The revival of classic survival horror continues and it’s nice to see more games that call themselves “survival horror” actually be a title that at least somewhat adheres to the main pillars of the genre. SIGNALIS did not catch my eye when I first saw it, but the more I heard of it, the more curious I got. And since after release it has gotten a lot of praise, I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to play it myself. It’s neat to see the genre taken to other camera angles and controls and the top down (and sometimes first person) perspective of SIGNALIS, while not novel for the genre (see Heaven Dust), was seriously underrepresented. Plus, this title most certainly has style. Unfortunately, that’s the best it can do.
The setting of SIGNALIS is… odd, but interesting. It’s set in the dystopian future of space exploration where bio-mechanical androids exist and The Government is a totalitarian regime clearly inspired by the German Democratic Republic. To be fair, the storytelling here in general is a mess of a bunch of ideas drawn from tons of sources. Literature, music, paintings, anime, other games… I’m sure people into the sources here would have a field day exploring what might be inspired by what, especially anime fans. Even I could see elements seemingly pulled from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Texhnolyze, Akira and Elfen Lied and I’m not that well versed in anime.
This does lead to an interesting and somewhat unconventional style. Which occasionally does get in the way – I mean, even the main interface for all the modules and inventory feels overcomplicated, even if it is thankfully easy to navigate. And there are a couple of recurring ideas that aren’t usually found in other games – the use of radio to receive messages, for example, is really cool. That said, it’s highly underutilized in the game, despite being so cool and important for the story. Oh and the story is a mess. It’s not undecipherable, rather it’s just not that interesting but told in such an obfuscating way that was probably meant to add mystery to it and fit the idea of fragmented memories and personalities, but it doesn’t leave any impact in the end.
So what’s with the gameplay then? Oof… It’s fine, usually. The title draws heavily from Silent Hill 2 and 3 and also from REmake (Resident Evil 2002), but does it without fully understanding why each game had the element it borrows and also borrowing the bad parts too. For example, the combat here is as tedious and “not great” as it was in classic Silent Hill titles, but enemies come back alive after a while unless burnt like in REmake (and burning resources are super limited). You get a ton of guns and tools to deal with the enemies, but only 6 inventory slots. And then they also make it so you can quite easily escape most enemies or even stealth around them. So there’s a lot of mechanics and nuances that you, as a player, just don’t want to ever engage with, because it’s a waste of time and it’s boring to do. Also frustrating, because the enemies can hit or become unhittable at really odd moments and some of them do contact damage, while some seemingly don’t?
The exploration aspect is also just bland at best. There’s no interesting “metroidvania”-esque aspect to the game, like you’d find in the best examples of the genre and the locations selected are just so uninteresting. It’s like taking Apartments, Prison and Labyrinth from SH2 and Chapel from SH3 and building the entire game around these least fun locations to navigate, going from drab and boring at first to at least visually interesting by the end. While structurally it’s just divided into several completely locked off mini-hub locations where you usually have some overarching goal to achieve, like “find 6 keys” (which you do three times) or what not, then you move to the next section that behaves similarly. There’s no excitement about running around or planning the route, you just take the only or in a few cases not only but the shortest path, while managing the stupidly limited amount of space in the inventory.
After I was done with the game I decided to check what I could miss too, because I most certainly had no desire to play it again. And turned out that some of the secrets that I’ve missed are just things that kinda happen in places where you’ve already been. Like – a door might open somewhere where it was with a broken lock before and there’s no visual indication of it, it’s just open and working now for some reason. While the endings (and yes there are several) are apparently tied to the way you play the game, because Silent Hill 2 did it 20 years ago and everyone is morally obliged to copy that, even if the way you do it makes no sense and doesn’t work with the game mechanics whatsoever, because it’s simply not fun.
It might seem like I disliked the game, but it’s more that I was extremely disappointed with it. It’s a decent title with a cool style and a few neat ideas. But it’s not a great survival horror game and it’s simply not exciting or fun in any way. It’s alright. And as I was playing it, all I could think of – The White Chamber did this type of story/setting/style 17 years ago as good as this and for free. And if you want a genuinely fun classic survival horror with top down view – Heaven Dust is unashamed to be ripping off Resident Evil, but it does it really well. SIGNALIS though? It’s fine. If you like the style and don’t care about the genre as much as I do, you might like it. I did, but not that much.