Hey all I’m back with a stealth game this week. It’s my Church in the Darkness Review!
Plot: The plot is pretty interesting, at least to me because I’m an Oregonian. However I’ll get to that in a second. The game follows Vic, a person who infiltrates a cult in South Africa to locate their nephew. Quick side note for those not up on some of the stranger things that have happened in Oregon, like being the only part of the continental United States to ever be bombed. Oregon had a radical cult founded by the Rajneesh that did some really crazy stuff including plotting an assassination, mass food poisoning and other things.
Gameplay: Anyways since I have that background knowledge I was pretty interested in playing this game and I wasn’t too disappointed. It’s incredibly simplistic in it’s stealth gameplay, you are highly encouraged to sneak everywhere and take out any enemies with stealth rather than go guns blazing into the cult compound. That being said it never really gets any better. Your first five minutes playing the game is going to be the exact same way you’ll play the game by the time you are done with the game for good.
The main replay-ability factor in the game is that you can get one of four different personality sets for the two main antagonists. I ended up with them both being evil, but it could be any combination of evil or good. That and the different endings you can gain in the game. If you go the entire playthrough undetected you’ll get a certain ending. However if the next time you play you decide to go in guns blazing and kill everyone you’re going to get a very different ending.
Characters: There really isn’t much to the cast, or there wasn’t for me at least since I accidentally killed my initial contact in the cult. After that I was booking it and dealing with the fallout of that miss-pressed button. Frankly I didn’t find the characters all that interesting, but for others maybe they’ll find it more intriguing.
Art: The art is incredibly low poly, which is both good and bad. It’s good because it’ll always look bad no matter how aged the game becomes, and it’s bad because it frankly looks pretty low budget.
Music: The music is okay, but nothing spectacular either. The voice acting however was fairly well done, the constant propaganda that plays throughout the compound is repetitive but it does set the atmosphere of the game really well.
Overall: A decent game, but it’s unchanging gameplay doesn’t help it’s replay-ability or overall fun factor.
For those who like: Stealth games, Cults, Games with Multiple Endings.
Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above, or gameplay that is unchanging in either difficulty or variety from the first ten minutes till the final storyline is revealed.
Developers: Paranoid Productions
Platforms: Mac, PC, PlayStation 4, Steam, Xbox One