Fright Train Review (PC)

In the midst of all the chaos, the flesh-deprived plush zombies and the overwhelmingly complex backpack shuffling, it felt as if I was making progress aboard Fright Train’s supernaturally-enforced locomotive. Even when it felt as if there was nowhere left to turn, or nowhere to hide, I truly believed that I was working towards the final carriage. I’d kick the living daylights out of boxes for the sake of it, rain hellfire on the dead with a flurry of bullets, and learn the language of the dead with the hopes of becoming fluent. Yet, it was often for nought; the giant worm-like creature would often bring the freight train to a grinding halt and leave me feeling wounded, confused, and a little out of my league. Against all odds, though, I fell into its trap time and time again. I wanted to see where the tracks would take me, even if it meant spending more time with Doug Barker than my own spouse.

To put it out there, Fright Train isn’t a scary game. If anything, it’s a canine-fueled crossbreed of two cult classic forms of cannon fodder, both of which can be attributed to the likes of Resident Evil and most old-school camera-hugging third-person shooters. But, there is a second ingredient that fleshes out Fright Train, and that’s its adoption of a rogue-like twist—a concept that, while not necessarily groundbreaking in the slightest sense of the word, adds a little more meat to an otherwise predictable train-hopping experience. But, we’ll sink our teeth into that later.

Fright Train puts you aboard the L.R.S. Great White—a mega train with interlocking corridors, monster-infested carriages, and handfuls of technical issues that you, naturally, must learn to juggle as the train barrels through Antartica’s blizzards. As Doug Barker, a paranormal special agent with a knack for unveiling SHARK Corporation’s idle mysteries, you enter the ice-coated quarters of the flagship vessel with a simple objective: to claw your way through to the front of the locomotive, and to prevent it from falling to ruin as the world around you descends into chaos. With your colleagues out of the picture and a trainload of foes to overcome, you, armed with a pistol and a slider of hotkey-laced weapons and items, enter into the fray with your sights set on the engine room.

Naturally, Fright Train is just as much of a juggling act as it is a tribute to old-school PSX survival horrors. Between booting the lids off of objects and unloading bullets on reanimated corpses, you also have several pressing matters to fret about. The temperature, for example, is bitterly cold, and therefore you must use whatever items you have available to keep yourself warm as you trundle through each carriage. Moreover, as the train breaks a little too often, you also have to volley back and forth to repair components and keep the wheels in motion. Add the spawning zombies, the credit system, and the tedious inventory management, and you have quite the burden on your hands.

I’d be lying if I said that it breezed through the carts and made short work of the dead. In truth, I struggled with Fright Train, not so much because it made the act of eliminating zombies a challenge, but because it made every aspect of survival an absolute nightmare. If, say, I wasn’t freezing, then I was missing out on the opportunity to repair a broken component due to a concerning lack of crucial parts in my hotkey slots. And, to be honest, that was the toughest part about Fright Train: the inventory management system. Every item had a purpose, and failing to adopt all of the right items at any given moment often led to a disastrous outcome. I’d die, oblivious to the fact that I was, weirdly, still making some form of progress.

As a rogue-like experience at its core, Fright Train is a game that you need to stick with to truly understand. In the beginning, you have a worrying sense that the world will take a huge chunk out of your morality and leave you out to freeze in the dark. You have a pistol, a lack of ammunition, and a vague sense of security. As you push through its procedurally generated carriage, however, it all begins to make sense. Juggling items slowly becomes less of a headache, and maintaining the shoddy components gradually becomes a doddle. Though, it all comes at a cost: your patience. See, the game pours a lot of energy into keeping you second guessing your each and every move. Even with light intervals between carriages and waves of zombies, you never really know if you’re fully equipped to tackle the monstrosities that lurk in the farthest corners. You will die, but you’ll also learn how its world ticks as you repeatedly suffer from the same fate.

If Fright Train was condensed into a barebones husk of a world where combat and inventory management were the only two things that kept it afloat, then I wouldn’t have a lot to say about it, to be honest. Yet, with thanks to its B-movie sci-fi fodder, voice acting and procedurally constructed environment, it does add a good amount of weight to an otherwise sluggish rogue-like third-person shooter. While frustrating at times, it does bring a lot of excellent qualities to the field, with some rewarding gunplay, intriguing plot elements and surprisingly unnerving moments, all of which are neatly wrapped in a low-poly aesthetic that feels awfully reminiscent of the heyday cult favorites.

If you’re a fan of double decade-old survival horrors that favor in-depth inventory management and smaller progression milestones over ballsy battle sequences and cinematic tearaways, then you will probably find a lot to love in Fright Train. It might drive you a little crazy at first, but learn to stick with it, and you’ll more than likely come out on the other side with something that’s worth writing home about.

Verdict

Fright Train trundles along the same tracks as a born and bred B-movie rogue-like survival horror flick with a locomotive that’s purposefully fueled by an awkward yet rewarding inventory management system, old-school gunplay and problematic components. With the aid of a carriage full of relentless foes, systematic failures and a well-wrapped procedurally generated environment, WildArts Games delivers a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit mechanically challenging thrill ride through the icy canyons of the Antarctic.

True to the spirit of a double decade-old corridor romper, Fright Train retains a weary heart that, like countless others of its kind, chooses to frontline the classic tropes that made games like Resident Evil so universally popular. And that’s a good thing, too. Oh, it can be a pain in the neck to learn on the fly, but if you’re able to stick around for the long haul, then you, too, will realize that the destination isn’t as important as the journey itself. It’s figuring out how to bide your time as the train powers on, that’s the tough part.