Re:re:Ghosted isn’t a particularly strong game, assuming you can even get it to work.
This looked like a neat idea. A game that’s themed around analogue horror with first person puzzling too. I like scary games, and I really like analogue horror, so Re:re:Ghosted seemed like a great combination, although I had no idea how it would actually work. It doesn’t, as it turns out, in more ways than one.
If you aren’t familiar with analogue horror, it’s a subgenre of found footage horror, normally themed around video cassettes from the 80s and 90s that seem innocuous until you watch a little too long and realise that something sinister has corrupted it, and may be speaking to you directly. There are lots of examples, with some strong ones like The Mandela Catalogue and Gemini Home Entertainment on YouTube being very interesting examples.
Re:re:Ghosted makes an attempt to do something similar, with each level being prefaced by what appears to be a live action video advertising a job that gradually becomes more and more unsettling. These sections are reasonably well done, although there’s not a lot of connective tissue between them, and I’m pretty sure there’s some AI at play in them if that’s something that concerns you.
You play as a guy who seems to be working at a motel who keeps waking up and has the sudden urge to check on guests staying there. You’ll head to their room to find it empty before interacting with an object that takes you to a world themed around that particular guest. You’ll need to solve a few puzzles to escape and wake up to do it all again. It feels as though you’re reliving some sort of experience that each person had.
The problem is that the actual levels aren’t really much fun. There are puzzles that are barely puzzles at all, involving you going from one place to find a code/button that unlocks a key that unlocks a door that leads to the exit. The levels themselves seem to be unrelated to much at all, with one looking like a kids play area, and another being the actual Backrooms, with all of them having uninspired puzzles and the occasional cheap jump scare if you’re lucky.
Even the potentially interesting VHS style visuals don’t help as they just make it harder to see what you’re meant to find. This is made worse by how dark the game is on some stages, making it near impossible to see where you’re going, let alone what you’re meant to do. You might suggest increasing the brightness in the settings menu! Good idea! Except there isn’t a setting menu. In fact the game won’t even pause. I resorted to turning up the brightness on my TV just to find my way around.
But worst of all is the optimisation. I played this on Xbox Series X — there isn’t a PC version it seems — and found it running smoothly enough. The issue is that it caused the console to overheat and shutdown on multiple occasions. I cannot comprehend how this would be happening, as it’s hardly a visual powerhouse and Forza Horizon 6 manages to run without causing the system to crash. I eventually had to give up playing for fear it would damage my console.
As an idea, Re:re:Ghosted is interesting, and the attempt to use what appears to be live action footage is something that’s used too rarely in games. But that isn’t enough to sell me on a bland and potentially broken product. I can’t comment on how it performs on other systems, but I dread to think what it’s like running on a Nintendo Switch. This is a hard one to recommend, and I’d suggest ghosting it.
Re:re:Ghosted is available now on Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch.
