During the first minutes of Blair Witch, it's hard not to think of the intro to Resident Evil 4 where Leon S. Kennedy goes in search of the daughter of the President of the United States in deep Spain. Except that there, we do not embody an agent of the American special forces, but Ellis, an ex-soldier with a tortured mind. Despite everything, he participates in the great search led by the Burkittsville police to try to find little Peter. The disappearance of the latter revives anxiety among the inhabitants of the town, who still remember the three film students (Joshua, Heather and Michael) of the Blair Witch Project. Two years later, therefore, the mystery surrounding the woods of Black Hills which they never left remains intact, and the presence of the German shepherd Bullet will not be too much to find your way around because Blair Witch looks like a great walking simulator. We walk, enormously, the developers having taken care to deprive us of the slightest indicator likely to betray a track. Constantly relying on our companion to scratch off a clue is both frustrating and terribly exhilarating. Frustrating, first of all, because the exploration is subject to the inevitable scripts. For example, until you get Bullet to sniff the right object, you'll be doomed to run around in circles in the same area. In fact, we would have liked this mechanic to be optional, if only to give the player more leeway.
While Blair Witch was expected to be an ode to horror, Bloober Team's game rather takes the same route as Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem with great emphasis on hallucinations.
Seeing our canine friend cross an invisible wall that we bumped into a few seconds ago defies all logic. But it's also what makes us feel a huge sense of satisfaction when Bullet brings us something capable of advancing the investigation; the heady side of it. What is also significant is that Bloober Team made sure that the bond between Ellis and his dog was as natural as possible. If there is a way to give him orders, he is also able to bring objects back without being asked, as long as you are nearby. And then, he also acts as a bodyguard; understand by this that he will immediately alert his master in the event of an evil presence. In this regard, Blair Witch's combat system is based on a single element: our flashlight. By pointing the light in the direction of creatures lurking in the woods, we grant ourselves a little respite until the next moment of tension. Simple but terribly effective, especially since the unpredictable behavior of the monsters reinforces this feeling of panic when you doubt the origin of the grunts. The other major component of the game is obviously the camcorder, which reminds us that The Blair Witch Project popularized the genre of found footage. If films such as Paranormal Activity or REC have had the same critical success, others like Unfriended and The Devil Inside are scary in the pejorative sense of the term.
By getting his hands on red video tapes, Ellis can alter the reality in which he finds himself. The door is closed ? Just choose the appropriate cassette and stop the image when it is opened for the miracle to happen. Steam engine not working? Likewise, Ellis must scrutinize the correct sequence so that it starts to turn. We let you imagine all the puzzles based on this superimposition of two dimensions, knowing that the camcorder is also valuable for distinguishing shadows, or even following a trail when we are on the verge of madness and all our bearings are upset. Instead of abusing jump scares as is often the case in horror games, the title of Bloober Team prefers to multiply the hallucinations which become more and more recurrent as you go deeper. in the woods. In addition to feeding the scenario of the game, they underline the versatile character of Ellis who constantly hesitates between giving in to psychosis definitively or clinging to life. His cell phone and walkie-talkie are great ways to keep in touch with acquaintances (and relax during short lulls), though they too can play dirty tricks on him; because between the text messages that came out of nowhere, and the conversations that are only the fruit of Ellis's delirium, we can understand that he is not completely serene.
LET'S GO FOR A WALK IN THE WOODS
If the lack of depth of the story did not bother us more than that, Blair Witch suffers on the other hand from a big problem of rhythm. The events take forever to take off: for a relatively short game (it does not exceed six hours), it is quite problematic. We can consider that the developers wanted a slow tempo to stick to the mechanics which, ultimately, are more about investigation than survival. Apart from the clues to unearth, Ellis already has everything at hand. However, the last two chapters (there are 17) are worth the detour, if only to see the former soldier fight with all his might against his demons, between two phases of infiltration. A show where all boundaries explode and where nothing makes sense. Too bad the bugs and numerous framerate drops on Xbox One X are ruining this last high-flying act. Without exaggerating, we had to restart our save twice because our character could not enter a room when the door was wide open. Ditto with the elements supposed to appear after watching a video, or Bullet who finds himself stuck on a beam. Despite a slamming artistic direction, a perfect mastery of the lighting, and certain visually successful sets, not sure that the technical concerns encourage the players to embark on a second run to discover a happier ending than ours – there are some has six in total. Finally, hats off to the sound design which gives even more flavor to the game when you have a headset on your ears.
