I was curious about Them and Us for the time it spent in Early Access as it seemed like a potentially curious independently made survival horror title that is an actual survival horror title. I mean, at the time I first noticed it we only had Alien: Isolation as the closest to ever attempt following the gameplay pillars of the genre in the past 5-10 years and since then the situation hasn’t changed that much, with only about 5 or so new “actually survival horror” games. After getting it a year ago and trying it out for about an hour, I saw many design flaws that the game already had, but still, was hopeful that it can at least be an interesting and enjoyable, if not notable, modern example of the genre.
I was not ready for what the game turned out to be.
This game is an unexpected result of a mix of huge ambition and lack of original ideas and understanding of good design. Somewhere at a developer meeting a question was asked “So what references from the classic examples of the genre we are going to base our game on?” And the answer was “Yes.”
This game simply doesn’t know when to stop. It keeps introducing location after location every couple of hours and I don’t think there’s another game that has quite the amount of backtrackable areas in the genre or maybe in general. This is probably bigger than Blue Stinger and Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare combined, so if you thought “Code Veronica” you were aiming too low. It keeps adding enemies and enemy types almost till the very end of the game. It’s story, that doesn’t even exist for about 90% of the playtime, gets progressively more stupid until the very ending becomes… and I wish I was making this up… basically Two Worlds II, even visually. And there are 5 endings, plus another hidden one, because why have less. And it has 3 completely separate view modes, from the classic fixed camera angles, to the over the shoulder to the DLC-exclusive first person view.
And it’s not a bad thing to want to add more. It’s variety, it can make every new part of the game feel fresh and exciting. But it doesn’t. Because for the most part the things are here not because the game needed them, but because “the other games did that, so we want to have that too”. Oh, The New Nightmare had those cool phasing enemies? Let’s take those, mix in the idea of fuel canteens from Resident Evil 2002 and put it in. Oh you can just avoid them and they will despawn forever?.. Well, let’s add Fatal Frame and Resident Evil inspired currency for the item shop that has absolutely no place in the game overwise, but it’s here now. Oh and who doesn’t like Tyrant/Nemesis enemies, let’s just add a few of those, even though they don’t add anything to the gameplay and are there to give you more keys for the locked doors. We have lots of keys and lots of doors in this game, did you know?!
There’s a section in the game where you have a ridiculously convoluted backtrack to one extreme side of the location with 4 necessary items in the inventory (which has 8 available slots total)… Oh yeah, and to get one of the 4 of these you have to do another convoluted backtrack. But anyway, once you get there, use the items and open the door that will surely have a memorable boss fight or the end of the game… you get one other key item and a shortcut to the area that you started the backtracking from. To get to the opposite extreme side of the location. That you previously unlocked with a lighter. That you’ve used up and discarded after one puzzle, except 15 minutes later you need it for another puzzle, so the developers just give you another lighter.
If I could say one positive thing about the game, is that I consistently could not believe what was happening – it was a surprise after surprise. Bad surprises, mostly, but hey, at least my expectations were subverted, you know. Except for all of the blatant usage of other properties that, I guess, was meant to be “references”, but when you namedrop The Nameless One while showing me an item that was modelled from the Tome of Eternal Darkness or have a special item storage room modeled directly from the starting room of the Haunting Ground it stops feeling like a “reference”. And these are the less blatant examples than some that might be legally questionable.
But the most shocking of all – before you get to a point where the game takes a fatal nosedive half an hour after first exiting the mansion, it feels like a decent and entertaining game. Yes, it shows all of its bad elements right from the start with pointless puzzles of keys for the keys for the keys you need and terrible approach to combat and enemy placement (especially if you’re not playing in over the shoulder, in fact just don’t play in fixed camera at all). But when contained to this opening area, the game actually kinda works. If it stayed there it could’ve been a nice and entertaining survival horror, like what Tormented Souls turned out to be. But that’s before the portals, the constant item juggling, more terrible puzzles, blatant RE4 and 5 village siege rip-offs with chainsaw guys included, the pointless items that you cannot put down, sections where the backtracking is blocked without reason, and the section where you return to the mansion and some of the doors are “just unlocked” and some were “locked by someone” for no reason whatsoever. Oh and the first person segment that I had to pause every few steps to not get sick, I sincerely hope that the FP mode DLC isn’t like that. And to think I actually kinda liked the game during those opening hours of the first playthrough. But no longer! (see, I can do references too, game)
You might think that this is a mesmerizing trainwreck of a game that you need to experience after a description like this, but no. It’s extremely unfun to actually play through to the end. It’s most likely fun to watch this game played by someone else, as they constantly go “what” and “but why” every few minutes. But going through the experience yourself? Not worth it. Still, this has been quite an experience for me. A mostly unpleasant one, sadly, but a memorable one either way. Plus, it’s a great example of the fact that you cannot just make the same game with 3 different view modes and, even with some adjustments, expect it to work. It really feels like over the shoulder has been the intended design all the way through. Anyways, just replay any of the classics Them and Us tries to rip off instead.