Jawbreaker

Let me first say that I don't intend to be harsh. The game isn't bad. Great aesthetic, voice acting, soundtrack, style. However, it suffers from one horribly serious problem. This problem is that ammo is so rare you basically can never use your weapons. So, the game becomes almost fully a stealth game with poor stealth. And when I say poor, I really do mean the most frustrating trial and error sort of stealth. Enemies can easily see you, and you basically can't escape them once detected. You can't hide either, because you can't hide if you have been detected for some reason (not to mention that hiding hampers you because you can't use items that help you see enemies, like motion trackers). So, you might as well let them kill you once you've been caught. Then it stops being a horror game called Jawbreaker and becomes a rage game called Spiritbreaker. The first encounter of the game is just brutal, and it honestly doesn't let up from there. Ammo, as I said before, is stupid rare. There are only about 6-8 shotgun shells in the game from what I've seen and read (up until close to nearly the end of the game, I believe, but I didn't get that far), and you use 2 shells when shooting the double barrel shotgun. So, if you stick to using the double barrel, you end up with maybe 4 shots at most. You end up saving it for "when you need it" then the game ends. Each and every encounter is frustrating and tedious, made even worse by this. So, what all this means, is that most of the game is either puzzles, walking, or these awful stealth sections. The best part of the game is the confusing boss fights. It just isn't worth it. Without the cheap deaths from crappy stealth the game would 4 hours long and it would pretty much just be a walking simulator.

Cool ideas and world atmosphere but bad gameplay. The game have some cool ideas but everything feels very barebones. Stealth is also bad and bosses are atrocious. The Tank boss fight is one of the worst boss fights i ever played. Just not worth it.

I was hoping it's a Condemned-like, but instead it's another cheap generic 1 mistake fail stealth section.

'Jawbreaker' is a tough game to review. It's in a genre that you'd describe as "stealth horror" and it shares similar failings to many games that attempt this, so it's a little bit harsh to judge it for that. On the other hand: It bungles a fair few things in ways that aren't inherent to these games. It's primarily about sneaking past some blood-thirsty lunatics who are out to kill you, and so it plays somewhat like Outlast / Alien Isolation / Thief / Amnesia / Maid of Sker and so on. You can't defend yourself most of the time, so you end up creeping around and avoiding enemies on fairly simple patrols. In this regard it's not so different to most titles in the genre, as few have particularly clever AI or offer much beyond crab-walking around and staying out of sight as a game-play mechanic. Here you can pick up bottles and throw them for a distraction, which is a bit of a step forward, if not a revolutionary one. The problem is that you can't keep hold of it for later and have to walk around with it right up in front of your view. It's generally there for one little bit that doesn't even need it, or you "put it down". And by that I mean "stupidly drop it on the floor where it smashes" which then alerts the enemy to your position. It's a pretty pointless mechanic given that you can easily get past the enemies without it. What makes it even worse is that you have a tracking device that allows you to see foes in the nearby vicinity. If you pick up a bottle and then want to see if an enemy is around, you have to drop it to use the tracker. Once-bitten, twice shy. I didn't bother with picking up the bottles after that. You either find it before you know an enemy is there and then blunder into them because you can't see with the damn thing hovering in front of you, or you smash it by going to the device that will let you know if you even need it. They got that so very wrong by not making it an item you hold in your limited inventory. In terms of atmosphere and tension, this succeeds quite nicely. The game-play isn't very sophisticated, but being honest, very few titles in this genre ever are. It's usually that sense of terror and dread that makes them thrive and part of that is your character being defenceless. There's nothing here that is so bad that I haven't given other games a pass for. At least, that is what I would say if it didn't have boss-battles, but it does, and so I can't. These boss-battles aren't awful, but they are irritating as they have some one-hit kills. Not only do you have to figure out how to even attack them (the two I've seen were both a bit obscure as to the solution) but you can also die quite quickly whilst you're at it. They're very trial and error. I think it's good that they were included, as the concepts were fine and it added some extra oomph to matters (taking on a tank whilst avoiding cameras attached to sniper rifles is fairly inspired). It's just the execution that was slightly lacking. The mechanics underpinning them were good, but dying time and time again while I figured out what was killing me and what I was supposed to be doing....Not so good. With the tank you have some bombs and fairly obvious spots marked with a red X. I initially thought you'd throw the bomb at the tank. Nope. Okay, so you put the bomb on the spot, then? Yes...kind of, but nothing happens. So you wander around and get blasted to bits with one shot. You try again - nothing works. What you have to do is put specific bombs in specific spots, which makes no logical sense but it does add some strategy to the encounter. In my case, it took about an hour to beat it, between working out what was going on and then doing it. Similar frustrations were present with the second boss, except it's even worse there because it has multiple attack patterns that you can either take two hits from or it kills you instantly. So, again, it takes an irritating amount of time figuring it out. There are times when the game is fine - no better, or worse, than most in the genre. Yet those things that make it fairly unique are both a strength and a weakness. It has a couple of decent jump-scares and a reasonably tense chase by a nutter with a chainsaw. The level design is good. The writing is okay and the voice-acting is decent enough. Technically it's fairly sound, with okay graphics and an atmospheric ambience. I'd say it's about 80% on the way to being a good game. It's just that remaining 20% where I can't recommend it. Even as someone who usually enjoys titles like this, and will make an exception for indie developers versus "professionals", there were just too many annoyances. It wouldn't take much to change this into a positive review, so I am interested to see if the developer can improve on this, should they release a new game. But this time around they didn't quite get there.

The aesthetic is great, however, I can't recommend this game due to this game being buggy and boring. I got soft locked before meeting any enemy, plus, I almost got stuck in the very beginning of the game due to protagonist's lack of ability to jump. I sincerely wish developer can play test the game before publishing it.

I'm honestly surprised how this has Mostly Positive reviews with how poor the overall game is. Whether it's the poor ai or the clunkiness of the gameplay, it's an overall snooze fest. The only thing this game has going for it is the atmosphere, the almost purge-esque setting is cool and was able to drawn me in.. it's a shame it didn't take long for the game to show exactly why it's terrible. I came to this game looking for a nice survival horror title and left unsatisfied. Do NOT buy this game unless it is heavily on sale, and even then I don't think it's worth it.

[h2] la única razón por la que lo recomiendo es por la atmósfera aterradora similar a manhunt pero con tintes de terror a lo RE7, la banda sonora es pasable para el estilo de juego que maneja, sin embargo me cuesta recomendar este juego por la simple razón de que hay un sin fin de bugs, el juego no es amigable con los pequeños errores, una vez te matan toca empezar el capitulo, no hay checkpoints, el juego es demasiado oscuro, no hay opciones de personalización de gráficos (subir bajar brillo) llegue a la mitad del juego por que es complicado avanzar con lo anterior dicho. ojala el dev logre corregir estos detalles. [/h2]

First played the demo and was immediately hooked on the concept of survival horror like an OG Resident Evil mixed in with some Manhunt repressed memories. The artistic design was both attractive but also felt retro in a way, like a nod to the past. The gameplay overall wasn't too bad (lots of stealth) but I did have some issues with the second-to-last boss but did eventually get past after maybe 10 attempts. Really looking forward to what comes next!

I tried to find fun, but I gave up. I just can't figure out where to go or what to click on and it was frustrating.

Kind of like Alien Isolation meets Condemned I guess. I don't like it. The stealth is unforgiving and this whole 1 mistake and you're starting the level over nonsense is about as fun as eating a pinecone.