Remorse: The List Review

We love a bit of horror here at the Tavern. From AAA titans to shorter indie experiences, we’re always keen to play and tell you about new scares on the Xbox store. Of course, not every game can be a banger but we find our fair share of good titles to rave about. Sadly, Remorse: The List won’t be near to top of our list, though it has its moments.

Playing Remorse: The List was a bit of a rollercoaster of thoughts. Initial impressions were pretty poor, with a distinct focus on cheap jump scares that were reminiscent of the early web games designed to give unsuspecting players a fright while their friends watched and laughed. We lost count of how many times we’d round a corner only to have our ears barraged by overly pitched screams and an enemy barrelling towards us.

This is exacerbated by the pathetically weak offensive options we start with. Our hero Adrian must have a severe case of arthritis as he’s only able to pull the trigger in increibly slow increments, while reloading our gun is akin to watching paint dry in the think of fighting enemies. A slower, weaker protagonist is Horror 101, but here it just feels like poor design.

In fact, Ashkandi must have the beginners guide to Survival Horror on hand as pretty much every early trick is whipped out throughout; awkward inventory, lots of backtracking, only select save points (thankfully not an ink ribbon in sight), and the reliance on those shock tactics rather than well crafted frights. We’re not against this approach per se, but in Remorse these are implemented in such a way as to make the experience frustrating rather than scary.

Enemies move faster than we do – especially those that slither along the ground all snake-like – so we’re forced into Serious Sam-style backpeddling while slowly unloading our guns. This results in it being hard to avoid damage by virtue of the enemies being too bullet-spongy and fast than anything else. One early section saw me killed by an approaching floating enemy torso several times as I was unable to kill it before I was cornered despite having plenty of health.

Things improve drastically when we gain access to better weaponry, though the same slow reload animations and general awkwardness mean we empty ammo way faster than we can reload, making fights feel oddly paced. We are at least able to keep most enemies at bay a bit better though, and it’s when this is the case that we started to enjoy my time with Remorse.

Without the hassle of worrying so much about combat, we could focus more on getting involved in the world and goings on. We’re tasked with finding three items and returning them to an alter set up in front of an old house. These items have a significance to Adrian’s past, and he’s here to deal with some past demons. Each of these three are locked behind various puzzles in three distinct locations within this semi-open world.

The set-up of each area is pretty nicely done, with several smaller puzzles leading into one final, more involved one. For the most part, these are easy enough to figure out, though there were couple of times where we felt that the clues were not fully fleshed out. One example saw us finding scattered parts of a riddle which needed solving; this part was easy enough, but when it came to inputting the answer, there was a lack of clarity over what exactly we needed to do. Involving adding several crowns to make a specific number, there was no indication of what each crown was worth or even how much we’d added up to on each guess thanks to a wonky camera angle that made it hard to gauge the markers.

Still, we persevered and got through all three areas (with a little light Asking Jeeves) and for the most part, we started to come round to this games quirks. While the jump scares wore out their welcome early on, there was still a passably creepy atmosphere throughout, with some great use of audio (outside of the cheap screams); dull basslines, barely audible whispers, and some decent music.

Even the awkward inventory – which not only was clumsy to use on console, but made us equip things like med packs in place of weapons in order to use them – became less of a nuisance, although we ended up with so much ammo we had to literally throw bullets away to pick up quest-essential items.

But then.

On the way the the third item, we’re thrown into a frankly boring boss fight that was as tedious as it was basic: luring a stronger enemy into a set zone so they’d expose their weakness, but the further their life depletes, the faster they move. Remember how slow Adrian moves? Yeah, this was a bit downer just as we’d started to warm to the game. Having beat them after several attempts, we were relieved to reach the end, only to be thrown into an even worse fight that – while easier thanks to the foe being as slow as us – achieved nothing but dragging our opinion back down once again.

The final kicker? After beating this boss, we were plonked back into the world to collect one final item directly in front of us to finish the game. But, we were unable to look down to pick up said item thanks to a glitch in our controls that meant restarting the game and replaying both boss fights again. Granted, this is not going to happen every time, but it felt like a fitting end to our time with Remorse: The List, and if it was intentional it might have been a clever way to leave the player on a purposeful low.

In fact, this was not the only glitch we experienced. There are several voice recorders to find that bestow what we imagine to be story or puzzle hints, but not a single one played for us. Elsewhere were more minor things (A couple of crashes, hang-ups in the scenery) but these certainly didn’t help our impression of the game.

Conclusion

While it had some decent moments once we’d gotten into the flow of things, overall we found our time with Remorse: The List to be underwhelming to say the least. An over reliance on cheap jump scares and underpowered protagonist, this is only for those who have exhausted better horror options.