Developer: Metavision Studio
Publisher: Metavision Studio
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
File Destined – Review
Sometimes, an older game passes by our radar, and we feel compelled to revisit it. Indie developer Metavision Studio has a handful of titles on its resume currently, but File Destined was its debut title. File Destined is a pretty basic first-person psychological horror experience made in Unreal Engine. We really wish we could give this game a more favorable verdict. But sadly, we’re glad that Metavision Studio has grown a lot since this release, because it’s a rather rough ride, from the overall design flaws to the lackluster gameplay.
Story
File Destined opens with an interesting tutorial given by the main character’s artificial intelligence assistant. The main character himself, Oliver, is a cop, and he’s using virtual reality to enter the crime scene of a murder that happened in a hospital, in the hopes of finding clues that could solve the case. As you start to wander around, you instantly get assaulted by a procession of horror clichés, from the shady doctors experimenting on patients to the main character hiding a dark secret of his own. It’s nothing new, and nothing too exciting either, though. The twist at the end was interesting, but could easily be predicted by anybody who isn’t a complete noob in horror. We just didn’t feel it was enough to carry the game through, even with the ridiculously short run time of under two hours.
Graphics
The visual choices might be one of the only things worth complimenting in File Destined. While the game is probably made entirely of bought assets rather than original content, the developers at least use them in a fun way, crafting some spooky environments to explore. Taking inspiration from other horror games that are basically walking simulators, you can expect doors to go missing once you turn your back and rooms to randomly change their layout in mind-bending ways. The game looks good, and a few scenes were even visually interesting enough to make all the other complaints we have in this review fade to the background. However, the ‘monster’ design is basically just a thin lady in a dress, and a lot of the jump scares were badly executed, so there’s not a lot of fright factor in this game.
Sound
Continuing the running theme of horror clichés, this game has barely any music, and the sound effects are mostly assets with cheap, loud jump scare noises and not much else. Honestly, we weren’t impressed. We will admit that the voice actor for Oliver did a good job; however, the spoken lines often did not match the subtitles, and in a few cases even contradicted them, which was very confusing.
Gameplay
File Destined is your typical psychological horror game that doesn’t offer a lot of gameplay. Practically a walking simulator, the tedium of wandering around waiting to trigger the next event that will allow you to progress is only once or twice broken up by a lock-picking mini game or a puzzle that requires you to find a code somewhere in the same room you’re currently in. You can pick up items and inspect them, and you have a lighter with limited fluid inside, though plenty is lying around, so it’s not like there’s a resource management element to the game. Normally, we wouldn’t really make a big fuss about this. Some of the best games are walking simulators, in our opinion. But since the story is rather lackluster, the jump scares are ineffective or sometimes even happen where the player can’t see them, and the events are so confusing, it really diminishes the experience.
Everything about this game feels like the developers were cutting corners. We already mentioned that the subtitles very often don’t match what the character is saying. Similarly, the text descriptions of items in the journal were at times nonsensical, feeling generated with AI or perhaps faulty translation tools since the game isn’t originally English. We also felt very confused when, upon finishing the game, we were instantly spammed by twenty-six achievements, each named after a different letter in the alphabet. This gives the impression that the developer added them just to bloat the total achievement number and make the game seem longer than it is. While in reality, File Destined can be completed in under two hours, meaning the price of four bucks seems extremely high to us.
Conclusion
File Destined would come across as a mediocre walking simulator horror game at best, if all the small things mentioned throughout this review didn’t add up to a whole heap of annoyances. We find it hard to give this game a lot of grace and cannot recommend it to anybody, not even people who really love horror. We just hope the devs really learned from this debut and put more into their current games.
No Comments