Doorways: The Underworld is a first person horror adventure, featuring a complex story and deep atmosphere. It will challenge you with its fast-paced gameplay and breathtaking visuals and sounds, so prepare to immerse yourself in a terrifying psychological experience. The Underworld is the third chapter of Doorways. It is not necesary to have the first chapters in order to play this game. But we recommend to do so for a better understand of the story. You're playing as Thomas Foster, a special agent who must track a missing psychopath. Who is she? What is this place and how did you get here? These are just some of the questions that you must answer during your journey...
+Atmosphere, I quite like the dream quality
+Linguistic skills, tells a story and without being afraid of good use of language
-The adventure gamey roots are to prominent.
While the first 2 chapters where atleast castle like and you could atleast have some connection with the environment, here you go through basically the most stereotypical places imaginable. Caves, Sewer, labs. The feel of playing this game is really uncomfortable and not in the good way. It feels like your not in control. Theres no run button, your character automatically runs when something chases you, and the levels are so very linear. In Amnesia it did feel very simple and easy to know what to do and where to go but it did manage to make you feel helpless because you where in complete control of your characters movements and the levels felt real enough that you could hide and feel like it was you doing it.
Here the adventure roots are so strong that everything feels 100% predictable, enemy chases you, you know it won't get you. You know the fat lumbering enemy won't catch upto you. You know that there its nothing but corridors so the exit must be this way (convenient map showed this). Many would argue that level design is perhaps everything, I would say its a very important aspect that can't be done 'by the numbers' and slap in a monster chase in any old place. You could remove every monster encounter from this game and it wouldn't make any real difference. The game would still feel hollow in its gameplay mechanics, brain dead puzzles, walking around through corridors, uninspired setting. Which is a shame because in a dream like nightmare world, literally is possible and we get this.
While horror games are moving from a tightly constructed experience to become more dynamic (random encounters a'la Alien Isolation & random encounter and procedural generated environments a'la Routine, Phantasmal & Monstrum), Doorways feels like its going backwards to a time long since past where horrors where just adventure games with site seeing train ride through a spooky haunted place.
Positives:
- Scary moments
- Intresting story
- Creative features
Negatives:
- The story line is too obvious
- Repetitive gameplay
- Bad graphics
- Short
I thought the first two chapters were decent. I didn't love them, but it was a pretty nice experience. I saw the pictures and trailers and though that this chapter looked even better and was excited to finally see some real monsters in the game. But in the end, it feels like the developers took a step back.
The gameplay is painfully repedtitive. It looks like you used the same engine they used for Penumbra. Don't get me wrong, Penumbra is a great game, but I expect better graphics in the year of 2014.
Almost every area in every map looks exactly the same. It looks like you made one tunnel and then copied it over and over again.
I liked the amulet feature, but all the other quests are also way too repedtitive. First map - find keys. Second map - find more keys and some valves. Next area in the second map - find more keys and more valves. Third map - find a key.
The monsters are not balanced very well. The first monster is super fast and kills you in one hit. And to top the cake, you have very few hiding spots and you can't crawl behind him or hide in a different hallway because he can sense you and have eyes on the side of his skull (or at least that's how it seems like), while the second monster is too easy to avoid and looks like a mutated hulk. Silly and not slightly scary.
The story wasn't bad, in fact, I like these kind of stories, but it was kinda there already. I play some games twice, and still don't know everything about them because the story is so complex. I read three notes and knew exactly what the story was about and what to expect. You leave almost nothing for the player to explore.
Conclusion:
If you are looking for a scary game, this might be good for you. I don't recommend it though if you want a deep story or good gameplay. It doesn't have any of those.
5/10 - Decent