Developer: The Farm 51
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tested On: PC
Get Even – Review
Get Even has finally released after a month long pushback due to unfortunate world events. The game was originally slated to release on the 23rd of May, but developer Farm 51 decided to hold the release off due to the unfortunate attack at the concert held in Manchester city a day prior. The game has since garnered some negative press due to a false association with a livestream hosted on several different sites by a third party. In it a woman could be seen in a similar situation as one of the characters featured in the game’s trailer. After this livestream was over, a youtuber who has gained early access to the game started playing it, only to be shut down by the official Farm51 youtube account. Now that the game has gotten it’s release, and the people behind the staged kidnapping have come forward, it is finally time to review: Get Even.
Story
In the first half of your play-through, you play as Cole Black, a war veteran turned private eye with a hankering for destruction. After attempting to save your employer’s daughter and failing, you wake up in an abandoned asylum. As you stumble around in the darkness, you feel something on your head. You gather your bearings, and you are told by a mysterious man that the device you are wearing is a virtual reality helm. The rest of the game you spend piecing together what happened to you and the girl the day you tried to rescue her, and with the help of the helm, you walk through your lost memories, which you need to figure out the truth.
The story can be complicated and loopy. It jumps from place to place sometimes, and (spoiler alert) it ends up in an inception moment more than once. The story is made to not be too confusing luckily, as it’s just nested storylines within each other. A lot of the story is also delivered through contextual exploration, through finding readily available clues, or sometimes even through snippets of dialogue by enemies in the map.
You can also find more than one ending throughout the game, depending on how much of the evidence you gather in your sessions. As you find more and more evidence, per stage in your investigation, you can also find a code to let you through locked doors that give you some back story, and some more evidence on some of the characters.
Graphics
The game plays out mostly in an abandoned asylum, and as a psychological horror game, the color scheme is full of dull grey and brown hues. That does not mean it’s a washed out game though. there is a good amount of level diversity such as office buildings at night, overgrown train yards and the aforementioned asylum. The environments lend a lot to the overall creepiness of the game, with grim paintings and empty wheelchairs, the open ruins of train buildings and office buildings at night, it really builds an aesthetic where a lot can happen that’s beyond your control that could scare you.
Sound
It should be noted again that Get Even is a psychological horror game, and that genre influences the music and sound choices of the game. Expect to find no grand orchestral pieces. That does not mean there is no music at all though, some sections of the game have amazing music pieces that underline the core of the story. Other than that, there are only ambient noises.
Dialogue is fully voice acted, as is usual for story driven games. The amount of ambient sound is good and is not disruptive, and good dialogue between your character and the man who put you in the asylum, ambient sounds of things falling and breaking, storms and the likes, it’s all there for a good horror experience. One notable example of some weirdly placed music however, was about halfway through the game in a graveyard scene where you are either sneaking past, or gunning through some enemy henchmen. The soundtrack at that part of the game was some high-energy pop type of music that did not entirely fit the bill of the setting and activities at that time.
Gameplay
The game plays like a first-person shooter, giving you a silenced pistol, and a high-tech smartphone from the get-go. While not being intended as an FPS, there are quite a number of enemy infested sections you need to wade (or sneak) through to get to the other side. This means that the design of the game makes it a little bit rough if you don’t have the patience to sneak through or just want to create mayhem. Running and gunning is not as fluid as you’d want it to be due to this design decision, making the game a lot more difficult if you want to take that approach.
The game has some noticeable bugs, nothing major and gamebreaking, but some problems nonetheless. The biggest of these problems is one where you can get stuck in the environment without being able to get out. A quick reload to the last checkpoint fixes this, but it’s noticeable nonetheless and can lead to a little bit of frustration. One other problem you may encounter while launching the game, is that the cursor upon loading the game is on “New game” which is a bit unfortunate if you’re absentmindedly pressing next when launching the game.
In the second half of your game you gain access to what Sherlock Holmes would call a “memory palace” where you can select the different missions to gather up evidence you may have missed. This may be a little bit unfortunate for the player, as horror games rely on pushing the player forward through something that may be uncomfortable, to achieve the desired horror effect.
Conclusion
Get Even has a good story with some unexpected twists. The game is a bit unfortunate in that it doesn’t always push the player forward like you’d expect from a horror game. The one graveyard scene where the music is off is also quite an interesting choice on the developer’s end. If you can look past these remarks, and are looking for a psychological horror game to spend a couple of dark, candle lit nights on, this is your game. Pick it up, turn down the lights, and sleep well!
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