Apparition (2018)

Apparition draws inspiration from some of the most successful horror-themed games of the last decade and it certainly succeeds at inspiring fear and dread, causing chills down the player's spine in sheer terror that the game's wretched ghosts are right around the corner. Unfortunately Apparition's limitations when it comes to its narrow and short experience, excessive repetition and unambitious visual environment make its appeal very limited to a niche of horror games fans and not much more.

Apparition is yet another example of a game being good in concept but bad in execution. I truly wanted to like this game. There are some really neat concepts, the ouiji board is fun to play around with, and the idea of only being able to bring along certain pieces of equipment could make for a grand, albeit nerve-wracking, time. Unfortunately, instead of the game that Apparition could have been, we got what essentially amounts to a slightly more developed Slenderman clone. The moral of the story: don’t’ ever assume that a game will be good just because it sounds like it should be.

Apparition wound up being disappointing, mostly because of how interesting the initial premise of the game was and how it subsequently attempted to deliver on that promise. Intentionally seeking out paranormal activity rather than fleeing from it in a horror game is a fascinating idea, but Apparition wasn't able to make it work with its repetitive gameplay and lack of scary elements. Apparition is hard to recommend in its current state to anyone except for the biggest of survival horror fans, and other games - Phasmophobia comes to mind - are probably better options right now.

A game that has a lot of potential, but the Switch version is full of glitches and even with jump scares the parts that do work just aren’t as creepy as they could be. The game is very repetitive and gets boring really fast.