Lazarski has more or less free rein of the building to explore, investigate, and interrogate tenants (all in first-person using standard WASD controls or a gamepad). A grisly discovery in the apartment where the call originated kicks off his investigation, most of which takes place within the oppressive confines of the housing complex. He traces the call to a Class-C Tenement Building and goes to find his son. The game opens in Dan’s fabulously retro-futuristic squad car, where he gets a strange, garbled message from his long-estranged son, Adam. He’s a willing tool of his corporate overlords but he’s not happy about it. Dan fits squarely in the mold of the modern, noir-styled, self-hating, down-on-his-luck detective, the kind that’s too tired or hungover to whip up Bogart-esque witticisms. The Chiron Corporation has demolished the democratic structures of the country and now rules over the Fifth Polish Republic, a corporatocratic police state in which everyone lives in Chiron-built housing, watches Chiron-produced news on Chiron-manufactured TVs, and works according to a Chiron-determined caste system.ĭaniel Lazarski is an Observer, a detective who has been cybernetically enhanced with the ability to jack into people’s minds and uncover hidden information and memories. Rather than the Victorian horror of the previous game, >observer_ moves things two hundred or so years farther along – 2084, to be exact, in a not-so-subtle nod to the Orwellian surveillance state that comprises near-future Poland (you find a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four early in the game, just in case you didn’t get the allusion the first time). I mention this not to beat a dead horse, but to emphasize my own pleasant surprise at just how much I enjoyed their newest release, >observer_, a game that shares a lot of design DNA with its predecessor yet tweaks the formula in smart ways, turning shortcomings into strengths. In 2016, the oddly-named Bloober Team released Layers of Fear, a horror game that mistook quantity of jump scares for quality, throwing scenario after incoherent scenario at you with little-to-no breathing room, leading to a predictable pattern of frights that marched toward obvious plot reveals. This review deals only with the original version of the game. Note: Since time of writing, this game has been updated and rereleased as Observer – System Redux.
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