Clandestinity of Elsie

☀️

It's generally a good game, with a great atmosphere. My main gameplay critique is that the stealth gameplay practically dies in the sewers in favor of gunning down enemies you're not going to be able to avoid. Narratively speaking, the ending feels anticlimatic, and could well have used an extra segment after reaching Burnie's garage where you go back home in time for the reveal at the end. Instead, we get an anticlimatic scene of Hayden trying to walk away from a Singed he could well have just shot dead followed by Hat Man's final scene.

This was a rather frustrating experience. Not because the game was horrendous. Quite the opposite: I found some parts to be genuinely fun. The very beginning where you get to your relatives' house in search of your wife and then traverse through the dark woods to their abandoned cabin was chilling and engaging. There were several moments like this that managed to briefly pick my interest, but none of them could distract from how lackluster the overall game was. And that's why it was frustrating. "Clandestinity of Elsie" had a potential to be a good game as it has several interesting ideas and decently executed elements. The creators were clearly inspired by "Silent Hill" series (particularly the second title) and while they managed to recreate its oppresive atmosphere with surreal imagery and limited lighting, they fumbled everywhere else. The writing here lacks the subtetly and complexity. The characters are one note: alcoholic war weteran who loves his wife, his angelic wife, some random girl who's looking for her dad, a mysterious guy who questions the protagonist about his life. I basically summed up everything there is to know about these characters. There's really not much more to them. On top of that the game handles its storyline in very heavy-handed manner, blatantly stating the moral on several occasions. Furthermore, you're regularly given an option to examine random objects to read protagonist's thoughts on them, something that "Silent Hill" used to great extends to develop its leads. Here, Hayden's banal comments amount to "I'm not really in the mood to eat", "The mailbox is empty", "An assortment of books, none particularly helpful for my situation" or "Garbage. What exactly was I expecting?" I could look past underwhelming storyline if it wasn't for the weak level design. Much like in "Silent Hill" you explore various locations, including an apartment building, hospital and sewers, but there's hardly anything to do there. While in "Silent Hill" you'd have to solve various puzzles to progress, in this game you simply pick some ammo, maybe health items if you're lucky, and than leave. You might be required to find a key to open a locked door or power-up a machinery by bringing fuel to it in order to drain water from your way, which is the most creative the game ever gets. Speaking of sewers, this is the worst place to explore as it's a giant maze and you're required to visit it twice. The first trip isn't so bad, because the area is rather consized. But on your second trip you're presented with GIGANTIC labirynth. I admit I was THIS CLOSE to calling it quits, but persevered. The second part is at least 5 times too big and nothing exciting happens there. In order to deal with monsters you need to either sneak past them (rarely works) or fight them with your trusty gun. The combat is slow paced. There's a lengthy delay between shots, but the enemies don't move particularly fast and each hit knock them back a bit. As a result I quickly got into a rhythm: fire, back away and fire again until they're down. The combat is challenging and requires some precision, which is why I found it decently satisfying. No gunning down monsters with ease like you can do in many modern horror games. However, the problem is variety of those encounters. You meet only four types of enemies throughout the game and three of them bum rush you. Also, you have only one gun to use. No other weapons that would require change in strategy. As a result the fights with monsters can get monotonous after awhile. In the end I found "Clandestinity of Elsie" to be a disappointment. If the creators made the areas you explore more interesting in the very least, I could recommend this one. But as it is, between lackluster writing and uninspired dungeons that range from too straightforward to downright frustrating, the game isn't worth the time. 4/10

https://youtu.be/02qDicbezzc Failing to establish real stakes before jumping into the action, it's difficult to feel a connection to the player character or sympathy for his plight.

Short but tense. Despite some slightly frustrating segments due to limited visibility, the atmosphere was fittingly isolated and oppressive.

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