The third-person, survival horror game Hollowbody, is making its debut on the console stores. I’ll be checking out the PS5 version for you. I don’t know what to expect, besides the game being tagged as short, and tech-noir. We do get the option to play either fixed camera or modern third person. For this review I went with modern. If you are looking to pick up Hollowbody, it’s currently priced at £12.99 on the PSN Store, or £11.04 with a PS+ subscriber discount until June 5th.
I am trying to find Sasha.
Gameplay
We take control of Mica, a woman who is on the search for her friend Sasha, who went missing. Hollowbody is pretty short, so I won’t say much of the story. Most of the gameplay is Mica walking around areas and stumbling across documents or items. Items that you will use elsewhere. If you have played games like Resident Evil, Forbidden Siren, Silent Hill, or Kuon, then you roughly know what to expect. There is combat, and Mica is equipped with a revolver at the start, but you can find more weapons as you play. Although some are more hidden, like the bow and arrow that you will need to find and then combined before you can use.
Players can expect to see monstrosities that are looking to outright kill you. Although there are times you will need to fight them, I would say for about 80% of your Hollowbody play-through they are easily avoided because they just do walk so damn slow. For any of the monsters to kill you it would talk about four hits, give or take. Larger monsters probably take 3, and the dog variant probably, like 5, as their damage was barely noticeable. When you actually need to heal, players can find healing sprays at the end of streets to fully patch them up. And lastly make sure to save often, the phones you use to save are far between, and if you die, you will need to redo everything you have done so far. Such as finding items, and solving puzzles.
Graphics & Audio
Hollowbody lends heavy-handedly from the PS2 era’s visuals and audio style. It seems the environments and visuals are Silent Hill 2 meets Britain, even borrowing the red flash when saving the game from the former. Mica herself looks heavily like a mashup between Leon Kennedy and Ashley from Resident Evil at that time. I ran into a few visual issues at times. There’s a choice between fixed camera and controlled, and I picked the latter. I don’t think they accounted for the controlled camera as much, as often I’d accidentally see through walls at certain angles, and in the residential areas I could clearly see just a stretch of plain map in the background with nothing on it.
The in-game flashlight did provide a superb amount of light, but the downside was while I was in combat it swung around like a maniac, as it’s attached to Mica’s chest. Though it may have been ‘realistic’, I would have preferred a fixed light, as trying to fight the enemies got a bit awkward when I was seeing them on and off. The sound effects when you pick up and combine items are also very similar to the Silent Hill franchise. The audio is a little crunchy at times, hearing an odd raspy filter-like sound when characters speak. The voice acting feels a little awkward, particularly when you’re listening to the signals. Sometimes the backing audio also stops and restarts which is a little jarring.
Longevity
Hollowbody offers 27 trophies and two endings for you to 100% the whole game. I managed to get over half of these trophies on my first play-through of just a little over 4 hours. But I don’t see myself returning to this game.
Final Thoughts
I was disappointed with everything Hollowbody had to offer. The story was underwhelming, combat was worse than janky, and there was no real build up at all. You spend a large amount of time just walking, and although there are enemies, they can mostly be bypassed with only a few being needed to be killed. The puzzles are okay, but even they feel that mid-way and near the end they just gave up. Since some of the puzzles later on are all just next to each other, when the apartment complex had you checking out different floors for items. For such a short game, I expected a bit more depth to the actual story.
I don’t think I could really recommend Hollowbody to anyone, so I am giving it the Thumb Culture Bronze Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
YouTube | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Discord | Podcast