I own and have played all of the I'm On Observation Duty games and this one remains my favorite. There's something incredibly chilling about wandering around a huge house or medical office with creepy, even dangerous anomalies going on around you.
I've noticed that since the release of this game, there have been a slew of looping 3D anomaly games. You walk through an area and try to notice if anything is different. If something's different you turn around and go back. If everything is normal, you keep going forward. I get why they're designed that way. But I've always found those types of games to be quite mid.
I understand the rationale for looping 3D games. In Observation Duty 3, you usually wind up developing a specific route to avoid neglecting any areas for too long. Once established, you rarely deviate from that route. So why not just make it easy on the player and have looping levels? Personally, I just find it hard to get immersed in those games, where it's obviously a simulation. There's no suspension of disbelief, no acute danger. It's boring! In Observation Duty 3, you're in a cursed building where something evil could be lurking three doors down on the other side of the hall. Yikes!
I heard that Observation Duty 3 didn't do as well as the other games in the series, which is why Notovia gave up on first-person 3D games. I really hope they'll reconsider. Wandering around a haunted property on the lookout for anything displaced gives me the perfect kind of goosebumps.
