izigame.me

TL;DR

If you've played the other two DreadOut games, expect a decent upgrade here. DreadOut 2 maintains the same style as its predecessors, although the developers branched out and added new things like melee combat. I would be interested in a DreadOut 3; I have this message for the dev team (Digital Happiness): I like your franchise. Please polish your game more. Don't take shortcuts. Make sure your UI functions correctly. Add objective markers for story quests (except when you explicitly want the player to search, but give better hints in that situation). Add ambient area SFX (like room noise) and more SFX in general. You have some really good ideas, you just need to put more effort into the execution.


Good

- Game overall feels more polished than the previous two.
- Iris phone + apps is cool, although some went unused.
- The cinematics/cutscenes were nice to see, something the previous games lacked.
- Same great creepy atmosphere from the previous games.
- Funny interactive moments like the toilet tv commercial.
- Actual real time combat! Cool!
- I like the focus on helping ghosts get closure, like Dai the speed racer. I also like the detail after that part where the grave tender will mention him and thank you.
- Sad but clever moments like the child who buried their passed away cat, and you can see the cat with your phone.
- Make coffee for a really picky ghost.
- This game is more story heavy and answers questions about Linda, unlike the first games which were more about the gameplay/horror.
- A few in-world puzzles, which was really cool to see!
- Eerie music
- Cool ending that provides an explanation for why the first games happened (although I am still confused on some details).
- Costume selection! Cool.
- An epilogue that has events from the past! Very cool.


Meh

- Lots of spelling/grammar errors that could be patched if the devs replayed the game and took some notes. Please do.
- Some of Linda's dialogue choices feel silly or emotionless instead of scared or another more appropriate emotion.
- The game can run at 60+ fps, but lowers to like 30 or lower when using the iris phone camera. Caused me some motion sickness, which I don't usually experience.
- You open doors by walking into them. If VSync is off, at least for me, they take forever to open. It breaks the game sometimes. So, keep VSync on. A button press to open doors would be preferred.
- Iris phone camera seems to render two cameras at once. Why? This seems unnecessary and causes a big performance hit.
- Default brightness of 25 was way too low. Had to bump it to 50 because I couldn't see where I was walking.
- Some background NPCs have zero animation. They're like mannequins. They should at least be playing an idle/breathing animation, or they shouldn't be there at all.
- Devs didn't do a good enough job at hiding empty rooms. In the hospital, lots of rooms are just empty squares. Just block the windows, guys XD
- I like the idea behind the enemies you have to be quiet around, but give us a crouch button please. I don't think anybody likes sneaking by barely pushing the thumb stick (I played on gamepad).
- "Papa" (the hospital surgeon ghost) getting stuck on doors. Kind of ruined the horror/immersion of the moment.
-Hospital section where Linda kept stopping to cough after the Papa fight was annoying. Idc if she coughs, but don't make me stop every single time. Make it random and infrequent, that'd be scarier.
- The game would benefit from a sneak/crouch mode. The game will auto-crouch you at cinematic points, but it's not indicated whre this happens. You just discover it.
- You can't phase throug henemies until they finish their death animation. Sometimes this blocks your path when you need to escape or strafe around another incoming enemy.
- Later in the game, Linda gets a special enchanted weapon. Love the idea, but it doesn't seem to kill enemies any faster than a standard knife or axe.


Bad

-Glitchy Ui that doesn't work well with gamepad. Control rebinding straight up doesn't work. Sometimes the pause menu got stuck on screen if I paused and alt-tabbed. You have to unpause, pause, unpause to fix it.
- Similar to (but improved from) the first game, objectives don't give you a lot of direction. "Find the pecel lele vendor" took me way too long. I'm fine with searching, but at least give me a hint, general direction, something to go on! There's a city map in the area, putting the vendor on that map would've made me feel smart for thinking to look at it. But nah, he's not on there. Not even "vendor district" or something.
- Enemy in the final area, the Siska mansion, was awful. It was an all black enemy in a long hallway leading to a room with a cult prayer and a key, kept stun locking me and killing me over and over. It moves fast, so I figured I needed to get distance between us before I attacked. Problem is, it would grab me again immediately after both our recovery animations played. This enemy was a real annoyance. Enemy recovery animations should always be longer than the player's, unless it's a boss fight or something.
- Playing the epilogue overwrote my main game save. I figured that was fine, since the epilogue takes place after the main game and I have chapter select. However, after finishing the epilogue, I noticed the game removed the chapter select option from the "extras" menu at the main menu. That's a real shame, because I wanted to try a different choice in the last level.