Hektor Review (Larry's Berry)
-Final Review
Hektor is a very disappointing experience for the USD$14.99 that it currently charges. It has a nonsensical story that is neither as sophisticated as it thinks it is, nor as interesting as it tries to be. Its music and art assets are frequently recycled throughout the entire game. It currently has barely 2 hours of game content, which is encased in a platform that seeks to draw out the experience over 3-4 hours through the use of confusing level design.Then there's the glitches, like being unable to interact with in-game items that are necessary for you to proceed further, causing you to have to reload your game.
The worst part, and perhaps the most insulting thing about Hektor, is that it isn't scary at all. Outlast was scary, Alien Isolation was a stressful and harrowing experience. Hektor? Hektor is a complete disgrace to the horror genre of games. Watch any of the lets-plays that are currently on Youtube. Not a single one of them is enthralling, immersive, or in the least bit frightening. Many claim that the game's atmosphere is intensely creepy, and that they would prefer a game like Hektor to one filled with jump scares. Sure, jump scares alone do not make a horror game. Neither do games that are all about the long drawn out creepy atmospheres that eventually amount to nothing.
You can only play so much of Hektor before you feel cheated and violated, like the boy who is strung along by a candy man with all the promises of a sweet future, only to end up in the back of a windowless van. No, there is nothing causing that sound that appears to be made by the wheels of hospital beds rolling across the corridor. Its just one of the many sound assets that the game randomly plays every now and then to build up 'atmosphere'. In fact, I haven't seen a single hospital bed move in this game. How about those creaks and groans and that squeaky violin sound you hear as the background music reaches its crescendo? Yup, just more of the same. Sounds with no force of a credible threat behind them. And do you know why there is no hiding in this game? Because there is no need to - the game is a bloody walking simulator. The only threats in Hektor reside in the creatures that you will encounter in this game, and what a disappointment they are.
The developers advertise this game as having a horrific monster that tirelessly pursues you. Yes there is only one monster in the game capable of killing you. But the only times you experience being chased by this presence is halfway through the game when you first come across it, and towards the end when the game artificially ramps up its difficulty level by putting the creature in your path. Beyond those two occasions, you almost never encounter the creature, much less get 'pursued' by it. Additionally, it is difficult to be afraid of a monster that has pathing issues. There was one occasion when the monster ran continuously into a box that was in front of me as it tried to get at me.
Besides this monster, the game scatters, with no logical rhyme or reason, half naked deathly pale people around the map. These death-camp prisoner of war lookalikes cannot hurt you physically, but are capable of reducing your character's sanity level if you are near them when they scream. The first time you encounter one of these people is a decently shocking experience, but towards the later part of the game, their presence is at best an irritating encounter as the game uses the same audio asset for their screams, and at worst you might end up laughing in their face, especially when you see their ridiculous transition from person into a reddish spectre.
Who are these people-like things? What is that monster that chases you? What is the Hektor program? Who are you? Why are you at the facility? How did you come to develop your psychosis? Why do you guzzle antipsychotic medications like M&Ms? You'd probably have a better chance of getting that information from God than this game. In fact, Hektor hardly explains anything properly. The game conveys its tale singularly through badly written journal or diary entries that are randomly distributed throughout the entire level in a humdrum and erratic manner. Walk into the intelligence room for the first time, pick up a journal entry. Walk into the intelligence room again at a later time, great there are 2 more journal entries to pick up. What the fuck is this? Shouldn't the intelligence room be empty now given that I have just explored it earlier? The entire attempt feels so lazy, so half-hearted. It destroys any remaining immersion that one might have in the game up to this point.
The main story is simplistic. It is also full of boring cliches. How many times can we pretend to be interested in the stories told by the people who eventually develop the 'crazies', or some aggravated form of 'stockholm' syndrome? Leave that for the bad movies, it is their rightful domain. You are supposed to be making a horror game that scares us, unnerves us, that makes the hairs on our skin stand as we uncover the story bit by bit. And this is the best you can come up with?
$14.99 is too much money to spend on this utter filth and garbage. $14.99 is too much money to spend to be insulted by the developers, who think they can masquerade this bad cashgrab as a 'psychological horror game'. The only thing that is horrifying about this game is our ridiculously low expectations when it comes to paying for and hyping garbage like this on Steam.
If you enjoyed 'Daylight', which is another horror game with procedurally generated levels, you might enjoy Hektor. They are both equally bad. Another option is to skip both games, and simply watch a let's play from one of the better youtubers out there. It will require a considerable amount of good acting skills on the part of the youtuber to beat some life into this dead dog's body.
Otherwise, FASTER FASTER... avoid Hektor. You have been warned.