Tormented Souls - Review

Tormented Souls, it’s a little bit survival, it’s a little bit horror, and it’s a whole lot of being alone in the dark with some mind-boggling puzzles. Is this modern take on old-school Survival Horror a good one, or should old-school be left well enough alone?

My earliest memory of gaming is seeing the intro movie to the original Resident Evil game. The corny acting, the cheesy effects, and the opening scene with the members of S.T.A.R.S entering the mansion. From my earliest days of gaming, I’ve enjoyed classics of Survival Horror. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Alone in The Dark, just to start. Silent Hill 2 was one of my absolute favourite games growing up and is the penultimate example of the tank-control, fixed camera 3D, survival horror.

Tormented Souls attempts to reignite that feeling in survival horror. Cheesy voice acting, reviving the survival aspect of survival horror, and giving life to this somewhat dated genre. The thing that stuck out to me early on, is whilst the environment’s look gorgeous and, are wildly reminiscent of the high quality pre-rendered backgrounds we came to appreciate in Resident Evil. The character models, particularly the main character and a priest character you interact with in future.

Look like they are wrapped in plastic and have been run through a shining machine. The character models definitely look like a modern-day version of an early 1990’s horror game, but they also look like they are wearing, for lack of a better description, glad-wrap. There is a bizarre gloss to the main character in particular, so much so that she seems to reflect light sources off her clothes. I’m not one to poke holes in things visually, but I do not understand this decision. The characters could’ve looked just as good as they do, without needing to be glossy. It doesn’t seem to matter as much with the enemies, who don’t appear as glossy, but the main characters suffer from this highlighter effect.

Survival horror walks a very fine line, between being too unsurvivable, and realistically being just horror. Tormented Souls whilst claiming to be inspired by Resident Evil, seems to have missed the crucial aspect as to what made the Survival in Resident Evil, survival. Ammo is scarce in Resident Evil. There are enemies you want to fight, and there is enemies you just want to run around. You don’t have the resources to kill everything, and you have to be careful with your resource allocation.

Tormented Souls, at least in the early sections, isn’t very survival. There is almost never really an opportunity to avoid an enemy, and the few that you can, are because you have absolutely no reason to actually ever go to the location the enemy is in. On top of that, you always have enough resources available to you, to kill every enemy that comes your way. Granted, I was incredibly thorough with collecting items everywhere I went. So perhaps I was collecting resources not intended to be collected as readily as I was, but it did mean, that I never found myself trying to “survive”. The most dangerous aspect was when I would take a hit for being greedy with trying to get an extra shot fired.

This isn’t inherently bad, there is nothing wrong with the game providing sufficient resources. The problem comes from making a point about this being a MODERN version of classic survival horror. Missing out on an entire section of that genre is frustrating, and you’ll find a lot of people, are likely going to put the game down in the few first hours, because they don’t feel that old school nostalgia working its magic.

The story is a little slim here too. In the 13 hours I played (and I will be justifying my stopping at this point) the story wasn’t explained all that deeply. Granted, I don’t think I got much further than maybe 1/3 of the way through the game, so I am likely missing a bunch of story. A lot of backstory comes in diary entries, which is perfectly fine. Lore in data entries is a great way of conveying information. There are occasionally books with puzzle solutions. Problematically, bar 1 of these, most of these are pretty useless. The puzzles they offer a solution to are generally pretty common sense, and I found myself solving them, before I actually found the books.

However, in the 13 hours I played, I have theories about why my character felt compelled to come to the mansion, but not confirmed. I have theories about what is happening, but nothing confirmed. There is a lot of possible things going on, but nothing has been really explained. What little story there is, seems interesting. I just wish there was a little more being explained, rather than just hinted at.

I played Tormented Souls for 13 hours, before I called it. Of these 13 hours, 4 of them were spent trying to solve 2 puzzles. Of those 2 puzzles, 1 took about an hour, and I was mildly frustrated after solving it, but felt there probably was enough information given to solve it.

The other is this damn monkey puzzle. I have spent 3 hours attempting to work this puzzle out. I have a document with the poem puzzle written out 2 different ways, with almost 150 possible permutations for solutions. I have scoured the entire available map, several times overlooking for a possible book that lends more information to the possible solution. Nothing. I had another member of Maxi-Geek jump on a call with me, and we spent close to 30 minutes, going over possible solutions, looking around the area, trying to find something I may be missing. Nothing. I have spent 3 hours of my life bashing my head against the wall with this one puzzle.

The thing with Silent Hill, Resident Evil and Alone in The Dark, is yes, the puzzles can be difficult, but there is always enough information to work them out, pretty quickly. I have never struggled for more than 10 minutes on puzzles in any other survival horror games. I have wasted 3 hours of my life trying to work out this puzzle. I know that day 1, someone will have the solution instantly, and I’ll feel like an idiot for not seeing it. But as it stands, I’ve had two sets of eyes on this puzzle, and neither of us can see WHY we would be incorrect with our solution. Any enjoyment I was having with the game, and I was enjoying myself despite my gripes, was drained from me with this puzzle. I cannot progress without solving it, but I have tried closer to 200 to 300 solutions in total and have had no success.

The puzzles are tedious, there is few that are designed well. This puzzle assumes knowledge of the 5 Wise Monkeys, I THINK. It has the traditional 3, as well as 2 I did not recognise. Research has led me to believe they are the lesser used 2 of the 5, but there is no way to confirm this. The text for the poem is expressed 2 different ways depending on whether you read it in the examine screen, or from the text box when exploring it more. The puzzle is the worst thing I’ve experienced in a modern title.

The biggest redeeming factor is that I sat in the main menu in anger for a long time after throwing the towel in on this puzzle. It reminded me of what was making me really enjoy the game. The music. The music in the main menu is lovely. It’s soothing, it’s relaxing, but it also sets the eerie tone of the game. The ambience of the mansion is fantastic, and it makes it much nicer to be walking around the mansion for the 18th time looking for a missed item. The creepy ambient sounds of scraping and creaking, the howling and the creature noises. It adds life and atmosphere to the game. If for nothing else, the music and the general atmosphere add a whole new air to the game.

Tormented Souls is meant to be a modern take on classic survival horror. Whilst it gets some things right, they’ve also failed to recognise what made classic survival horror great and have focused on the most obtuse areas of it. Lack of survival, obnoxious and poorly explained puzzles, weak story. The atmosphere and visuals are gorgeous, and when the game lets you actually play, it is fun. It is a fun game. But it is also one that will have you smacking your head against the wall, if you aren’t the best with puzzles.

The Score

6.0

Review code provided by PQube

The Pros

+Sound design is great, with perfect ambience

+Enemy models are interesting and unique

+Gorgeous environments

The Cons

-Obnoxious, poorly explained puzzles

-Missing the survival of survival horror

-Character model is unnecessarily glossy and reflective

-Monkey Puzzle