Pineview Drive - Homeless Reviews

This is better than the first game in the series and has a coherent story line. More background story would have been ideal. There are still questions left as to the story of the house at the end of Pineview Drive. Like who built it, when, and why there is a bunker underneath the cemetery on the property? (Let alone a cemetery at all?) At least there was no last minute character introduction like in the first, where an antagonist seems to randomly get introduced.

I have now played all the Pineview content and this was my favourite, it improves over the first game by a slightly quicker pace and you unlock areas rather than individual doors, I noticed a few walkthroughs online had a different path to mine so yours may differ. Still no option to adjust keybindings. I don't recall this in the original but if you can't use your torch your eyes adjust to the night and you can still move about in darkness with some limitation.

Its pretty much the same tedious boring game play of the first PINEVIEW DRIVE with its lack of rewarding the player for exploring and a endless buildup that never goes anywhere. Too bad since am a big fan of haunted house games and was expecting more especially since its the same house as the previous game.

Complete dumpster, the first game was vague but i never got stuck like in this game. Running around with nothing to do but get jumpscared over and over and loose your health. At 2AM many doors are locked and theres nothing to do, waste of time and money.

I'm a big fan of the original game. If you played it - there's no reason to buy this one. Same house, same gameplay core. And it's shorter than the original, so why even bother?

I played the game for about an hour and I can say the game definitely has a creepy atmosphere and some jumpscares here and there, but in the end this game is not really all that fun due to a combination of a few things. One major thing was the fetch quest concept where the solution to go forward is to get an item from another room and use it to progress. Now that alone does not make a bad game, but that along with the uninteresting story and the price makes me not want to recommend this game. The game does seem long, but the quality of the game plus the story is not worth the price. If the game was $10 I would say it is a decent horror game, but for now I would not recommend it. But as always you can judge for yourself here is the first 15 mins of me playing https://youtu.be/RW2-RPbvJFA

Bottom line, it's fun. It's also creepy as Hell. Not the best graphics, but I love the lighting effects, most notably the lightning and the reflections. The flashlight almost seems to project it's light in front of or apart from the source, if that makes sense. The audio is pretty good at creating sounds "off camera". The music doesn't really seem to cue anything, it seems to be dramatic at times just to be dramatic...which still absolutely helps sell the atmosphere of the game. The controls aren't bad, nothing stellar, just basic. A layout of controls in the options menu would be helpful, but everything is laid out around WSAD. This game is one that relies heavily on psychological terror in the beginning, in that, nothing much is actually happening, but the atmosphere is freaking you out...and then it gets more terrifying as the game moves along to new corridors and rooms in the mansion. I am enjoying this game a lot more than Infliction. It's not as pretty to look at as Layers of Fear, but the atmosphere is so much better.

Game itself is really just mediocre and a worse copy of Pineview Drive. But as the game has one or two partially bugged achievements (one of them just won't unlock for me) and the devs aren't responding nor fixing it I have to give a thumbs down. EDIT: So with some help I found out that there is a legal way getting this achievement, it is not completly bugged. I also made two achievement guides for the game if you wanna check them out. So 100% is possible. Still the game is mediocre and the devs didn't even answer me, so my review stays negative.

Update: I've written up a walkthrough complete with all the statue locations and added it to the guides section. It is far from perfect but it might help if you're stuck. This review has an ending spoiler! It should be blacked out. Good golly. Several hours of my life that I can't get back. I am a fan of the first Pineview Drive game. I didn't mind that it was basically a door unlocking simulator. I didn't mind the backtracking that never seemed to end. I didn't even mind how dark it was that much. This game is unnecessarily difficult to pad the amount of time spent playing it seems as there really isn't any kind of depth to the story at all. You're a homeless guy who gets locked into the estate and you have to make it through the night to get out in the morning. That's it. The end. The most frustrating thing for me was the almost complete lack of direction. I would have to wander around checking the tiniest details of every single room in the house to try and find something in interact with or trigger an event. I found this to be incredibly tedious and it wreaked havoc on my motion sickness sensitivity with all the camera movement I had to do to search every nook and cranny. Sometimes the main character gives hints after long pauses of being lost, but the hints are vague and unhelpful. The worst part for me was after combing this gigantic mansion(at least 20 rooms) several times for nearly impossible to find clues, my only reward was a tiny scrap of paper that had one or two sentences on it. These notes could have told so much more story and are an abject failure as far as making me interested or informed on what this chapter in the series is actually about. Terrible. [spoiler]The ending was rather shocking because you spend all of this time just trying to get out of the mansion and once you do: BAM! GAME OVER! Credits roll and there is no epilogue to explain anything. It was abrupt and unsatisfying. It made me really sad that I spent hours of my life playing this game and hoping for a decent ending only to have the developers turn my money into a joke.[/spoiler] Gross. So what did I actually like? What would I change? I liked collecting the statues. I liked the achievements. I liked returning to Pineview Drive for more adventures with Scarecrow. I liked that there was a brightness slider for people who are blind in the darkness. I would add more to the story and try to make the hints more useful. Most of what makes a game scary isn't the jump scares, it's the dark mystery that you painstakingly piece together to find something awful and terrifying. Something nightmares are made of. This story was about as scary as a fart in a jar because it was invisible and stinky. I will purchase the next game to see if the Developers can do better than whatever the hell this was. If that's terrible too, then I am done with VIS-Games for good. Sorry guys/gals, this game just wasn't any fun.

Asking me if I recommend this game would be met with an inhale, stutter, pause, and a heavy sigh. As someone who has haphazardly wandered into this game and has no experience with the first Pineview Drive, I find this game has a severe lack of thought in some areas and then some truly cool moments in others. Pros - Eerie atmosphere. Not really scary, but just creepy overall. As a directionally incompetent person, I found the house's layout to be decently memorable. Which is a huge plus for me. Small cool factor. If you turn your flashlight off, the scene gradually becomes slightly brighter (than pitch blackness) as if your eyes are adjusting to the dark. Neat! There's some great audio cues, creeps, and scares. I do hate horror games that employ just loud shrilly noises to scare you for no reason. This game does it a bit, but it excels when it has those subtle hint of footsteps, creaks, and voices. BUT Cons - Good dear lord. The audio mix for this game is absolutely horrendous. There were many points I'm yelling at the over zealous music "holy hell music! Chill the eff out! I can't hear anything but your orchestral swell!" This game has great audio cues, but is drowned out by the blaring music that often doesn't even fit with the experience. I think music excels when you don't necessarily notice it blatantly, but it adds emotional weight to scenes. PS horror games, please give me audio control. Most don't to force loud jump scares, but this one gives you a master volume. Could easily be fixed if you let me control music vs game. The scare factor in this game is also tepid at best. It's not terrible, but sometimes it gets repetitive and you learn how the scares work and how to expect them. The flashlight mechanic in this is absolutely a terrible design choice. I like to investigate and explore the house and appreciate the creep factor. The battery (though you get several and are the size of a soda can) last for a hilariously short amount of time and after the first two bars are gone, you're left with a little christmas light of a bulb to see in the dark. It's not scary, just annoying as you're fumbling around a house. There's little guidance in this game. As you survive on, the house really opens up, but leaves you little direction to discover what to do next. Which leaves you wandering aimlessly wasting precious battery power. Everything in this game seems to be disproportionate to you. Objects seem oversized and it can be a little disorienting at times. TLDR - Cool spooky audio ruined by overbearing music. Limited batteries means if you get lost, enjoy your time in the dark. Not scary, but creepy. Overall not good enough for me to recommend, not bad enough for me to refund or stop from finishing it.