The first person horror genre is under a sort of renaissance right now, with the likes of Resident Evil going back to its roots and terrifying audiences, the recent Layers of Fear and Amnesia: The Bunker bring close-up, claustrophobic scares to the genre, and then there’s Greyhill Incident.
Set during the 1990’s in a tiny little town called Greyhill, players are thrown into an alien invasion of the town. As Ryan Baker, you’ll spend your time exploring houses, farms, barns and more in an attempt to get an answer to what is going on, save the town and its inhabitants as well as your own son.
Greyhill Incident – Incident Indeed
It’s obvious what Greyhill Incident was trying to do, with clear inspirations being drawn from the stereotypical conspiracy theories and their perpetrators and alien invasion films and books from the 80s and 90s, but unfortunately it seems to fall at every hurdle.
The game opens with a long opening credits, with a voiceover discussion occurring between multiple people, as they discuss the current situation in their town of Greyhill. The government seems to be actively covering up an alien invasion, residents are scared, although you only realize this from what they’re saying, not how they’re saying it, thanks largely to an incredibly poor voice acting cast; and the residents don’t know what to do, other than board up their houses and hunker down.
The voice acting never gets out of first gear throughout the entire duration of the game, with various situations barely eliciting any emotions from any of the principal cast, including our character, Ryan Baker. From losing his son to being terrified of the aliens casually walking around the town, there’s never a convincing line of dialogue from the actor, and in a game where most of our time is spent listening to him talk, this is a real problem. Maybe it was the direction, the poor script or just the actors, but there simply isn’t a redeeming feature to the voice over cast unfortunately.
The game itself is a poor mixture of a short draw distance to create atmosphere and terror (think Silent Hill, but with far less nuance), and ugly graphics that would have been out of place and outdated on the last generation of consoles. Whilst the game is intentionally minimalistic regarding a HUD, the game actually suffers from this and increases frustration as players can aimlessly walk around the map with no real idea as to where they’re going, at least until Ryan Baker goes ‘I don’t know think we should go that way’, so through a process of elimination you will eventually find your way.
The aliens themselves are the little grey men that permeates pop culture, and this isn’t a criticism, as it is an intentional design choice clearly satirizing the very content it’s offering, but they’re just so unpredictable it’s irritating. It could be argued unpredictable AI is what players want and need in a stealth-orientated video game, but with Greyhill Incident it’s a huge detriment. Sometimes the aliens will notice you, and other times they’ll ignore you, except it’s the same scenario and distance! It makes creeping around a chore, as they’ll no doubt see you and you’ll start the merry-go-round of running away, hiding, and then going about your business again. It’s a very uninspiring and boring gameplay loop.
If instead of running away you choose to fight instead of run, you’ll find the combat isn’t much better, with a three strikes rule in effect for knocking down aliens with the baseball bat, or a couple of hard-to-pull off shots with the gun, although ammo is intentionally sparse. Ironic considering one of the town’s inhabitants is a Vietnam war vet with a huge patriotic streak and would almost certainly be a member of the NRA.
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Without any specific spoilers, there is one moment towards the end of the game that is nothing short of infuriating. Poorly designed and poorly implemented, you’ll find yourself aimlessly walking around a field in an attempt to trigger certain events that’ll continue on the story. If you’re not positioned exactly right in this huge, expansive corn field, then you’ll end up stuck. This is design 101… make your product usable and intuitive.
The idea was impressive, the execution far less so. The most redeeming compliment I can give Greyhill Incident is that the game is short and respectful of our time, which will no doubt be endearing to a lot of horror fans. Unfortunately it isn’t particularly scary or featuring any tense moments, with only a single cheap jump scare being pulled from me, and Greyhill Incident can’t seem to decide whether it wants to have a story or not, so instead it walks a poor line and nothing really matters.
2/10
Greyhill Incident was played and reviewed on a code supplied by Perp Games.
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