Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout Review (Tomas Mac Mordain)
The indie-presentation and VHS-style graphics are a great fit for the genre.
The voice acting is above average.
The sound design is pretty decent.
The jump scares will get you good.
BUT, man this installment is held back by some jank - just as the ones before. Instead of investing time in creating a completely inconsequential playable mini-game the core experience deserves a lot more polish. For example:
- Get better driving mechanics in - cmon, if I'm supposed to be driving an RV, make it feel like driving an RV, this is worse than driving mechanics in 20 year old games
- Get a consistent control scheme on. There's enough examples of games doing this properly. LMB, RMB, space, f, g, escape... its outright irritating
- Allow more player freedom between scripted events. Absolutely everything in this game is mandatory. Nothing is optional, can't even drive by a diner that has completely inconsequential interactions tied to it.
- Allow to solve the final encounter in multiple ways. The one way that is scripted to work is the one least likely to work IRL. There's at least 3 more options feasible: such as kiting the intruder, locking him after leaving the door open, running into the woods etc.
- Make diagonal movement make proper sense. Adding X movement and Y movement gives sqrt(2) ~ 140% normal speed when running both forward and sideways. You're too fast that way.
- Support wide screen resolutions properly, as it is the image is cut off at the top and bottom.
The game lacks a lot of foresight in what you might want to do and puts you on rails way too much. Goes so far as to limit the order in which you have to do your evening chores. On the other hand, it does not protect items you need for the story to progress, so it's incredibly easy to softlock yourself without realizing it - even with all the railguards on.
Oh, and if you're playing on PS5, the jank is cranked up to 11 and some important story interaction prompts may be completely missing you won't get the prompt to hide under the bed, for exampe so you'll never know how to complete the final sequence, and will keep dying for no reason.
Nice idea, Firewatch and the Tower 4 podcast are saying hi. But please... this series needs some QoL improvements as it goes along. As it is it seems to keep repurposing the jank that was developed for previous installments in their original janky form....
If you can see past the jank - go for it. Otherwise, wait for a steep sale.