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0 Back in April, I checked out a preview for Deadbolt Interactive’s new game Pneumata. If you want to know my initial thoughts of the game, click here. Today I’m looking at the full release of this new survival horror to see if it delivers. You can pick Pneumata when it releases this month on the 20th for the PS5.
Disclaimer: some GIFs used in this review contain strobe effects and flashing images, please be careful.
Why is it always the small towns that are the issue?
Additionally, I would like to warn you that Pneumata contains heavy flashing images. Even though the game provides a warning, I do not recommend it for individuals with epilepsy or other conditions that can be affected. I don’t suffer with anything myself, and found the game too much.
Gameplay
The game begins with our protagonist David being abruptly awoken by a disturbance outside. Upon investigating his front porch, he discovers a package containing a tape. The contents of the video suggest a lead for his missing (I presume) wife, Jaime. Thus, we arrive at a small town known as Milton, found in Missouri.
Pneumata plays a little similar to the more recent entries of Resident Evil. You’ll conserve ammo, solve environmental puzzles and do some backtracking. Although for exploring, I would get lost too often. I wish they had introduced a map you can find since the demo had a map for the Detention Centre on the wall.
Crafting & Inventory
Nothing has changed or been added since the demo for crafting. You can only craft two items and they are bandages and adding nails to a baseball bat. This was disappointing since the bandages are redundant thanks to the large amount of painkillers you find. They also provide way more health when healing.
You still will have to manage your inventory space as well. You still need to manage your inventory space as well because there is a limit to how much you can carry, and I couldn’t find any way to increase it.
Graphics & Audio
The overall graphics in Pneumata are okay, and the lighting is decent. Unfortunately, there are a lot of texture issues and audio problems that take your attention. I assume the wide camera lens during the found footage segments is supposed to provide an effect of some sort. For me, though, it just made me feel nauseous and made it difficult to navigate the area. There were plenty of instances where textures on enemies would blur, but one particularly annoying glitch was a ladder disappearing. It was still there and usable, but it was completely invisible, and had I not walked close and seen the interaction prompt, I wouldn’t have known.
The audio is the most jarring for me. Spoken audio is awfully quiet, while the sound effects are insanely loud. A door creaking would rip through your ears rather than play subtly in the background, as you’d expect. Some background noises felt unnecessary and obnoxious after a while. Though it’s usually a great tool to build suspense, the effects become overdone and remove the creep factor when they happen too often and for no reason. For example, hearing someone trying to use keys on a door five times in a row while you were in an unlocked, empty room made no sense and seemed awkward after a while.
Longevity
There is an achievement in Pneumata, that states you can beat it in three hours. I, however, didn’t finish the game as I began to get frustrated during what I would guess, is the end boss fight. My overall time on the game thanks to the in-game timer was nearly six hours.
Final Thoughts
After the demo, Pneumata looked promising, with the setting and navigation. However, the constant issue I had was getting lost as the environments all looked to same in future areas. With the main one being the sewers (god did I despise that level). The story itself didn’t become interesting, and around midway through, I noticed that Jaime (David’s presumed wife) doesn’t get mentioned again after the beginning.
I also came across a nearly game-breaking bug with me falling through the map. I could bypass this by finding the aforementioned ladder that vanished. Although a lot of objects in the environment wouldn’t spawn in such as boxes, barrels and lamps (yet the light source was there).
Pneumata’s gunplay was still solid, and I enjoyed using the guns. You can feel the weight behind each swing of a melee weapon. I still didn’t like the block/dodging from the demo. It was annoying during specific parts of the game where they would throw a hoard of creatures at you. The few reasons I say this was annoying was because of explosive barrels in poor locations. Enemies basically breathing down your neck while running so you can’t detonate said barrels.
A day-one patch could probably fix a good few of these glaring issues. But in the end, I’d say I’m left with torn. The atmosphere was great once again, but the area layouts were its downfall. This is why I feel Pneumata deserves the Thumb Culture Silver Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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