Surrounded by full darkness and closely restrained in an antiquated wheelchair, life seems to be bleak. However then you definately discover a button has been positioned inside your hand, which seems to activate a laser pointer connected to your head. Focusing on what seems to be like a pull chain, a determine steps out of the darkness and switches on a lamp to light up the room.
Quite a few questions start to run by way of your thoughts – Who is that this individual, and why am I strapped in towards my will? Is my life in severe hazard? How on earth do I escape from this place?
That’s how the unsettling opening moments play out in Final Labyrinth -Lucidity Misplaced-, a mysterious escape room fashion puzzler developed by AMATA Okay.Okay.. Previously an expertise solely doable in VR, Final Labyrinth has been reworked for PC and consoles; eradicating the necessity for a headset. So, let’s discover out whether or not the haunting puzzling inside nonetheless manages to succeed with out VR.
In Final Labyrinth, the mysterious individual you first meet is definitely a lady, Katia, whose sole job is to supply support. Level at one thing to work together with utilizing the laser and she’s going to gleefully carry out the motion – albeit after a short nod of the pinnacle utilizing the analog stick. The concept is to discover a means out of the room you’re in, which may contain merely exiting by way of a door or fixing a puzzle. Succeed within the puzzle and every little thing’s rosy. Fail and dying looms for each of you.
Any individual is watching every little thing unfold, akin to Jigsaw within the SAW movie collection, and it seems they’re answerable for establishing the dying traps. It’s all fairly sinister, nonetheless it’s not probably the most giving of narratives and so lots of the questions you’ve gotten will go unanswered. Particularly when your ally speaks a made up language, limiting communication to mere gestures. That issue specifically hurts any potential bond being made, which lessens the affect of dying scenes as you merely gained’t care.
Chances are high, you’ll fail rather a lot and bear witness to the numerous lethal conditions that come up. From rotating pillars lined in spikes and a guillotine, to flesh-eating beetles and electrocution, Final Labyrinth is brutal with its punishments. These moments have clearly been made to be skilled in VR and so any worry of impending doom is minimised with out the immersion. And that’s a disgrace as a result of the deaths are fairly inventive.
Transferring on to the puzzles, and there’s one per room so that you can clear up. There’s no hand holding by any means, therefore determining the issue is as a lot of a conundrum because the eventual answer. I like the variability, for you possibly can find yourself getting Katia to flip levers to soundly re-route a toy prepare set or press buttons to change all of the lights off on a board, akin to the outdated Lights Out recreation. Different concepts contain algebraic calculations to steadiness the scales, a reasonably harmful model of Lower the Rope, repeating a collection of sounds heard, and extra.
Within the early levels, finishing a single room results in an ending scene, earlier than being thrown again to the begin to deal with a special room. Ultimately you’ll attain a degree at which an entire host of different rooms are on the agenda, together with extra branching routes. That is when the monotony can creep in although, with sure puzzles repeated to be able to attain the alternate pathways. Worse than that nonetheless, is the overuse of a Japanese chess-like board recreation.
Dōbutsu Shōgi, additionally recognized internationally as ‘Let’s Catch the Lion!’, is a child’s board recreation the place every participant has 4 tiles – a chick, an elephant, a giraffe, and a lion. Very similar to chess, all of them possess totally different motion guidelines and the last word purpose is to seize the opposition’s lion. If, like me, you’ve no information of it, then you definately’re in for a painful quantity of matches all through. Not solely should you face off towards Katia, a number of instances, but additionally the large unhealthy Phantom who’s seemingly orchestrating every little thing. As soon as is an excessive amount of; a finest of 5 for a single encounter is overkill.
One other problem, albeit a slight one, is just not at all times realizing the place the laser pointer is aimed earlier than urgent it. Certain, just a few puzzles have an indicator on the sq. or merchandise it’s concentrating on to be able to information you, however others have you ever virtually guessing; shortly readjusting to go well with. There’s a fast-paced part the place that is an absolute nightmare and also you would possibly want a handful of makes an attempt to succeed. Fortuitously, it’s only a small nuisance for the remaining.
I really feel as if Final Labyrinth -Lucidity Misplaced- loses its edge with out VR and merely turns into a mediocre puzzle recreation. That’s to not say the puzzles aren’t good, as a result of they’re respectable exams of your logic for positive. It’s much less charming on the entire nonetheless, with the cleverly ugly dying scenes coming throughout as lacklustre because of them being equipped for folk engrossed through a VR headset. The repetition of sure sections, and the inclusion of a really tedious child’s board recreation, merely provides to the frustration, which then places you off experiencing each doable ending.
If you wish to dive into Final Labyrinth -Lucidity Misplaced-, then both seize it on a budget or persist with the VR model.
