Ad Infinitum Reviews

all at last

That's an upper class adventure/ horror walking sim like many other's but takes an individual topic along, to be great for historians of WWI while meeting well designed trenches and to face the reality of how much misery and suffering has been passed in the lower world of mud and barbwire. Along goes the tragic story of a split family during the war, human experiments, a possessed mind with heroic goals so as paranormal development with scary creatures. the ambient part is great, use headsets to get all of it, the graphics are a bit split, UE4 shows Master work while being inside but lacks details when leaving outdoors, where distant fog in excessive presence tries to simulate a not existing distance. The gas mask and finding your way thru yellow clouds is well done so as the overall lighting. Without doubt, the masterpiece of gaming architecture will be revealed when meeting the searchlight tower and how to navigate on it, The bosses are with a good variation and well designed. The hard nut is to obtain all the dog marks where searching in gas contaminated area is a must for achievement hunters. Well, this is worth playing when you are interested in the basics as listed but it cannot match others like LOF or similar. 7/10.

This is a prime example of a game having a good story, but the rest being lackluster at best You play as Paul, a veteran from WW1, who now goes through this purgatory/nightmare, where he's coming back to trenches with Silent hill-esque symbolic monsters. At first, i though it was going to be about the horrors of War, but the plot focuses more on protagonists family and brother who also served. I don't mind it and in fact it does explore some interesting themes. The voice acting is solid too, though i don't get why germans speak with british accents. Unfortunately, this is where we get to the gameplay. it's a borderline Walking simulator, that alternates between the mansion, where you'll be just tediously roaming around and solving simple puzzles and trenches where you'll have, here and there, deal with monsters with subpar stealth. At the end of the chapter, you "fight" boss by running around and doing 3 of something (f.e. turn the valve) - this is where the game tells you that choices matter and it's way too obvious which ones will give the best ending. they might as well just give you 2 buttons, with good and evil plastered onto them. What little gameplay it has just flat out sucks and the horror aspect doesn't really help. It's never scary and it's quite predictable. Like i wanted to like it, but when the core is this bland, i just can't. it's not impossible to make this type of semi-walking sim work - Mouthwashing does a great job and it's because the game is visceral and tight. Ad infinitum feels like it has a lot of dead air and the decent bits don't really save it. If i wanted to play a WW1 horror, I would just stick with Amnesia: the Bunker, which came out the same year and is like 10 euro cheaper. Overall, it's almost like they didn't know how to adapt the story properly into videogame form, so for the next time, i hope they work on that. This really doesn't do it for me.

The game looks really good from the trailer, but in reality its a glorified walking simulator. The only actual "gameplay" consists of tedious puzzles that are really easy to solve and flipping some switches/valves. The WW1 setting and visuals of the game are really well done, but it doesn't feel like Ad Infinitum made the most out of this setting, since the beginning of each chapter forces you back into the family mansion, which has zero enemies and danger. The story and themes are somewhat interesting, but the ending ruins what little enjoyment there was. Your ending (3 total) hinges on how you solved the 3 boss battles. The only satisfying ending is the good ending in which Paul successfully confronts his families problems and conquerors his PTSD. The other endings are either being thrown into an insane asylum or Paul letting his family die around him. Both of these endings made the entire game and story feel meaningless, especially when other games have shown that bad endings can still be interesting and fit into the games narrative. Overall, Amnesia: The Bunker did much better and more with this setting. The developers tried to do a lot with this game and it unfortunately didn't hit the mark in a lot of areas. Very disappointed overall in the game. Not even close to being worth the $35 dollar price point. 4/10

great story, quests, awesome atmosphere made only one shot for the whole game