change with endless hallways. There are even times you can suddenly walk into a new area entirely like a police station or cabin in the woods. The cabin even assumes an interesting look based on the fact you find it by entering a painting, brush strokes visible if you approach things too closely, but poking around there isn’t really more interesting than back in the house thanks to the game having already made it clear how it will use the threat of your dead wife.

There are times at least where a vengeful spirit can stalk the halls and your death isn’t just a guaranteed step in continuing the story. However, these aren’t handled much better. There will be a bit of a visual distortion if your wife is near and then she’ll appear, coming towards you at such speed you really have no hope of outrunning her. If you have the camera you can use its flash to make her disappear, but she’ll reappear rather quickly it seems and then probably attack before your flash is ready to go again. This is technically where the game’s hiding system might come into play. Beds and tables sometimes give you the option to press Square to hide beneath them and wait out a spirit, but it doesn’t feel particularly feasible or more importantly, worthwhile. If you get killed there’s not much penalty since areas you explore are fairly small and even if you did want to use hiding spots, they’re often fairly far from where threats will actually appear. This is how what is meant to be an injection of terror instead ends up an irritation, the spirit too capable and their threat minimal so you are more likely to roll your eyes when danger crops up rather than actually fearing for your in-game life.

 

The only remaining activities are the rare puzzle that usually either has too few variables to be interesting to solve or involves using your camera to uncover something hidden. Most other moments of play involve wandering around in search of where to go, and while the game can muster up a decent jump scare from time to time, it’s hardly the hook the game needs to keep your interest. In fact, the most interesting thing is perhaps the behind-the-scenes museums unlocked for beating the game since there is a good deal of well done art hanging on the walls to appreciate and a peek at game development at least leaves you walking away with something interesting to think about.

THE VERDICT: Infliction: Extended Cut has a fundamental misunderstanding of how to pay off its otherwise well built atmosphere. When things become too predictable you can’t really find them terrifying anymore, especially when you know the outcome will be either a minor setback or sometimes an advantage. The character models and lean story offerings don’t really help build up a story and the rare puzzles aren’t very involved, so you’re left wandering around the same house that could have hosted a good horror game but the the payoff to all the mood setting is going to more likely be irritation and eye rolling than reacting to the rare effective pop scare.

 

And so, I give Infliction: Extended Cut for PlayStation 4…

A TERRIBLE rating. It’s important on some level to approach a horror game ready to be scared. Infliction: Extended Cut even has a good start where the the house feels unnerving and you’re left wondering how everything ties together. Then the game spills a few too many details early on and you realize every time you do something important you’re probably going to see another death scene, and moments that could have worked if they were more organic lose their punch and you too easily accept your fate rather than appreciate the supernatural circumstances around it. It’s not like Infliction: Extended Cut does much better with its experimentation on less predictable dangers though. Too often the small areas you explore mean by the time you know where a threat is it’s too late to do much, and since there isn’t anything like a sprint you are more likely to invite death than try to prevent it since it’s simper, quicker, and oddly more productive. Not everything this horror game does is a failure, there’s some interesting visuals to be sure and giving the player time to explore the police station to absorb information would work in a plot with more to build to. Infliction: Extended Cut lacks depth to its ideas though, there being a basic understanding that a killer ghost lurking the halls could be scary but little thought is put into proper implementation of it. The game wants to be ominous but then you enter a new room and you know you can poke around as much as you like since the only danger is going to come from picking up the flashing object required to progress.

 

Infliction: Extended Cut doesn’t feel like it has much to say or any strong ideas for direction either, leaving a prospective player scrounging for something of value to extract beyond high fidelity cans of corn. Some striking images would work in isolation even if they struggle to fit into a narrative that perhaps could have found deeper appreciation through thematic set pieces or more details to peel back through exploration. Instead it is predictable, shallow, and despite being short, a chore to play not because it is hard, but because there’s not enough stimulating the player into even wanting to see how this bland and basic plot concludes.