Chasing Static Review for PlayStation

What does it mean to be haunted by the past? How do we confront the ghosts of what was and what could have been? Headware Games’ Chasing Static is a game that seeks to examine these questions. Made in the style of PlayStation 1 horror games, Chasing Static is, to its core, a game that seeks to examine our relationship with the past as well as deliver a classic horror experience.

The fear of Chasing Static is delivered not through jump scares, but an atmosphere carefully crafted by its unique visuals and excellent sound design. The game’s audio is well done, with sound effects for rain and thunder sounding incredibly realistic and even changes depending on the player’s actions. When a player enters a tent or a building, the ever-present rainfall changes to sound like raindrops falling on top of a tent or pattering against a window and further immerses the player. Additionally, the game is exceptionally lit, with the game’s oppressive darkness only broken up by the player’s own light sources, the occasional small light source providing some ambience, and flashes of lightning providing only a brief respite. The segment of the game that forces the player to investigate a run-down hotel in an abandoned town is by far the best example of how these disparate elements blend together as it fully immerses the player and makes them feel both totally isolated and as if they’re being watched at all times by something. The only cons I can give the game’s presentation is that it can suffer from minor graphical glitches such as distant trees popping in and out of the game at random, and this hurt the feeling of immersion in forest areas as a result.

Chasing Static’s narrative is interesting. The game starts with Chris (the player character) heading home from his father’s funeral and stopping at a roadside cafe and seeing the waitress get attacked by a mysterious entity and blacking out. When he reawakens, Chris discovers that the cafe is now run-down and filled with strange machinery. From there, the game’s story centers on Chris exploring the surrounding area, chasing down frequencies that uncover visions of past events, and trying to repair the machinery containing the area’s mysterious properties. The meat of the game’s plot and themes are conveyed through the visions players uncover throughout their playthrough alongside the notes and journal entries left by Chris’s father. Both the visions and the journal tell stories of men obsessed with a supernatural power they believe can connect them to the past and how that leads them to commit horrible actions. It gives the game a unique identity beyond its visuals and helps it stand out long after playing.

Unfortunately, the actual gameplay is a bit of a letdown. Chasing Static will have the player scouring various environments both for echos of the past and items they can use to solve puzzles, although I use the term “puzzles” in a loose sense. The puzzles don’t test the player’s ingenuity so much as they require the player to find an item and use it in the correct area. The game is an exercise in finding a bunch of keys and putting them into locks to find even more keys until the game ends, and the only time the game presents the player with a puzzle tries to test them intellectually (trying to restore the power in that hotel I mentioned earlier), the solution requires an almost nonsensical leap in logic regarding cleaning up a corpse. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the game was challenging and required the player to avoid monsters like the one in the game’s introduction, but it doesn’t. The game quickly tells you that monsters such as that were mere illusions, and you can go through the game in a couple of hours without danger. Outside the initial feeling of dread, there’s not enough gameplay depth to keep players coming back for more.

Chasing Static is an interesting game about memory. The story and presentation are good on a first playthrough, but the gameplay doesn’t do enough to compel players to keep coming back for more. Regardless, if you are in the mood to be spooked and have a few hours to kill, Chasing Static is a good game to play.

Score: 7/10

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Related: Reviews by Josh Freeman

Josh Freeman

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I love games and love talking about games. Some of my favorites include action games (both 2D and 3D), metroidvanias, roguelikes, shooters, and Indies.

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