Exit 8 Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

I must’ve looped the same corridor a dozen times before realizing that a simple hunch wouldn’t be able to bring me closer to the stairwell of Exit 8’s white-washed chamber. Boy, I still can’t quite believe how much time I spent decoding Japanese posters on a wall, or even how many minutes I lost to the tedious act of staring at a white brick wall in the hopes that it would paint the way forward. Frankly, I lost a little too much time to Exit 8’s perpetual cycle, not because I wanted to, but because it wouldn’t ever let me leave.

I figured, if the entire world was made up of a single corridor, six posters, a concourse sign, and a strolling businessman, then I could quite easily spot anomalies and breeze through the eight corners in five minutes or less. But, in spite of my best efforts to believe that it would be a walk in the park, Exit 8 didn’t work like that. I’d take a walk, witness the same events take place, and then somehow find myself back at square one—the bottom floor of an eight-level station. At times it felt like I was making progress; a sudden spur of enlightenment would pave the way toward the next level. But then, out of the blue, something would knock me back—a simple miscalculation or a fickle sound to cloud my judgment. The loop would reset, and I’d be back to square one.

Exit 8 isn’t the easiest of observation games on the dimly lit concourse, that’s for sure. Even though it is one of the most liminal of its kind, it is one that offers a rather complex challenge. The idea, much like those that have come before, is more or less identical: spot a riff in the ambience—an “anomaly” that tampers with an otherwise ordinary scene—and make a decision on whether or not to progress forward, or return to the previous corridor. If something feels out of place, you retrace your steps. However, if you encounter a scene that looks normal, you move forward. If you fail to spot an anomaly or make a wrong turn, the loop resets and the cycle essentially repeats itself, only with more anomalies for you to unearth.

Of course, Exit 8 doesn’t quite deliver a terrifying observation experience, nor does it amplify the scare factor in an effort to silence The Cabin Factory. If anything, it feels like more of a puzzle game with light elements of horror. The walls may bleed, and a bang on the door may knock some sense into you, but at no point does Exit 8 ever exceed its limits as a horror. It startles you at best, but that’s about it. And sadly, that doesn’t happen all that often, given that its thirty-six anomalies are widely spaced out and the jump scares are few and far between.

Unfortunately, Exit 8 is as equally frustrating as it is unnecessarily difficult. The scene—a single corridor with as little as a few doors, a handful of posters, and a middle-aged man—isn’t all that unusual. But, it’s the little details here that you often struggle to find. For example, in several loops, the scene is identical to the last, yet one small detail—a slight swivel of a camera, or a discolored tile on the floor, for example—will often brush over your eyes and cause you to make the wrong turn. And I’ll be honest, it did take me several attempts to understand how it all worked. At times, it was obvious, but more often that not, it was painfully unclear what was missing from the corridor.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the brief spells of horror—the warped businessman, the sudden flush of water barreling through the station, and the gloomy eyes of a stranger staring through the cracks of a tunnel door. But, it took a lot of volleying back and forth to unlock those tender moments. Heck, I’d say that only one in every ten loops had something fresh to offer. Other than that, it was a rather slow experience. It was so slow, in fact, that I often set out to find an anomaly that would give me something to write home about. And when one did finally creep out from beneath the woodwork, it was a welcome sight that I could openly greet. But again, it just didn’t happen all that often.

Let it be said that, as far as observation games go, Exit 8 does have some creative ways of getting your blood flowing. In one case, I’d walk to the end of the hall, only to hear the sudden burst of pattering footsteps. I’d quickly gaze back and find a businessman staring at me, breathing down my neck. It was times like this where it felt as if Exit 8 was finally embracing its natural-born horror roots. But then, the cycle would repeat, and it would present me with yet another nine loops of absolute nothingness. I wanted more, and I wanted to feel petrified of whatever lurked on the other side of the next corridor. Exit 8 just didn’t deliver that. Or at least, not enough to keep me awake for the duration of its short twenty-minute journey.

With all of the above said, Exit 8 is still an excellent game, and not to mention a pioneer in the field of observation. It might not be as scary as others games of its kind—I’m on Observation Duty, for example—but it is an experience that has all of its cards in the right place. To that end, I’d say that it’s worth taking a trip out to, if only to see where the anomaly hunting genre found its newfound potential in the market.

Verdict

Exit 8 might not boast the most impressive display of bone-shattering horrors in its liminal world, though it does stand tall as a symbol of an increasingly popular genre—a series that, in all fairness, often falls beneath the same umbrella as its Exit 8 counterpart. As one of few pioneers in the anomaly field, it certainly shines bright as a reflection of how much potential there is in the category. As a horror game, not so much. But then, you can’t win ‘em all.

Of course, it is worth checking out Exit 8 if you just so happen to be on the market for an anomaly game with a familiar backbone and skeletal structure. It might not scare you senseless, but it’ll definitely get the cogs in your head turning for thirty or forty minutes.