pneumaticexpected for the September 20, 2024is a horror title published by DeadboltInteractive and developed by PerpGameswhich is actually made up of just one person. This new survival horror will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC. Unfortunately, however, it is a title that he can’t give his best of itself from many – too many – points of view. But let’s address all the problems of Pneumata in this review.
A narrative that “doesn’t take”
This survival horror title has a quite simple incipitwhich however manages to give motivation to the protagonist, Davidto abandon his home and move towards the town that will begin his nightmare.
Imagine you have a boat accident, which unfortunately starts to give you memory problems, so you take some medicine to calm it down, but in the accident you lose your girlfriend and the body is never found. A seemingly normal night, David receives a package with a VHS (in 2018) and decides to watch it. Here he realizes that it is a recording of him and sees the body of his girlfriend disappear. But what really happened? So is it in the town of Milton that he is?
Considering that this is a a place a little out of time and which seems to have been erased from the internet world, the only way to understand what really happened is to go there in person. But a bit like in the case of Silent Hill 1our David will have a car accident shortly after passing the entrance to Milton, which will prevent David from going back and that will start the nightmare of the young man.
Unfortunately, the narrative of Pneumata is not the best and combined with a gameplay and a technical aspect that does not shine, everything weighs too much. But what do you mean? Let’s discover one of the biggest boss fights in the game.
Frustration…
Pneumata is the result of a project created by a single developer, who has always been passionate about survival horror. In fact, it is possible to see, wandering around the game map, how he made a series of references to the two giants, silent Hill And Resident Evilwithout forgetting the Red Barrels series Outlast.
Having made this necessary premise, it goes without saying that Deadbolt Interactive’s title is a bit too derivative from the titles we mentioned above, so the three pillars of the survival horror world. The problem is that it makes too many references to other games, for example let’s see the issue of the cassette already seen on Resident Evil 7the tormented character and the car accident taken by surprise silent Hill and the question of the camera taken from Outlastas well as the first few bars of the game which are a quote too big to the title of Red Barrels.
But something that is really well done is the reference to the save room of Resident Evilsince they make those of Pneumata recognizable. The negative aspect is too much derivation. Anything that is “unique” doesn’t work. Furthermore, the very save rooms are not well positioned within the map. Sometimes they are too close, other times too far away and this can make exploration confusing, especially considering that the map is already quite messy.
Another thing about the maps is their modification. Sometimes you will have to waste bullets to get past some planks, but if you die, then things will go back to how they were before, but not with the same bullets. Since we are in a survival horror, we know that every bullet counts.
A prime example of things that are wrong is the game’s shooting, as it is nowhere near the shooting of other independent titlesso excluding the triple A. This is because sometimes the crosshair does not appear and you have to press the button twice to have the most precise aim. Not to mention the fact that the damage inflicted by firearms is negligible compared to the strength of the larger enemies that are around. Suffice it to say that the very first “boss” which is inside Pneumata requires more than one magazine in the head to be able to be shot down.
One thing that could unfortunately bother those who suffer from motion sickness are the sections with the camera, which due to the fake fish eye, tends to give a great sensation of seasickness and motion sickness, which is not great. We who have tried the title do not suffer from motion sickness so much, but with Pneumata we had to close your eyes for some simple actionslike climbing spiral stairs or the like.
…And Problems, problems, problems
In other words, there are a lot of little things about Pneumata that don’t work and you can’t get over them. The only thing that holds up is the graphics, thanks to theUnrealEngine 5but it also lacks aesthetics. Or rather, it turns out to be quite banal. Yes, because you will find yourself in front of classic “cryptic” sentences written in bloodwhich we have already seen in many other titles and which fail to achieve the same effect, given that the narrative does not hold up.
Sometimes the textures load as you pass by, although everything still remains beautiful to look at thanks to the Unreal Engine 5 graphics engine. Unfortunately, however, there are some things that are poorly managed, for example the rain inside some closed buildings. Despite being a new generation engine and therefore really good, unfortunately there are quite a few things missing in terms of settings, even for the console version.
Specifically, in the options there is only the management of lighting. As for other settings, we see that from the audio point of view it is only possible to manage sound effects, music and master. In addition the audio itself is not equalized welland from the positioning point of view it’s completely wrong. Sometimes you have enemies far away but they feel very close and when they are attacking you you can’t hear them. Other times, however, the audio disappears completely. And the control settings? You can only choose whether to have vibration, and manage the sensitivity.
There are also some bug for artificial intelligence. During our test of Pneumata we found a bug several times where enemies would remain still even though we were right in front of them. In fact, we beat a boss fight because of this bug. Another minor issue is the fact that command prompt disappears and therefore it is difficult to understand when it is possible to carry out an action and when it is not. Another small shortcoming, but this is specific to our country, is the absence of Italian. Both in dubbing and subtitles.
In short, although Pneumata is a way to pay homage to the great survival horror games, unfortunately it does not work like a Daymare or other titles. It is a title that has too many problems both from a technical point of view, from a gameplay point of view and also with regards to the narrative. So we cannot consider it sufficient. Which is really a shame, but it is not possible to ignore some gross errors, even if made by a one man developer.
#Pneumata #Review #Man
