REVIEW : DEVOUR (PC)
With the whole world quarantined due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s no surprise that co-op games are becoming increasingly popular. It’s been a great method for me to stay in touch with friends who don’t live in the same place as me, and as a result, I’m always browsing around to see what new offerings appear interesting enough to pick up. This is what drew me to DEVOUR on Steam, a fresh new cooperative experience whose goal is to survive while exorcising a mad cult leader! Picking it up was a simple option for me, as a horror fan who wanted to try something new with friends, and one that I’ve come to appreciate every minute of.
DEVOUR’s tale is brief, but it does the job of kicking off the experience. You play as one of four cultists who have travelled to an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere in quest of Anna, the cult’s leader. Anna vanished after completing a ceremony supposed to connect her to the cult’s patron, the demon Azazel. Anna has been possessed as a result of the ceremony. You and up to three pals must now perform a ritual to exorcise the demon, survive, and avoid being carried to hell by the possessed cult leader.
Lore and gameplay instructions are mixed in pre-possession Anna’s journal entries, which explain the storey of her steady descent. But this is a game where the storey takes a back seat, emphasising the gameplay and the terror you and your buddies are stuck in. In that aspect, I believe the game is a huge success, and I can overlook the lack of a storey.
DEVOUR is similar to other “find and collect” horror games, such as the Slender series and its clones, in gameplay. You must collect thirty MacGuffins in all, including 10 bales of hay to attract goats, ten goats to sacrifice at an altar, and ten gas canisters to set the goats on fire to complete the ritual sacrifice. All of this is to exorcise Anna’s demon possession, which is following you and your companions with growing zeal.
The UV light setting on your flashlight is the sole weapon you have to burn summoned demons and calm Anna down during her rampages; otherwise, gathering resources and pushing your way through as swiftly as possible is the name of the game. Keep in mind that if you’re playing alone or with fewer than four people, there isn’t a scale of difficulty to make things simpler. The simplest method to get through is with a complete party of four, which has its own set of obstacles for scheduling game time. Although the game has open multiplayer possibilities, I haven’t had much luck getting paired in it.
Even with four players, if your strategy isn’t perfect, this game can be brutally challenging; when Anna is in a rage, she can fly across the battlefield at breakneck speed, stopping you in your tracks with a classic jumpscare. However, you do not die because you remain in play in an injured state eternally while waiting for a teammate to find and heal you. Anna wins only when all of the other players are knocked out. After completing the original game, the Hard and Nightmare difficulty modes can increase the difficulty.
The hard mode adds a recharge to your sprinting and reduces the efficiency of your UV light, whereas Nightmare removes the UV light entirely. Not only do you have no choice but to flee when it comes to Anna, but her demonic minions are also unstoppable. These modes offer a new level of complexity to an already difficult game, but I never felt the game was “unfair” or “cheap” in any way.
Even though my entire squad was wiped out and dragged to hell, I was still having a good time, and I attribute that to the fun of attempting to survive with friends. Even though the single-player mode is available, it’s clear to me that DEVOUR is primarily a co-op game, and that’s where it shines.
DEVOUR’s true strength, in my opinion, is its ability to build tension and keep you on your toes; every piece works together to produce a flawlessly terrifying experience, which I believe keeps the often overused jump scares effective when you do get smacked with one. The flashlight’s field of view is severely limited, leaving you blind to about 75% of the map at any given time.
The house’s layout is tiny and tight enough to feel the fear of being pursued in close quarters immediately. On the other hand, the outside areas feel so open that anxiety is continually mounting due to the restricted light. Even if Anna isn’t aggressively following me, I feel uneasy whenever I see her; the way she shuffles around the house perfectly fits the bloodied corpselike décor and feels natural. Her limbs flap in an almost unnatural way when she’s being chased, which only adds to the creep factor.
The sound design helps by cycling among maintaining quiet while you stroll, hearing Anna’s cries as you draw closer to her, and then hearing her demonic shrieking as she rushes for her next victim. I rarely felt “safe” while playing DEVOUR, and when I did, it was quickly followed by the understanding that I shouldn’t have. It’s a fantastic horror game design, and while it’s not necessarily “new,” it’s performed flawlessly here.
My greatest concern with the game is that there isn’t a lot of material at the time of writing this review. There is currently only a single map and three game styles to choose from. While the $5 price tag reflects this, I’ve seen that many gamers are left wanting more, which indicates the high quality of the DEVOUR experience. With all of that said, the game’s five-person development team has been hard at work on an upgrade that includes a new map, location, and plot.
REVIEW : AWAY: The Survival Series (PS5)
