Game review 03 September 2019, 12:09

author: Filip Grabski

Blair Witch Review – the Scariest Forest

Bloober Team is a company that has become a synonym of horror for many people. Blair Witch is their first game developed under a license, but the devs were able to turn that into their favor, offering another successful title. Is it their best game yet?

The review is based on the PC version.

Nine years ago, Krakow's Bloober Team created the first Polish music game: Music Master: Chopin. The game was horrible. Maybe it was that trauma of the initial failure that made the studio so keen on horror games? If so, then let's thank the gods of gaming for making sure Music Master was concieved. Hard beginnings aside, the subsequent years brought us two installments of the creepy Layers of Fear, and The Observer – all of them reasonably successful releases. Blair Witch, the first game from Bloober based on a license – a wildly popular license at that – confidently joins the above games, and it's not in the least intimidated. It can easily rival them. But is it terrifyingly good?

The announcement of Blair Witch at E3 was quite a surprise for two reasons – first, the game used a very popular movie franchise, and second, the express release date (with Layers of Fear 2 being released merely two weeks prior). Fortunately, the creators feel confident enough in the genre of scary walking simulators that they were able to produce several hours-worth of adventure quite quickly and, moreover, without any real damage to quality.

On the one hand, the new game comes with all the good elements featured in the previous ones – we get a dense and surreal atmosphere, a hero with an obscure past, shape-shifting reality, an invisible threat, and a few ambiguous endings. And there also are some novelties – elements of combat, decent ideas for puzzles, a companion that has to be taken care of, as well as a famous, well-defined setting that has its own rules. All of this makes Blair Witch the best, the most mature game from Bloober. Provided you can swallow a few bitter pills.

Lost in the forest

The game is set in 1996, two years after the events of the original Blair Witch movie. In Black Hills Woods, near Burkittsville, a boy goes missing, and a former police officer, Ellis, joins the search-and-rescue team – for him, this is more than just another routine check. As usual with the games of the studio, the protagonist has a complicated past, and it largely influences the story. Ellis seems like a good guy – after all, he came to the woods with a dog – his best friend, and as an experienced explorer like himself. But as soon as the team under Sheriff Lanning finds out who wants to help them, as soon as Ellis talks on the phone with his girlfriend Jess, we learn that his conscience is far from clear, and that he's looking for the boy for his own sake.

If you've watched any movie from the series (which isn't required to fully enjoy the game), you know well that the Black Hills Forest is a charming place only at the very beginning. The darker it gets, the worse things are. The intangible force reigning this territory starts to close its grip. People lose track of time, forest paths are beguiling, you hear uncanny sounds (perhaps whispers?), and all the bad memories and thoughts suddenly gain the weight of a thousand moons and don't want to let you go for nothing.

Fetch, Bullet!

Fortunately, Ellis has a friend. Bullet, the dog, introduces the most important game mechanic in Blair Witch. On a purely emotional level, the connection was shown admirably. The dog responds to commands, is grateful for the treats and tenderness, boldly runs through the woods, looking for the paths and tracks. On the gameplay level, though, things are a bit worse – mainly because some of the potential was squandered. Bullet acts as your living compass – if you have a hard time getting your bearings, the dog will start barking and lead you to the current objective. In a dense forest, this is invaluable. Too bad that there aren't too many situations, where the dog is really indispensable; they're all heavily scripted, too. This can leave you wanting more, because Bullet is a good boy.

Another good idea was the implementation of a video camera (which is a hallmark element of the Blair Witch franchise). This mechanic is, again, making me feel ambivalent – the device greatly reinforces the mood, and the collected tapes shed new light on the story. In terms of gameplay, it's pretty good – the NV turns out essential later in the game (and it works differently than in Outlast), but the system of manipulating the reality by pausing the clips in the right moments was used too scarcely and poses no real challenge.

Since we're talking about challenge... Blair Witch is simple and linear. The atmosphere is phenomenal, and the sense of impeding danger is gripping and relentless, but the problems the game has us solve don't require a lot of effort. The puzzles are simple, and the combat system makes the game an Alan Wake Lite – the witch sends her invisible minions to certain places, and the player must drive them away with the flashlight. You can die, but the death isn't compelling; it's a nuisance, an un-scary cut-scene.

You will be afraid

Fortunately, Bloober Team have studied the art of horror well – Blair Witch is certainly the creepiest game of this team – we have a few jump scares, but a compelling end result was achieved with skillfully managing the feelings of madness, isolation, and the fantastic, shape-shifting map.

Indeed, the best thing about Blair Witch (apart from great sound design – music, voices and sounds are top-notch) is the forest. It’s dense, diverse, and intimidating, but there's also one issue it entails: the sheer complexity of most of the game's scenes makes the game feel more poorly optimized than this year's Layers of Fear 2. Meanwhile, the overall quality of graphics was not improved so much that it would merit such a decrease of performance.

There were some minor visual glitches, such as Bullet levitating, his poor animations, some objects going through each other… The instances when the game teleports the protagonist to make it look as if they'd gone in a circle is also a curious case, since the process of moving the player wasn't concealed very well. The fear, although portrayed with mastery, also isn't perfect – people from Bloober don't know when to stop, and there are also moments when the strange and twisted scenes stretch for too long, diffusing the tension. This is especially true of the game's finale, which begins phenomenally, just to turn into an almost boring affair.

You can tell Blair Witch is the work of a well-versed team that's looking for new areas to explore. If this challenge was tackled more boldly, perhaps we'd be talking about a masterpiece here. Still, the game breathes some fresh air into the genre, and invites the hope that the studio's next game will be truly great. My adventure with the Black Hills Witch wasn't as long as I'd like, and the atmosphere was damaged a bit by a few avoidable glitches and controversial gameplay solutions. The overall impression is nonetheless positive, and this modern version of the Blair Witch will certainly be remembered more fondly than the trilogy from the early 2000s, inspired by Resident Evil. Blair Witch AD 2019 is Bloober's "best-of," supported by a recognizable franchise.