Ghostwire: Tokyo

Ghostwire: Tokyo might not be developer Tango Gameworks’ best work to date, but it certainly impresses with its rendition of modern day Tokyo. Everything from the dark alleys to the weirdly empty roads and neon lit shops lining the streets feature striking amounts of detail, which is further helped by generous use of ray tracing in the lighting department. Turning it on immediately increases the accuracy and resolution of reflections, and indirect lighting is also simulated more effectively than before – making for an even more immersive experience all around.

Cruelty Squad

Perhaps the strangest immersive sim out there, Cruelty Squad sees you as a hitman completing some wetwork for a morally onerous company. You’ll have a variety of weapons, fish and play the stock market with your catches, grapple with your intestines, and much more in an acid-dripped world. Kill everything or go non-lethal, explore the environment for secrets, die, and try again in whatever manner you see fit.

After releasing for Xbox Series X/S and PS5, Observer: System Redux is slated to release for PS4 and Xbox One. It launches on July 16th with Koch Media distributing the physical “Day One Edition” for $29.99. This includes the base game, official soundtrack and an art book.

Set in 2084, where the world has been ravaged by war and the Nanophage plague, players assume the role of Daniel Lazarski. As an Observer, he’s tasked with hacking into the minds of various citizens. However, things take a turn for the weird when he receives a call from his estranged son in a run-down tenement building.

Along with improved visuals, Observer: System Redux sports new missions, quality of life improvements, more neural interrogations and various secrets to find. It should be interesting to see if the title runs in 4K on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime and check out our review for System Redux here.

Bloober Team may have entered the new generation of consoles with a brand new ambitious release in The Medium, but at the same time, they also went back to one of their most beloved releases and brought it forward to the new hardware with significant improvements in Observer: System Redux. On the PS5, the game already featured support for ray-tracing, leaving many to wonder whether the same feature would be added to other platforms as well. Well, wonder no more.

Over on Twitter, the developer has confirmed via the game’s official page that the latest patch for Observer: System Redux (patch 1.3) enables ray-tracing in the game’s Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC versions. Other improvements have also been made, such as a dynamic resolution option being added, light and level streaming being optimized, and more.

Observer: System Redux is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, and will also be getting a physical release soon.

https://twitter.com/ObserverRedux/status/1376581959439253510

Bloober Team ended up putting their fingerprints all over the new generation consoles this go around. Not only was Observer: System Redux a launch title for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, The Medium was the first high-profile next gen exclusive title for Microsoft’s new machine that came out at the beginning of this year. Now they also will both see physical box releases.

Bloober Team announced via a press release that they would be partnering with Koch Media to release physical retail versions of both horror titles. Koch Media is part of the ever expanding Embracer Group. There is no date or time frame given for when to expect these releases or under which label they will be published under, only that Koch will be handling the publishing duties worldwide.

Until then, Observer: System Redux is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC and The Medium is available on Xbox Series X/S and PC via digital means, with the latter still being on Xbox Game Pass.

GhostWire: Tokyo

Though more of a supernatural action adventure game, there’s plenty of frightening goings-on in GhostWire: Tokyo. Most of the city’s population has vanished, followed by the arrival of the Visitors – hostile spirits based on Japanese folklore. There’s one resembling the kuchisake-onna, a slit-mouthed woman that goes around scarring people’s faces with scissors. Faceless, suit-wearing foes can be seen which bear a strong resemblance to Slenderman and there are headless spirits running around as well. That’s not including the mysterious Hannya mask-wearing group who have their own motives. GhostWire: Tokyo is currently slated to release in 2021 for PS5 and PC first.

As with the original, System Redux is set in the year 2084 in Krakow, Poland. The world has turned into a cybernetic dystopian future where virtually everyone has a microchip implanted in their brains and is monitored by the megacorporation Chiron. It’s such a familiar setting in media that the game never thoroughly explains how the world got the way it is, though there is a lot of world building regarding rebellious factions and other groups that don’t conform.

It seemingly expects you to accept the setting at face value and move forward from there, and it would’ve been nice to delve into more of the history behind the world. The plot revolves around Daniel Lazarski, a detective with the Observer subset of the police department whose work mirrors that of a homicide detective, though his tools are understandably much more futuristic. He can approach a murder or crime scene and scan anything with either a biometric or electromagnetic implant, which tells him details regarding evidence.

"Observer: System Redux is fundamentally the same game as the original, and many of its problems have persisted through the upgrade, but what was already a solid, if not particularly unique or groundbreaking, psychological horror game has been made that much better with more resources under its belt."

From the outset, Lazarski is tasked with finding and arresting the murderer of a tenant in an apartment complex, from which the game’s setting never really expands. This relatively straightforward investigation is the line that connects the entirety of the game’s plot, as a handful of murders make up the sequence of events that last the entire game. Some short side missions are the only divergences from investigating each crime scene and using the evidence to move either to the next one or to snuffing out the killer’s location.

Having such a compact game, which takes only 7-8 hours to complete, allows it to cut out a lot of the fat that other, longer games might contain, but it does get repetitive to see so little diversity in mission structure. Of course, there are larger and more complex themes at play that become more prominent as the game reaches its climax, but they don’t overshadow the relative simplicity of the plot’s substance. The story seems to want to explore some of these themes, especially regarding control, but it doesn’t ever give enough context to do so and leaves it to the player to sort out the pieces.

In place of a truly memorable plot are the visual style and highly memorable brain hacking sequences that occur throughout. Everything in the real world is constructed with colorful neon lights that give off a fittingly futuristic yet still engaging visual palette. The most interesting moments, though, come by way of Lazarski’s ability to hack people’s brain implants. One of his special privileges as an Observer is his access to any person’s brain chip, which lets him see inside their minds in the hopes of finding a clue as to who killed them or where a murder suspect could have come from. This access is manifested in the form of interactive nightmare sequences in which Lazarski watches and moves through what is effectively the victim’s life story.

While the game’s real world is contained primarily to the apartment complex, these nightmare sequences allow it to explore much more experimental and unique environments and visuals. Because they’re nightmares, there is no restriction on what can and can’t happen, so the game has the license to be as unsettling and ever-changing as it wants. As such, these sequences are easily the game’s most memorable and diverse. While there are only a handful of them throughout, each lasts long enough to have a lasting impact, and they don’t happen often enough to become stale.

Instead, I was always interested in what was happening within them. Whether things are seemingly normal within the apartment complex or completely absurd, like a puzzle that forces you to find and remove mind-altering computer chips that make a storage room look like a forest, they are always visually gripping and atmospheric, and they contain the most disturbing parts of the game because of how much uncertainty there is in what can come next within a nightmare.

"The story seems to want to explore some of these themes, especially regarding control, but it doesn’t ever give enough context to do so and leaves it to the player to sort out the pieces."

The nightmares are primarily linear walking simulators, but they do contain a handful of stealth moments that have luckily been improved from the original. Stealth no longer feels like a chore, though it has become much easier to walk virtually right past whoever is looking for you. Outside of the nightmares, the gameplay consists mainly of scanning environments for clues and talking to other people in the apartments. There’s very little that can go wrong in the real world, and the only obstacles you’ll face are the locked doors that lead to new areas, but these codes are almost always very easy to find.

The psychological horror aspects of Observer mostly lie in the atmosphere within the brain hacking sequences because of their wide-ranging possibilities, but the rest of the game mostly lacks any real tension that contributes to the same feeling. It’s unsettling to see a dead body or to hear the deranged conversations of people inside their apartments, but it never really put me on the edge of my seat.

An intermittent jump scare keeps you on your toes, but most of the scary sequences are more thrilling than downright terrifying, even in the nightmares. I found myself more unsettled by the state of a person’s mind than caught up in the fear that comes with games like Layers of Fear or Amnesia, and it quickly becomes monotonous when you get used to the dystopian tone, especially when you’re in the real world.

While System Redux isn’t solely a remaster, it’s easy to mistake it for one. The biggest upgrades are the noticeably improved visuals, which run at a solid 4K and 60 FPS and incorporate ray tracing. Needless to say, the game is downright gorgeous in its unique, often grotesque sense.

The number of particles flying across the screen and the way the lighting shines through the apartments are mesmerizing, further compounding the wide-ranging possibilities of the nightmare sequences to make them unforgettable. The other additions to the upgrade are new side missions, which are mostly in the shape of existing side missions and add some interesting new content but don’t make any real changes to the game’s core.

"The biggest upgrades are the noticeably improved visuals, which run at a solid 4K and 60 FPS and incorporate ray tracing. Needless to say, the game is downright gorgeous in its unique, often grotesque sense."

Observer: System Redux exemplifies the psychological horror dichotomy between visual style and concrete plot. There little truly interesting that actually happens within the story or that creates a consistently unsettling feel, but its visuals and environments do so much with so little. The brain hacking nightmare sequences are incredibly memorable pieces of mental exploration, and the environments in the real world are beautifully detailed.

The new additions to the package are highlighted by the gorgeous new visuals, which make the entire package’s presentation more intriguing. There are many uninspired aspects of Observer: System Redux that hinder the experience, but the game’s best moments make up for its downfalls with their truly remarkable explorations of the human psyche.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox Series X.

Bloober Team may have The Medium coming to Xbox Series X/S and PC this December but PS5 players can still get their hands on Observer: System Redux. This revamped version of the 2017 title sports improved visuals which further accentuate the cyberpunk horror and dystopian aesthetic. Check out the game’s first 20 minutes running on PS5 below, courtesy of IGN.

Observer: System Redux features new mechanics, revamped stealth and additional secrets. More neural interrogations have been added along with three new side cases – “Errant Signal”, “Her Fearful Symmetry” and “It Runs in the Family.” In terms of graphical improvements, there’s 4K resolution support, HDR lighting and ray-tracing (though the footage below is from a preview build that didn’t have it).

Launching on November 10th for Xbox Series X/S and PS5 players, Observer: System Redux will also be available for PC players. Unfortunately, current-gen players won’t receive a free next-gen console upgrade. PC players, on the other hand, can pay $5.99 to upgrade to the Redux version.

If there is one developer who has found themselves just all over the next generation of console launches, it’s Bloober Team. Not only is The Medium a next generation-only title coming to the Xbox Series consoles in December, they’re also launching a new version of Blair Witch for Oculus Quest 2 at the end of this month. To top it off for both Sony and Microsoft, they will have Observer: System Redux. They’ve released an interview to promote the game, but it is somewhat bittersweet.

Today, Bloober decided to release an interview with the late Rutger Hauer. While he’s mostly known for his role in 1982’s Blade Runner alongside his iconic tears in the rain speech, he had a storied career as an actor over the last several decades. He played a key part in Observer, his first video game role. The interview was originally done in 2017, and serves now as a tribute to the man and his role. Hauer died in July of 2019. System Redux is a remaster of that title, and seems to be a pretty impressive graphical jump, and will also include Hauer’s likeness and voice from the 2017 original.

Observer: System Redux will launch alongside the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. The PC version will come alongside the Xbox systems on November 10th.

Bloober Team are going to release a next-gen enhanced version of their cyberpunk horror title, Observer, about a month and a half from now, and the game’s looked rather impressive in all that we’ve seen so far. From improved load times to new lighting to DualSense-specific features, Observer: System Redux has looked like an impressive upgrade so far.

Recently, we got another look at the game thanks to a gameplay showcase at TGS 2020. The video shows us a solid chunk of roughly 5 minutes of gameplay, and the visual improvements here are instantly apparent, from significantly improved lighting to impressive particle effects and much more. Check it out below, courtesy of IGN.

Observer: System Redux will be a next-gen launch title. It will release for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC on November 10 (check out its PC requirements through here), and for PS5 on November 12. You can get more details on the game via our interview with the developers through here.