NightCry Review for PlayStation Vita

NightCry by Playism is a horror game. In it, you switch between the viewpoints of 3 different characters as you try to help them escape a demon.

Most of the gameplay revolves around either observing/interacting with objects, picking up items, or using the items you picked up to interact with those objects (for example, using a key on a locked door). To progress in the story, you need to do these interactions in a certain order. I found this somewhat annoying because what you are supposed to do next isn’t always obvious, which would sometimes result in me running around the level for 30 minutes before I found the object/item I was supposed to interact with. There were even a couple of times I needed to look on the Internet to figure out what I was supposed to do next. The most annoying of these was when an interactable object was hidden by a distracting short sequence. Once the sequence finished playing out, you would get a game-over if you hadn’t interacted with the object by then. Until I looked up how to go forward online, I was convinced that either I had somehow missed something or that my version of the game was bugged. When I looked it up, the Internet said I was supposed to look in one corner of the room and interact with the object for the 5 seconds the sequence goes on for. It never even occurred to me that you could interact with something during that sequence, I assumed it was just one of the game’s endings.

NightCry claims to have multiple endings, although it would probably be more accurate to say that the game keeps a record of every way you could get a game-over. The annoying thing about this is that every one of the “bad” endings results from you forgetting to do something. I probably would have been more forgiving of this if some of the “bad” endings were caused by something you had done rather than something you forgot to do. It made the game feel less like a branching narrative and more like a checklist to go through to get the one “good” ending.

There are “chase” sequences where you need to run away from something as standard horror-movie clichés dictate. However, these still felt like an extension of the object-hunting. In these sequences, you would try to outrun the threat while looking for an interactable object that could defeat your pursuer.

Overall I did not enjoy my time with this game. It focused far more on telling a story than it did on actual gameplay. As such, I think a fair rating for it would be 6/10.

Check Out the NightCry Trailer:

NightCry for the PlayStation Vita is out now on the North American PS Store.