Pneumata Review

Player(s): 1
Extra Features: N/A

I’m a pretty hardcore survival horror fan. Survival horror is my genre to go to when I want to have a good time. I can play some of the worst survival horrors and actually enjoy them most of the time because of my love for the genre. I like survival horror so much that I actually enjoyed Pneumata somewhat. Would I recommend it to anyone else? Well, only if you’re a super hardcore survival fan. Other than that, avoid it.

You take on the role of a detective that is sent to figure out what is happening at Clover Hill. Tenants have gone missing and you must find out why. As you enter, you’ll eventually stumble across the horrors inside. Honestly, the story to this game is very confusing and overall, never goes anywhere. I could really care less about what happens. The ending is also just as confusing. To reveal too much of the story would spoil the “surprise”.

Pneumata starts out great. It has some really good graphics and atmosphere. The environments have plenty of gore and blood to make you feel uneasy. Earlier areas can get quite scary with the overall look. The outside environments can feel incredibly dreadful with all the darkness. There is a constant need for a flashlight in this game since the environments are so dark. The overall darkness is something to enjoy at first, but as I went further into the game, it got annoying because the darkness would hide key items and key places that I was supposed to interact with. A good majority of time spent with Pneumata was spent trying to find out what to do, where to go or where something was to pick up.

The gameplay to Pneumata is basically Resident Evil 7. The game is presented with a first-person view. The overall graphics engine looks similar to RE7 as well. The enemy designs are pretty good. Enemies are all some sort of infected mutants. The majority of them simply rush you and attack. Enemies seem to dissolve as you hit them. If you go for headshots, you’ll take down enemies quicker as you decapitate them. The game has a good assortment of melee and projectile weapons. All melee weapons will eventually break, so you’ll have to constantly hunt down other melee weapons if you choose to go the melee route.

Along with shooting and melee hits, you can also block enemy attacks. Your character will throw up his arms to avoid an attack. I found this option rather useless since you can simply run from enemies and nearly every enemy gets staggered with any type of hit. The overall enemy stagger is very good though. It allows you to go for headshots rather easily since all you have to do is shoot an enemy anywhere then aim for its head while it staggers. Game pad players know all too well how hard it can be to get a headshot on an enemy running at you without an option to stagger.

All enemies have some sort of puss-filled blister on them that will damage you when shot. It’s hard to tell if shooting the blister is an actual weak point or not. Environments are also littered with your usual explosive barrels and canisters that make quick work of enemies. As you keep progressing, this game doesn’t mind throwing several enemies your way at once. There is one part where, after you finish a key sequence, the game will throw hordes of constantly respawning enemies at you while you try to find your way back to the objective area. With this game’s poor navigation, that area was quite annoying.

This is one game where you can run out of ammo rather easily, especially at the beginning of an area. Once you run out, you do have a melee kick and stomp that you can use, but it doesn’t take off much damage for enemy fights. I had to run from enemies at times. The game also takes away all of your inventory at key points quite often. If you build up a huge inventory of items, don’t expect to keep them all until the game’s end because you won’t. The game has your standard item boxes and save rooms just like an RE game.

Strangely enough, this game has no autosave slot even though it autosaves at key points. Your autosave slot is your last manual save slot. So, if you finish a hard battle that you would like to do over again and gain an autosave after the battle, unless you saved on two separate slots at the last save point, your last save before the fight just got overwritten by the autosave. Because of this, I always saved twice (on two separate slots) at each save point.

This game also has some or the worst voice acting I have seen in recent survival horrors. Many indie survival horrors can have bad voice acting, but the voice acting is so bad in Pneumata that I could really care less for the cutscene. I zoned out for a lot of the cutscenes because they were too badly voiced.

Just about every survival horror game has a sewer area and Pneumata is no exception. This game has one hell of a big sewer and it is super hard to navigate. There are no maps to help you out, so you just have to learn the entire area. The sewers have MANY winding corridors that all look the same. The overall sewer navigation is an exercise in frustration. I spent about a good three hours of my time just in the sewers area try to find a certain location. The level after the sewers actually gives you maps that help out quite a bit, but that area is not even as big as the sewers. Why no sewer navigation help!?

Pneumata might look good and it has some overall good enemies and play control, but there are tons and tons of negatives in this game that weight it down. Outside of achievements, this game has no replay value at all. I’d only recommend this game to the most hardcore of hardcore survival horror fans. If you have to play every single horror game out at the moment then give it a try and judge it for yourself. Other than that, I would recommend Fobia or Jack Holmes for those that want a taste of an RE7-inspired survival horror.

The Good:
+ Good graphics and overall atmosphere

The Bad:
- There is no autosave slot
- The sewers area is very confusing and maze-like
- The voice acting is so bad I don’t care about the dialogue
- Overall story never really goes anywhere
- Nearly no replay value (other than achievements)
- The overall game feels too dark, especially in the flashbacks with extremely zoomed camera