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With only a few cheap jump-scares and some clever space twisting, this is only for people who are desperate for some scares. "For the first time ever, I was so shaken by a horror game that I had to pause and set the controller down." "Home Sweet Home is a solid modern horror game which effectively utilizes Thai culture and mythology to create an unnerving, atmospheric, and surreal experience." After the novelty fades -- and this happen within minutes, not hours -- there's little reason to keep going.
Where the setting and premise makes it fall into horror the game plays out like a stealth puzzle game. In Home Sweet Home, Yggdrazil Group does an amazing job of sprinkling various ambient noises throughout the game that will keep you on edge. Couple that with the sounds of the box cutter that the main demonic entity — a ghastly looking woman — carries, and it all makes for a genuinely unsettling experience. One moment in particular saw me slowly moving down a near pitch black corridor and listening for the distinct sound of the knife, and for a brief moment, I was completely sucked into the game and what was happening. Beyond exploring and solving puzzles, the bulk of the gameplay involves playing hide and seek with the various spooks and ghosts that stalk Tim.
Home Sweet Home Review Summary
So while I might rant for several paragraphs about things that I found frustrating about Home Sweet Home, I want to make it clear that I’m recommending the game anyhow. It’s not the greatest game ever made, but it is one hell of a horror experience. As you wander through frightening environments, surrounded on all sides by foreboding images, silent triggers start yelping inside of you. Your mind knows that you are just playing a game, of course.
Now the game can be played in both VR and TV mode, and this is where my second issue came in play. For me the VR support seems like is something that was a last-minute add-on. The reason I say this is the image all seems a little blurred and like it has some sort of film grain placed over it. I was really underwhelmed by the way they have managed the visual side of the VR mode, and this is only magnified when you play the game in TV mode.
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Your job is to put together dazzling new rooms for your clients, most of whom have extremely one-track minds. For example, a fellow might want an Asian style, another might seek nothing but orange in her living room, another still only wants loud components and so forth and so on. You must select the right furniture and place it in the room to the customer's satisfaction without going over budget. This is all done with the Wii remote -- just point, grab items from a pull-down menu and drop them in the 2D world. With the initial setup done, you team comes and tackles the dirty work, but they cannot get the job done without your guidance. To that end, you use the Wii remote to drag and place workers on various items, make sure they don't become fatigued, pick up the trash, and give them coffee or medical attention when needed.
Home Sweet Home Alone takes its sweet time, filling its first hour with an endless round of "Oh it's him from SNL / that HBO sitcom," as we meet multiple families and multiple kids who absolutely do not matter at all. • Challenging Gameplay – Focus on stealth gameplay which requires player’s skill to overcome. Progression is occasionally gated off by some insidious puzzles. A few of the puzzles are extremely clever, requiring the player to search the environment for clues and then perform some mental gymnastics to come up with the solutions. Most, however, simply require the player to acquire a nearby object to interact with an environmental barrier (including one game of “find the keys” in Tim’s house that had me ripping my hair out). This is frankly an awful way to start the game, but players should push through this sequence.
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If not I don't see the point as virtual reality and horror make it so scary. Home Sweet Home puts you in the shoes of a man named Tim, whose wife has vanished mysteriously. On top of that, he awakes one morning to find himself in a strange building filled with blood, gore and murderous spirits along with a new secret of his own.
I would tell you to play with the lights out, but in VR, it simply doesn’t matter. The lights are always out in Home Sweet Home, and what you can’t see may kill you. Well after the first level, this title takes a sharp right turn into Thai mythology that I didn’t see coming. Sure, there is a stereotypical ghost girl walking around and looking to kill you, but Home Sweet Home separates itself from the expected. With its issues, it’s not going to redefine the horror genre, but this book shouldn’t be judged by its cover.
While Home Sweet Home doesn't bring anything new to the table for first person horror puzzlers, it does stand out with the inclusion of Thai horror folklore which is truly terrifying. It's let down with a couple of bugs but it's not a bad way to spend a few hours. Even though there is much good to be said about the game, I would also like to note that it is not for the faint of heart. Want to keep up to date with the latest Xt reviews, Xt opinions and Xt content? Some examples may be that you need to blow out three candles scattered throughout the complex to allow access through a certain door, but each of those candles has its own puzzle.
In games especially, so much is communicated through sound, from your emotional state being manipulated through music, to being able to gauge your surroundings, to all the “fun” stuff. In this case, after playing Home Sweet Home, the sound of a box cutter’s blade protracting and retracting might stick with you for a long time. Especially since that sound is tied not only to the central threat, but also all the dying and continuing you’re going to be doing. I have heard opinions from some that the horror experience in this game drops off and becomes stale after a while, and I respectfully disagree. I’m almost certain that I did not blink or breathe once during my time in Home Sweet Home (ok, that’s an exaggeration but you get my point). With a fantastic blend of hide & seek stealth gameplay and Thai mythology and folklore, Home Sweet Home strikes a pleasant balance of horror, challenge and storyline.
"Home Sweet Home is one of the most intense PlayStation VR compatible horror games released to date, and it’s ready to take you on an experience you’ll never forget." The truth is that there exists a market for a game of this type, especially on Wii, a system that sails the so-called blue ocean. If your idea of a quality WiiWare game is World of Goo or LostWinds, well, stop reading now -- Home Sweet Home is absolutely not for you in any way, shape or redesigned form, period. But as someone who has spent the last 10 months entrenched in the ups and downs of the real estate market, first selling and then buying a new home, I can appreciate a game about decorating. I have sunk just as much time into the presentation of my new house's living room, kitchen and bedrooms as my wife has, much to her chagrin. And the deep-dwelling nerd within me has even pondered the possibilities of creating a virtual apartment on PlayStation 3's Home network, whenever it finally goes live.
Copy, paste, repeat for 50 some-odd different rooms and you've got the idea. The horror imagery present in Home Sweet Home has its roots in Thai mythology, and those fingerprints are everywhere in the game. Unfortunately, beyond this strong opening, Home Sweet Home meanders towards those answers with your five or so hours spent on it being largely about frustration, trial, and error.
Home Sweet Home is here to show us that horror is still alive, or dead, or a humongous black monster wanting to slap the life out of you. I bought the game today hoping that I would be able to play with my Oculus Rift, however I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do it. I start steamvr and everything and once I open the game it is just a black screen in the headset with the game playing in desktop mode. The core gameplay focuses on storytelling and stealth to avoid perilous spirits hunting you.
But the things that the game does well will live on in my memory long after the missteps that threatened to ruin the scary fun. Allows itself a little more leeway when it could have just as easily restricted itself to its toy store starting point. Begos maintains consistency with the movie’s heightened aesthetic despite the larger sandbox that he allows himself to play in. These are characters that never stop drinking or getting high despite being in constant peril. So much of the film is just Tori and Sam casually chatting as they mock Christmas tropes and rank metal albums and horror sequels.
Tim can run, crouch, use a flashlight, and pick things up in order to proceed. To find an escape, he’ll need to do all of these things, plus hide, in order to avoid dangers and solve puzzles or situations. Unfortunately, most solutions will be to find an item that grants access to a path and move to the next complication. Home Sweet Home is pretty linear and most doors, stairways, and windows will be inaccessible to Tim. You’ll always have a clear picture on what your surroundings are in any given level, but some of the puzzles are not very clear. Home Sweet Home follows Tim as he wakes up in a house with no clear memory of where he was before today.
While he begins to search for a way out and solve questions that could lead to his wife's disappearance, he’ll find himself being hunted by vengeful evil spirits. There is a dark and sinister secret casting a shadow over this interconnected labyrinth…and it's no longer the happy home that it once was. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how important sound is to a horror experience.
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