Paranormal

 PC
Metascore
tbd

No score yet - based on 1 Critic Review

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 1 out of 1
  1. Thunderbolt
    Feb 22, 2013
    30
    Paranormal feels like an alpha build of a final idea, weighted down by the worst horror movie genre nonsense and the current obsession with walking at a snail’s pace to build faux tension.

User Reviews

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User Score
6.5

Mixed or average reviews- based on 21 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 21
  3. Negative: 6 out of 21
  1. daazazaz
    Sep 18, 2013
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. What could have been a great idea for a procedural horror is let down by an irrelevant storyline, poor mechanics, cheap attempts at scariness, and a truckload of bugs. The story, such as it is, doesn't seem to connect to the hauntings as we see them. Indeed, the scares seem entirely random, both in terms of when they are triggered and their content. There seems to be no cohesive message or theme to the events, just hackneyed old footsteps, bangs and sudden jolts and so many of them! Every single idea of haunting seems to have been thrown into the pot flickering lights, screams, darkness, changing paintings, dolls, blood, hand-prints, etc. etc. with the result you find yourself not so much scared as bemused. The camera battery requiring sleeping to recharge is very contrived, and didn't add anything to the game beyond irritation, as you must return to bed each time, or die. (Why didn't the protagonist Mattel die before he turned the camera on, if that's so important? Why doesn't he die when he's asleep and the camera's recharging?) Mattel seems remarkably short compared to his furniture, and frequently gets stuck against or behind things. It's not clear which items you can use or collect, or why, and attempting to interact with an object will often cause the game to activate the wrong one particularly an issue with objects near doors. In short, this game is well worth avoiding. If you want scares through a camera, Project Zero/Fatal Frame does the job much, much better. I've given one point as the narrator's acting is decent.… Full Review »
  2. Contemplar
    Sep 5, 2013
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. I loved the idea behind this game, and jumped at the chance to purchase it as part of an indie games pack. What I found was sorely disappointing. First up, it advertises itself as a procedural haunting game, where things are different in each play-through. This would be an absolute lie if not for the fact that the random haunting events are triggered rapidly on a Random Number Generator style basis, with no regard for narrative or effect. In my ten playthroughs, the story has been exactly the same, only with the various 'spooky things' happening randomly like at the result of a rolled dice.

    The 'mystery' of the haunting was entirely static, and not much of a mystery given that there are sheets of paper out completely in the open throughout the house, each one giving details on the history of the abused family in the house's past. How is this even a mystery? Did the main character research all this stuff, leave print-outs everywhere, then become an overnight amnesiac? Even some of the haunting events are completely static. For instance, one of the very few rooms in the house is the garage area, and yet every time I walked in there, the car turned itself on and blinked its headlights. Every. Time. Without fail.

    The scares themselves are the lowest forms of screamers and found footage reality TV haunted house stuff combined. Random stompy noises without origin. Slammy noises everywhere. Oh no, so startling and pointless! Anybody can cause a startle-scare, anybody can make a 'screamer' type startle, and anybody can tie together wall-to-wall haunted house tropes. It's hard to feel threatened when from day 1 your couch is floating on the spot, and the randomly strewn around boxes are shuffling along. It's like the game is practically begging you to be scared, but it comes across as hamfisted as the lowest of budget 'horror' flicks. Many of the bigger haunting events can easily overlap, completely reducing their effectiveness, and leaving the player confused. An example of one of the least effective scares is that a random, small mannequin attached to a crucifix slides into the players view, like a bad motion-tween from a flash animation overlay attached to the camera... and then slides away again. The game made no attempt to explain why there was a mannequin sliding in front of my eye. The character didn't even react or remark on the matter. It was just... there.

    And then the bugs. Oh the bugs. Invisible collision volumes. Randomly unable to move, waiting for your camera batteries to run out (which results in instant death, yep). The interaction button having a strange reach/field causing you to reach past nearby objects you are looking at, only to interact with something else, some of which freezing you to the spot on a timer while you stare closely at something. Another glaring bug being a looping, grating sound that once started persists until the end of the playthrough. Depending on your GPU, the shadows will also flicker and pop around crazily.

    Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore horror, but that is perhaps why I feel so let down. I appreciate the creator's efforts to make something original, but it just combines the absolute worst elements of several horror genres in a buggy, glitchy package that they outright lied about being flexible and procedural. It's current state is 1.2.4, I believe, and yet it feels like an early alpha. The creator is busying himself with a kickstarter to make an 'expansion' location, while the game sits in a truly sorry state.

    This game only gets a 1 from me, because the program is at least somewhat functional, and it had potential. That's all it deserves in it's current state. It was so bad that I even assumed Desura streamed an old dev copy to me, where the hauntings trigger rapidly as a method of testing their results. Nope. The copy I got was the 'full release'. If only it was "so bad that it's good", then I could give it more marks. Only, it isn't. It's just plain bad. Such a waste of a potentially good idea. This game needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.    … Full Review »
  3. MarcusHolloway
    Jun 11, 2016
    6
    A história do jogo é um grande fator, que faz muitos dos jogos de terror errarem. A maioria deles tem uma temática interessante, mas noA história do jogo é um grande fator, que faz muitos dos jogos de terror errarem. A maioria deles tem uma temática interessante, mas no decorrer do jogo você percebe que não se aprofunda muito e isso acontece em Paranormal

    Um ponto muito positivo do jogo, que agradou muito foi a trilha sonora. O ambiente dentro da casa com os objetos batendo e se quebrando é sensacional e souberam aproveitar bem nesse quesito

    A gameplay do jogo é bem básico e não é algo que demore pra você se acostumar, o que é algo bom

    A Atmosfera que o jogo tem é outro ponto crucial pra qualquer jogo de terror, e Paranormal consegue fazer isso, e consegue fazer muito bem apesar de dar umas forçadas de suspense em alguns momentos

    Os gráficos é algo bem ultrapassado pro seu lançamento, considerando que já tinha jogos (antes de Paranormal), de desenvolvedoras independentes que capricharam muito nesse quesito

    A proposta do jogo é envolvente, mas peca na quantidade de suspense que o jogo proporciona, e a devida espera do jogo não valeu muito a pena.    … Full Review »
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