Combine something which has great nostalgic value for you, for example recording tunes onto cassette from the radio and making mix tapes, with another thing which is completely unrelated yet also has an overwhelmingly warm place in your heart, say, chocolate covered pretzels (no longer available in most retailers in the UK). Now combine these two things in some sort of unholy alliance. Yes I give you chocolate covered mix tapes! ...Eh?
That’s kinda what playing Lone Survivor feels like. The unholy alliance in this case is the combination between survival horror of the Silent Hill variety and pixelated 2D graphics. Now you see the chocolate covered mix tape comparisons! This game borrows heavily from the former series, with heavy reliance on atmosphere, puzzles which revolve on exploration and the feeling of claustrophobia which comes from being severely under-gunned for the task at hand. How does this work in the constraints of a 2D world with the limitations of 16-bit-alike graphics? Surprisingly well. The atmosphere is suitably dark and foreboding, with effective lighting effects that figure into the core gameplay. The sense of a broken world post a un-defined cataclysmic event is well established through the dark look and excellently moody soundtrack.
There’s nothing necessarily new or complex about the puzzles, but the storyline and general weirdness (pill popping and cardboard box man) give this game just about the right balance between infuriatingly abstract and overly obvious. The 4-6 hours it takes to complete feels just about right for what is at its core a relatively simple game, though fans of the survival horror genre might feel like the game could do with an extra area or two. Either way the game actively encourages replay through multiple endings and the oh-so-survival-horror grading you receive upon completion.
By now I guess people will know whether or not this is a game for them, and one short monster chase sequence aside, I wholeheartedly recommend!