As October reaches its end and Halloween grows ever closer, I’m sure you’re looking for some good horror games to play with your friends. Luckily for you, Kinetic Games has finally brought their hit game Phasmophobia to current gen consoles. If that name rings a bell (I know it did for me), then you probably remember when Phasmopbobia first released on PC four years ago, and maybe you’ve always wondered what the horrifying hype was about. Now, more people than ever are able to play this ghost-hunting simulator, but was it worth the wait?
Phasmophobia is a surprisingly packed ghost hunting sim. The gameplay loop will see you, either alone or with a team, venturing into one of thirteen different locations to investigate a possible haunting by one of 24 different ghost types. To do this, you’ll use a different variety of equipment to collect evidence, manage you and your team’s sanity, and try to survive against the angry dead. Phasmophobia’s greatest strength is its variety. The different ghosts the game gives you to hunt offers a good variety of situations and leads to great moments of horror and emergent gameplay, especially as your lowering sanity offers more opportunities for the ghosts to hunt you and your friends.
Phasmophobia’s multiplayer is where you’ll get the most mileage out of its mechanics. While you only need three pieces of evidence to determine what kind of ghost you’re dealing with, you don’t have the inventory space needed to carry every piece of equipment at your disposal. If you want to save time on running back and forth between the house and your truck, you better group up to cover more ground and more efficiently cover your bases as you research each haunted site.
This also gives you the benefit of hearing your friends scream their lungs off as they’re chased down by ghosts. Really, the best part of Phasmophobia is, as cliche as it is to say, is the fun you make alongside your friends. Phasmophobia feels like it was built with the goal of offering as many chances for you and your friends to make a new memory as possible, especially the seemingly random nature of the ghosts’ behavior. Unexpected jumpscares can quickly throw off your collective composure, and hunts will inevitably cause your teamwork to descend into chaos, but that’s all part of the fun.
If you’re more inclined to single-player experiences, you might want to skip this game. This game will, inevitably, force you to backtrack to switch out equipment and check your truck’s cameras for ghostly activity, both of which will quickly grow tedious the longer you investigate a level. The lack of other players also reveals how simple the tasks you’re performing are. I’m not bemoaning this simplicity, but I am making a point that, if you prefer to play games as a solo player, you might want to skip out on Phasmophobia this Halloween season.
For everyone else with a group of friends to play with, Phasmophobia is easily something I can recommend. It can provide an endlessly spooky good time that’ll keep you and your friends entertained well into the darkest parts of the night. I give Phasmophobia an 8/10.
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Related: Reviews by Josh Freeman
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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