Among Ashes PS5 Review. Developers are constantly battling to deliver unique experiences. So it’s refreshing to come across something like Among Ashes, which blends modern horror with retro horror to offer a unique title that surprised me, for better or worse.
Among Ashes PS5 Review
A Connected Story Between Fiction And Non-Fiction
Among Ashes takes place in the early 2000s. In it, you take on the role of a young man spending the holidays alone playing Among Ashes’s version of Doom. Soon, you receive a message from your friend Mark, who links you to an unfinished game to download and try out. What follows is a terrifying blend of modern and retro gaming.
You play Night Call, an unfinished game by a developer who claims the game is haunted in a blog post before disappearing. In the game, you take on a police officer who is called to a mansion where a woman is heard screaming. You are welcomed by the housemaid who tells you nothing is happening, and she and the master of the home are the only ones there.
After questioning the home’s master, you leave the mansion only to hear the scream. Upon investigating, you are attacked by the lady of the house, who they thought dead, wakes up and attacks them. The game descends into madness as you try to discover what’s happening in the mansion while being attacked by undead creatures and other abominations.
A Breath Of Fresh Air For Solving Puzzles
Playing through Night Call, you experience disturbing situations in your apartment. Noises outside your room and knocks are heard everywhere, and you soon start to see figures in your apartment.
As you continue playing the game, Mark messages you throughout the experience with links about some bugs and issues, such as how to solve puzzles and get through glitches that other community members have gotten past. It’s a unique way to provide hints on how to solve the game’s puzzles.
Night Call is a PlayStation 1 survival horror game from a first-person perspective. The characters and environments are heavily pixelated. I can’t say that it’s a great-looking game because it was specifically designed to look retro, and in that regard, it succeeds.
The monsters you encounter are pretty creepy. Though you can take them out, they don’t die. After leaving the area for an extended period, they will return to life, and you will have to deal with them again. The mansion is well designed with lots of retro detail in the rooms, though there isn’t much to interact with in the game outside of switches and items to place into places to solve puzzles.
Passible Combat That’s Easily Avoidable
Combat is where the game suffers the most. Though I understand the design decision of being a retro game, I also feel it’s an excuse for lousy combat. You have a police baton and acquire a handgun and a shotgun later in the game. Ammo is scarce, so it’s good to preserve it. Most enemies can be outrun to avoid a lot of the combat, but when you need to kill, you will have some issues.
Shooting is very stiff, and I ended up missing a lot of shots. Some enemies even take up all your ammo unless you hit their weak points, which isn’t always easy due to how much they move around, and one enemy won’t even reveal its weak point until it’s about to strike you, leaving a small window to cause real damage.
Melee combat isn’t much better, as you’re always asking to take considerable damage before taking down a foe with your baton. It’s passable, but most of the time, I just wanted to avoid it.
Horror That Excels With Sound Design
Most of your time is spent in Night Call, but the real world doesn’t provide much gameplay. It’s mostly a way to keep the tension going. As events occur in Night Call, l things will happen in the real world. I strongly recommend playing the game with headphones so you can hear these things.
You can investigate them if you’re paying attention, but some can be missed. Later parts even have you solving puzzles that occur through Night Call and reality. It’s again a unique mechanic that was very welcoming.
Visually, the game achieves what it sets out to do. Night Call looks as good as it should for the time, and the reality part of the experience looks great for a modern title, with solid lighting across both games and real-time shadows throughout.
The audio design is exceptional. The monster sounds, and audio cues between two games simultaneously are a great way to build tension and terrify you. The voice acting is as bad as it should be in Night Call, but it’s decent enough in the real world.
Among Ashes is a unique game that is a breath of fresh air in the horror genre and a great example of thinking outside the box. I loved playing through the game, and I did it in one sitting as it dug its hooks in me. It didn’t let go until the credits rolled. Though it’s a short experience, it’s a memorable one.
Among Ashes is now available on PS5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.