![]() ![]() Whilst all the madness is going on Daniel must continue his investigation, using his two vision modes, thermal and electronic, to scan locations and follow the trail. Something also takes great pleasure in murdering the flying beasts and throwing them down a shaft at you resulting in a gruesome wet splat and an ever growing pile of pigeon parts. If you have an aversion to these sky rats then Observer is not for you, they swarm in the courtyard, nest in the attic, and a giant pigeon with glowing eyes inhabits one memory sequence. A floating TV set cries like a baby when left alone but gurgles happily when you grab hold of it and use it to open doors, childlike characters with TV sets for heads scream and burst in to flames when you get near, the number of utterly insane sequences is impressive and for the most part, very original.Īfter the first memory dive you’re never quite sure what is real, Daniel has to take a drug to keep his stress levels down – represented by more glitching on the screen – but there are still things creeping in shadows and growling from behind lock doors. There are hints of The Matrix with hunter drones searching for you in a cornfield, shades of the brilliant SOMA in the stealth sections, and corridors filled with pipes and electrical cabling that gradually morph into organic flesh much like those in Aliens. There are walls of washing machines that suddenly turn on, tv screens that burst into life with flickering eyes, children being told bedtime stories, gravity-defying coffee mugs, and forests to navigate. Some of the sequences are very effective, as someone who works in a huge open-plan office I found the first memory, which is set in a office featuring hundreds of identical cubicles filled with workers and computers who only move when you do, very disturbing. The memory sequences are utterly bonkers, with shadowy figures darting around, perspective changing, objects glitching and walls, corridors, and entire rooms re-configuring in the blink of an eye. To discover how this gory scene came to be Daniel can jack in to a chip in the intestine-free NPC’s brain and relive his memories, and that’s when things start to get weird. ![]() Investigations lead to an apartment with what looks like a makeshift hot tub filled with blood and a man with most of his intestines hanging out. The game begins with Daniel – played by the excellent Rutger Hauer – receiving a call from his son asking for help which leads him to an apartment block that gets locked down as soon as he has entered, cutting it off from the outside world. Taking it’s cues from cinematic classics such as Blade Runner, Akira, The Matrix, Alien, and Videodrome, Observer is a cyberpunk detective story with a good dose of body horror and plenty of things going bump in the night. By interrogating the inhabitants and scanning locations using his cybernetics Daniel must piece together the clues to the whereabouts of his son. The rest of building’s resident’s stay locked behind their doors and you can only communicate with them via intercom. However, during the game the only living person you get to meet in the flesh – or what’s left of his flesh – is Janus, the janitor for the apartment block where the majority of the game is set. The half-ruined city is inhabited by people who have augmented their bodies with cybernetic enhancements and a great plague, the Nanophage, has killed thousands. ![]() Daniel Lazarski is an Observer, a detective who works in Krakow in the year 2084 following a huge war which saw East bomb West and West bomb East, leaving the way for Poland to become the dominant world power. ![]()
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