It solely took 10 minutes of enjoying Unknown 9: Awakening for me to really feel a eager sense of deja vu. Taking out enemies in small arenas, watching an emotional story of private progress, and squeezing between loads of tight cracks in partitions – it’s a system that feels all too acquainted, sticking to the properly-established traditions of the “Crevice Crawler” style. It does check out one or two distinctive concepts to set itself aside, like thoughts-management powers that allow you to play puppet grasp together with your enemies, however the issue is that it executes on the basics considerably worse than its contemporaries. There are definitely glimmers of hope inside that new stuff, however any novelty rapidly wears off, leading to a generic and underwhelming slog stuffed with efficiency points and different jankiness in addition.
Set in an alternate-actuality model of the early twentieth century, you play as Haroona, a distrustful girl who loves spouting trite platitudes that has been imbued with the ability to faucet into an unseen dimension referred to as the Fold. Her powers allow you to do typical magic stuff like go invisible for a quick time frame, Pressure push and pull baddies round like an off-model Jedi, and enter a ghost type so you’ll be able to stroll round and clear up the simplest puzzles ever conceived. You may use them to worm your manner by a collection of small arenas separated by cutscenes clearly pining to be the following HBO adaptation – if you happen to’ve performed The Final of Us or God of Conflict you then already get the thought, however as an alternative of finely-tuned fight encounters and nail-biting stealth sections, Awakening provides sloppy fisticuffs and barebones crouch-fests.
Regardless of the extraordinarily generic setup, the worldbuilding right here is definitely not half dangerous, and there’s clearly been numerous effort and time put into establishing this universe’s timeline, lore, and supernatural guidelines. Like a knock-off Indiana Jones, this alternate model of Earth is house to mystical secrets and techniques and hidden histories saved simply out of attain in elements unknown, together with a mysterious cycle of extinction, a race of beings who cheated demise by making themselves immortal, and secret societies vying for paranormal information. Sadly, that promising basis doesn’t do the story itself a lot good, as Haroona’s predictable story is filled with cliches and unremarkable characters, finally getting horribly misplaced in a sea of magical jargon and convoluted references that fully whiffed on any try and make me care about what was taking place.
Plenty of that wonky journey will present alternatives for sneaking about to dispatch enemies discreetly, however the stealth is extraordinarily run of the mill and provides few improvements. You’ve bought a ghostly rock you’ll be able to throw to distract individuals and you’ll, after all, spend loads of time hanging out in tall grass the place no guardsman has ever thought to look. Sadly, the hopelessly dumb AI has a tough time detecting you even once you’re making issues explode and leaving our bodies in plain view. Nonetheless, there’s some small enjoyment available within the subpar stealth, as feeling like a grasp of the shadows who can clear a whole space with out being noticed continues to be rewarding to drag off. Plus, your companions will typically touch upon how sneaky you might be if you will get by a bit with out being caught – that’s a pleasant contact.
Sadly, you’ll have fewer alternatives to have interaction with stealth than you would possibly suppose, as Awakening railroads you into outright fight continuously and with nice relish. This weirdly appears to occur increasingly more as you get deeper into the roughly eight-hour story, which would not be as a lot of an issue if it weren’t for the false decisions it units up in its ability timber. This straightforward three-pronged improve system makes you higher at fight, stealth, or thoughts management skills as you acquire barely hidden “Gnosis Factors,” and does staple items like permit you to stay invisible for longer or make your melee assaults do extra harm. After spending the overwhelming majority of my ability factors on the stealth skills tree solely to see these encounters dry up, I started to marvel if I’d wasted my efforts and began hedging my bets by investing in different playstyles.
It’s actually unlucky that you simply’ll end up in additional easy fight as you go, too, as a result of it’s simply one of many issues Awakening does worst. These wimpy encounters pit you in opposition to the identical handful of enemy troopers who wield weapons and melee weapons, they usually largely quantity to the everyday dodging, gentle assaults, and heavy assaults recipe you’ll have seen in dozens of video games earlier than, solely much less polished. I performed my complete run on the toughest problem and the AI is so silly that the overwhelming majority of the time I used to be capable of fudge my manner by battles by spamming the identical set of assaults and effortlessly transferring out of the best way of extremely telegraphed strikes.
Whether or not you’re squatting behind crates or punching dumb minions, not less than you’ll be capable of get pleasure from Awakening’s finest function: thoughts-management powers. You possibly can leap out of your physique and into others with the press of a button, then use these dim meat puppets to hold out your twisted designs, together with activating that unit’s particular potential to wreak havoc on the surroundings or their fellow villains. For instance, you’ll be able to possess one of many large bruisers and use his floor pound potential close to a cluster of his mates to deal a ton of injury, or you’ll be able to take over one of many sniper enemies and have him shoot at a bit of surveillance gear to make your stealth job simpler.
As you progress, you’ll finally be capable of chain-possess a number of enemies in a row, instructing them to carry out varied misdeeds, then watch all of it play out in gradual movement, which will be numerous enjoyable. It’s not precisely revolutionary stuff and begins to develop a bit tiresome by the point you attain credit, nevertheless it’s undoubtedly probably the most entertaining a part of an in any other case disappointing journey. Additionally, fairly hysterically, if you happen to begin making your foes kill one another whereas remaining hidden close by, they appear solely vaguely conscious that you simply’re messing with them and rapidly return to what they had been doing – as a result of, once more, they’re so very silly. That is undoubtedly not a good factor, nevertheless it did not less than crack me up with regularity.
If sloppy encounters and a weak story aren’t discouraging sufficient, Awakening additionally suffers from varied efficiency points, bugs, and basic jankiness all through. The framerate dipped regularly whereas I used to be enjoying on a Ryzen 9/RTX 4090 PC, together with throughout fight in moments that may get you killed. Haroona likes to get caught on objects and bounce in place bizarrely, and cutscenes do that actually bizarre factor the place they soar abruptly between a bunch of pictures that solely final a pair seconds every, like they storyboarded the scene however by no means bothered ending it. That final one is generally type of humorous, nevertheless it additionally provides to a basic lack of polish that makes an already subpar sport really feel much more feeble.