GHOST at DAWN Recensie (Xbox Series X|S & PC)

GHOST at DAWN understands the importance of keeping an old flame alight in a world that yearns to extinguish it. In what feels like a time of innovation, Blue and Red Games cradles the opportunity to keep quiet, remain still, and to stoke the embers of a fire that so many of us have forgotten to prod. It doesn’t wish to prolong the inevitable; it chooses to remain faithful to a small pocket of survival horror in the hopes that the right handlers will congregate on it.

Billed as a noir-like survival horror, GHOST at DAWN ushers you into The Pines Hotel, a dismal place in which corridors exhume intrigue, memories bleed via conduits of mentally unstable characters, and a quest that hangs on the discovery of a teenage girl holds the key to salvation. You are not a hero in this chapter, but a real detective with real problems. Cigarettes and alcohol provide substance, but the emotional scars run a lot deeper. The Pines Hotel just happens to hold the power to lean into your greatest weakness.

In a similar vein as most old-school survival horror flicks à la Resident Evil and Silent Hill, GHOST at DAWN favors the dated, albeit somewhat adored feel of a camera-locked, puzzle-oriented world. It also opts to leave a lot of the usual trappings in, which includes the liminal environments, the scarce ammunition, and the logical puzzles that keep you second guessing your each and every move. Without attempting to reinvent the wheel, it looks to build on the iconic pieces of a PSX-baked puzzle, which ultimately lead to a familiar foundation that, frankly, any fan of the nineties style will immediately recognize and fall head over heels in love with.

Set in 1947, the game follows Ben O’Hara, a Japanese-American World War II veteran who, after accepting a contract to seek out a missing teenager, ventures out to The Pines Hotel to weave the clues into a plausible narrative. Armed with time-appropriate weapons and a turbulent mindset that warps reality in the most peculiar ways, the war hero-turned-detective embarks on a perilous journey to unravel the truth of one Emi Kosuke. The hotel pulls you in, and before long you find yourself following the breadcrumbs of a cold case that feels unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

GHOST at DAWN isn’t your typical action-skewered survival horror game. Rather, it’s a deep dive into the back corridors of a contorted reality of bleak grays and curious questions. As you aren’t the big shot of action stories, you have two vastly conflicting aspects to juggle: a mind that requires frequent remedial input—cigarettes, alcohol, and medication, for example—and a hotel that houses copious amounts of vague secrets, puzzles and otherworldly threats that require you to levy your ammunition and strategical skills.

Behind its thought-provoking puzzles and corridor-shifting tendencies, GHOST at DAWN offers a good story with a significant number of layers to explore. Rather than spoon feeding you jump scares and wall-to-wall action sequences, it opts to utilize the power of dated facts to weave its atmosphere and give you a reason to fear the unknown. With fixed camera angles and intentionally wooden mechanics to guide you, you never truly know what lurks around the next corner. A slip in your mental health, for example, can shift your perspective on the world and alter the image. What’s more, if you spend too long in the dark, then you may face disturbing hallucinations.

Keeping a lid on Ben’s ever-dwindling sanity plays a huge part in GHOST at DAWN. If, say, you’re not out searching for clues to usher in the next story beat, then you’re on the hunt for short-term remedies to keep your mental health from deteriorating. This issue gracefully plays into the psychological aspect of the journey, too. Without it, it would be a peculiar dream with light puzzle mechanics. With it, it turns even the most harmless things into supernatural nightmares. It captures all of this incredibly well, too, with an eerie setting and a distorted tone, to boot.

For a game that actively leans on older tropes, GHOST at DAWN establishes a brilliant canvas that’s visually unsettling, atmospherically engaging, yet just as fun to tiptoe through on a cold evening. And even with its knuckles buried deep in the root of an old-fashioned model, it never makes itself out to be an incompetent, much less cheap emulation of a timeless classic. If anything, it elevates a lot of the core nodes, all whilst retaining the beating heart of an idealistic framework.

As I said, GHOST at DAWN doesn’t aim to lick the salt from the wounds of a modern-day horror flick. If it does anything at all, it reminds us that there is still a great deal of life left in the grainiest of details of old-school corridor thrillers. It might not appeal to those who yearn for change in a rapidly evolving genre, but for those who find comfort in the woes of yesteryear, it ought to be able to swivel enough heads to warrant a night at The Pines Hotel.

Verdict

GHOST at DAWN takes a well-needed step away from the claustrophobic corridors of modern-day survival horror to retrace its roots, not as a poor imitation of a cult classic, but as its own self-contained noir flick that harbors its own identity. Atmospherically, it hits the nail on the head with its hallucinogenic properties and two-for-one perspectives. To add, its puzzles, combat, and nostalgic feel also serve as excellent compliments to a genuinely gripping supernatural tale. And as for the other bits and pieces that flesh out The Pines Hotel, well, let’s just say that it collectively goes well beyond basic room and board.

I’d definitely recommend giving GHOST at DAWN a chance, especially if you’re looking for something that strikes the perfect balance between being a signature ode to Silent Hill and a tip of the trilby to noir-like detective fiction. It might not hit all of the right notes, though I can tell you this with confidence: The Pines Hotel is definitely a place you’ll want to spend a night or two. You can thank us later.