LogFAQs > #968399720

Strangeland (PC)

This game only has one game to compare it to: Sanitarium. If I didn't play that game, maybe I would've appreciated this one a bit more. Even Sanitarium's worst parts--the non-horror parts---are in my opinion better than this. Sanitarium knows how to set the tone on the bizarre and the surreal without being pretentious, overwrought, and too on the nose with the symbolism which was what Strangeland is. Like in that final chapter the twist was like this one big exposition on how yes the carnival is apparently how the protagonist thinks his life is a game which makes the message of the story trite and shallow. Whereas Sanitarium just puts a circus in the game for absolutely no reason other than because the human mind is incomprehensible and you're having a breakdown.

Anyways, when the game isn't trying to shove poetic drivel down your throat, its decent. Puzzles are fine and not basic. But its the characters that really charm me. Even though they're just "You", they have their own facets to them that make them endearing. And I don't want to say much about the second half of the game but essentially you get to do the first part again but this time everything's dead and this part felt more rushed than the first. It would've been really interesting as a redo but the pretentiousness just had to get in the way.

Its meh really and I'm glad to have gotten it out of the way. Twist is nothing special. I saw it a mile away and can I just say that I am starting to get real tired with these family-related "psychological horror" games like you just *know* that it's always your fault your wife/child/sibling died. It's always you no exceptions. Like I wish there was a game where you're just being fucked around in the head even though your family is fine or you have nothing to do with anything.