Not a remake of the Black Mirror that resides in the GB Hall of Fame,
but the inspiration for a re-imagining, this Black Mirror will appeal on
many levels but may well frustrate many players with the controls,
especially when death can come upon you.
First things first though.
A ramble up a cliff and a self-immolation cutscene leads me to an old
house. “I” am David Gordon, the house is his ancestral home, and he
is here for the first time in his life. It is Scotland in 1926, and
there is a gloom that blows through the corridors as surely as the wind
and rain blows outside.
It looks impressive from the get go, even if the character visages
are a little wooden. There are screen loads of 6 or 7 seconds when you
change rooms or scenes, presumably indicative of the lavish attention to
detail. I thought the lighting effects were exceptional, the ambient
sound as equally well done, as was the non-intrusive music, used when
necessary to heighten a mood, otherwise absent. The voice acting is very
good, in keeping with the tone. The early part (and much of the rest) is
spent inside the house and despite the pall and the darkness it was an
enticing environment across the board.
The website speaks of “madness and psychological distress”, and
the game talks of curses, a day of reckoning, and ancient powers for
which the debt is still to be repaid. Visions begin to plague David,
ones which can end in death, and what went on here, and is still going
on, is not at all of this world. Whilst not frightening, there is a
moody Poe edge to the unravelling and escalating events.
The game plays in the third person, and while the mouse can be used
for some things it is largely a keyboard game. Or a gamepad, which is
the only input referenced in the menu in terms of game play and
controls. The game itself provides ongoing instruction however, and the
standard WASD keys for moving around are used, so it isn’t hard to get
on with things.
Moving David about with the keyboard was generally ok, albeit that I
occasionally crashed into walls or missed doorways, exacerbated
sometimes by a shift in camera. The keys work (largely) relative to the
screen, not the character, which I always find easier. If you want to
move towards the left of screen, it’s the A key (or left arrow); the
fact that the character is facing that direction does not make it the
“move forward” (W) key.
Piloting is easier when David is in motion. If you are standing still
and want David to turn to his left, you are far more likely to cause him
to do a little pirouette that ends up with him facing leftish. This
doesn’t matter a whole lot, except when it does.
Come with me
I like the fact that you explore with David. You don’t paint the
scene with your mouse, looking for hotspots, rather you move David about
and when close enough to something he will “notice” it (a small
white circle will appear). Get closer still and the circle will likely
become an action, and perhaps even more actions will become available as
he (e.g.) sits at a desk and starts rummaging about. You do need to have
David oriented the right way to trigger the action icon, which doesn’t
matter a whole lot (just move him about), except when it does.
When it does for both aspects is when you can die.
I mentioned David has visions, and you will usually have to interact
with each vision about three times in order to move on. Simplistically,
interaction involves activating a hotspot, usually on a character, and
interacting with it. However if you linger too close for too long to
these characters, you invariably end up dead. You will be aware you are
too close because the screen starts to contract darkly from the edges, a
sure sign you need to back off quickly and then try again.
The visions are short recurring loops, and if you watch them for a
while from a safe distance you will usually have an idea of where the
hotspot might be as there will be a short glow on some part of the
scene. What you then need to do is move David in, orient him in order to
get the hotspot to activate, and interact with it, which will allow you
to retreat and work out the next one.
Which sounds simple enough, until you factor in all the foibles of
the moving about I mentioned, and it can then become a frustrating
chore. I died numerous times in some visions, overshooting the hotspot,
or failing to be able to micro-manipulate David in the window I had
available. There was lots of moving in, missing the mark, and then
moving away unharmed, able to try again but no more advanced. The most
frustrating aspect is if you die on the third hotspot; you will have to
start the vision from the beginning as there is no save during these
sequences. Indeed, one will throw you back to a point before you
completed a key puzzle, and you will have to do that again as well.
I grew to dislike these sequences, which is a shame because the
visions themselves are important to the events and the narrative.
There is also a sequence near the end where you have to move David
across a floor following instructions from a companion and also a vision
of your father. Suffice to say that the instruction, turn left and move
forward, given the vagaries of the locomotion, is easier to vocalise
than it is to follow. At least in this sequence death isn’t the
immediate result; a little “balance” game is played which if
completed in time will prevent David falling into the abyss masked by
the floor. Then you get to try the floor again.
Mental gymnastics
This balance game pops up in different guises throughout the game. It
involves keeping a floating object inside a floating circle until the
circle is complete. Frenetic mouse clicking and moving is involved. It
is often a sign that David needs to “pull himself together”.
There are times when clicking the mouse is also needed to achieve a
feat of strength (open a door) or prevail in a struggle with another
character. They aren’t hard, and even more benign versions exist (hold
down the mouse while a circle fills). They do seem like they are there
to give you something to do.
None of these things make it an action game by any means. But they
earlier ones are what I suspect will leave an unhappy flavour in some
players’ mouths.
In the ordinary game world, you may have more than one action or
conversation topic available at a hotspot. If so, each will have a
number beside it. You can use the keyboard to select the number, or you
can point and click at the desired action with your mouse.
The rummaging about I mentioned earlier also involves a little bit of
fiddling. You again use the WASD keys to move about, and this can occur
across a number of surfaces. Take the desk; you can move in all four
directions on its top, but you can also move “down” to examine the
draws, or “left” to move around the side (perhaps). It took me a
while to realise this and I missed a surface in a desk puzzle as a
result. It pays to be thorough. You also might need to move back and
forwards to interact with items in the close up; a combination lock in
the desk is a case in point. Ditto to be able to “activate” all the
hot spots. Early on there is a candle in a box, from which I had already
taken a note. I could see it, but until I moved my orientation slightly
I couldn’t activate the hotspot and take the candle. So if you see one
of those small white circles, fiddle about until it allows you to do
something.
From the above it should be clear that while the mouse is involved,
it isn’t the dominant input. Other mousey things are to “leave” a
close up and to pan up and down or left and right in an ordinary scene.
Given its somewhat redundant nature, the rather large bright yellow
cursor, like the point of a spear, seemed incongruous. It was also a
distraction.
What of other things?
David’s visions are of people he doesn’t and couldn’t know.
There are also numerous real world people with whom to engage. The maid
clearly knows things, including about David’s father, but she is
afraid. How to win her trust? Clippings and notes talks of things
somewhat sinister. Lady Margaret, a rather beautifully crafted wizened
old lady, knows things as well and may or may not talk about them. The
butler remains taciturn and a dominant presence. The gardener with his
milky white rheumy eyes, sitting quietly in the dark eating from tins of
fish, gave me a start the first time I met him. The woman who treated my
father became a friendly companion, but not so Eddie.
Secrets abound. Dark ones that have claimed the sanity of many
Gordons. There are deaths that aren’t limited to David’s
misadventures. Get to the end and there will be more, and a reckoning
with the Black Mirror itself. Peace may have come to some.
Quests (objectives really) show up in log, as do diary notes.
Exploration and conversations, perhaps interacting with some items, are
generally the route to completing the objectives. They can also be the
trigger (a little artificially perhaps) to accessing other parts of the
game; I couldn’t go outside for instance until I had learnt some
information. There are also out and out puzzles, more towards the front
half of the game, although one of the best is in the end game. As with
many games, it pays to go back to characters (and even objects) if you
have learnt something new, the result being a little aimless wandering,
hoping something might have changed.
Some puzzles involved inventory items, and having the item is enough.
You don’t “use” the item by dragging or clicking to enable it,
rather an action will be available which might say “pick the lock with
the wire” or something similar. For some of them I had to manipulate
the item in the inventory; getting the teeth of a key in the right
orientation to fit the lock is an example (more than once). Items will
be removed from the inventory when no longer needed. There are a few
codes too, and it pays to examine your inventory items from every
perspective.
The game remained visually appealing till the end, and some of the
cutscenes had a cinematic construction about them. Little details in the
characters bring them to life, and while there is a stiffness in the
visage of some characters, the craggy nature of some paradoxically
softened their features. There is a lot to like about the modeling, and
the attention to detail remains - if only the hair was more natural.
Much of the game is at night or cloaked in darkness, and the first time
you get outside in the daylight really is a breath of fresh air.
You have complete freedom of movement in the game world and can save
at will (except inside a vision). Choose "Continue" in the
menu to start from where you left off.
If what I have written of Black Mirror sounds like a lot of
negativity, don’t take it that way. I do think certain aspects will be
important to many gamers, and so I have been as fulsome as possible
about those things. Despite some frustrations, I thoroughly enjoyed my 7
hours as David, and there is a lot to like.
I played on:
OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
Processor: Intel i7-6700 4GHz
