Shaun Munro reviews The Inpatient…
The Inpatient is Supermassive Games’ much-anticipated follow-up to their acclaimed VR rail-shooter Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, and with promises of a rich, cinematic story that takes full, terrifying advantage of Sony’s headset, it truly seemed like the game might be the first big AAA VR hit of 2018.
There’s no joy at all, then, in declaring The Inpatient an underwhelming, scarcely two-hour horror romp that not only fails to make the most of its brief length, but also makes numerous choices directly antithetical to the dread-infused atmosphere it sometimes manages to muster.
A prequel to Until Dawn set in the Blackwood Sanitorium some 60 years prior, the game pits the player as one of the hospital’s patients suffering from amnesia and trying to piece their memory back together as the inmates and staff of Blackwood alike start getting picked off.
It’s a simple premise and one that, with the right execution, could’ve made The Inpatient a paranoia-soaked slice of survival horror brilliance ala Resident Evil 7. Unfortunately, though, the game’s impressive visuals and flashes of inspiration can’t mask a mostly slack, oddly uninvolving horror VR experience – yes, experience, because this really doesn’t feel like a full fat release – that only occasionally raises the pulse.
A clear problem right out of the gate is the narrative’s pacing; the opening 20-or-so minutes don’t amount to much more than listening to ho-hum dialogue in a mostly stationary position, at which point most players will probably be gagging for something scary to happen.
The game’s most effective moments are unquestionably the surreal, heightened sequences which see the player slowly walking through Blackwood’s eerie hallways, usually following an ominous figure. Though these sequences do employ jump scares, Supermassive was more restrained with the jumps than you’d expect from having played Rush of Blood. There’s an undeniable effectiveness to these set-pieces, even if they’re ultimately too short and there don’t seem to be any death or fail conditions (something I almost hesitate to mention, but it quickly becomes obvious anyway). The “walking simulator” label may be trite and reductive, but it fits this game like a glove.
At its most basic level, The Inpatient is hamstrung by less-than-ideal controls, where both Move and DualShock 4 inputs have their major pros and cons. The Moves allow free hand movement that makes interacting with objects feel more intuitive, but using the right-hand Move to change movement directions never begins to feel natural, even if the game’s lack of palpable danger makes the Move’s clunkiness a little easier to forgive. The DS4 is meanwhile effortlessly superior for locomotion, but interaction is rough. It’s hard to decisively recommend one over the other, and both feel like they should be better.
As for the narrative, as an Until Dawn fan I still found The Inpatient‘s narrative laboured and uninteresting. A huge creative foible was having the player reside in the company of others for so long, which significantly strips away the sense of isolation that VR is so effective at conveying. The third act in particular squanders a lot of its intense potential because you’re accompanied by other people for the majority, which combined with the lack of fail states, means there’s not much reason to be anything more than mildly creeped out.
It’s a shame because there are some fantastic flourishes here; a mechanic which allows the player to speak dialogue options aloud is fun and effective – especially hamming up the dialogue for your own amusement – and the overall quality of the sound design, from the voice acting to the intrusive 3D bumps in the night, is really quite fantastic.
Visually the game is also unquestionably one of the best-looking PSVR titles, with character models broaching the uncanny valley far more convincingly than just about anything else available for the hardware. The lighting effects, especially during the aforementioned set-pieces, are particularly impressive, with the Move controller serving as a brilliantly tactile representation of a flashlight.
Perhaps the game’s single best moment, not to spoil it, involves a clever VR riff on the famous “Don’t Move!” mechanic from Until Dawn, though it arrives amid an immensely rushed finale which smacks of a game that perhaps didn’t have the smoothest production, having been delayed from its original mid-November release date barely a week before.
For all of the game’s many issues, the ultimate sticking point for those keen to make use of their PSVR headsets will be the price, which unfortunately makes The Inpatient even more dubious a proposition right now. Costing an absurd £34.99 on the PlayStation Store and sold physically for around £25, the game feels wildly overpriced whatever your preferred medium, and even with the game featuring mild plot variations depending on your dialogue choices, it still doesn’t amount to a game worth more than a weekend rental or waiting for the inevitable digital sale.
The Inpatient seemed like it’d be just the kitschy dose of gonzo VR fun the doctor ordered to kick 2018 off, but with its brief length, exorbitant asking price and litany of dubious mechanical and creative choices, it’s ultimately a middling horror game without the consistency of vision or potency of atmosphere to fully recommend.
Pros:
+ One of the best-looking PSVR games to date.
+ Smart, creepy use of sound.
+ Some undeniably effective, atmospheric moments.
Cons:
– Short length for the price.
– The story is disappointingly tedious.
– It’s not that scary.
Rating: 5.5/10
Reviewed for PSVR.
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more video game rambling.
