PlayStation 4 Review Code Provided by Ratalaika Games
When you think of horror games, you expect there to be a lot more twisted moments within the overall experience. As a fan of psychological horror games in particular, I was pretty excited to find a new game that seemed to do well on Steam. Recently, developer Headware Games and publisher Ratalaika Games brought their game Chasing Static to console and so I had to give it a try. Unfortunately, I’m not sure why this game was so well loved on PC because I just could not really enjoy this experience…
Story
Driving through a stormy night through what seems to be and endless forest, Miles takes refuge in the only piece of civilization he has seen in miles. Once inside this little Cafe, he meets a nice waitress that makes a deal to help guide him for a ride home as the Cafe was about to close. While waiting for her to finish her shift, the power goes out and upon fixing it he returns to the ghastly sight of the waitress pinned to the ceiling by a strange creature before he loses conciousness.
Upon waking up, he finds himself in a more desolate version of the cafe with a lot of damage and destruction inside of it. Heading out, things aren’t the same as when he first arrived to this area. What’s going on? Forced to explore the nearby area for help, he heads out into the darkness to face an eventful night of confusion and horror.
While I felt the premise was really well setup, the story of everything is told in the form of memories that you can sort of run into. Most of them are pretty much en route of where you are going, but sometimes they felt like they were randomly placed. They do help you find key items at times as well, but it was just such a strange way to share a story since you could run into any memory in any order given the freedom of direction the open area provides you.
Gameplay
The cafe section does let you get the hang of the basic controls you will be working with, Your interaction button, picking up objects, and movement. After leaving the cafe, following the black out, you’ll be left with no choice but to leave. Of course, leaving fails as you crash off the road. From here, you will find yourself in a big open forest area with no real direction given to you. This is where you explore until you find what you need to do. Eventually you will find your way into a bunker where your ultimate objective begins and that is to restart generators in three different areas.
In the bunker, you will finally come across the main item for the game; a directional sound device. You are meant to use this to literally chase static, as implied in the name. As you point it in different directions, you’ll get a noise to indicate something in that direction. Aside from wandering aimlessly in the dark open map, you use this to help you find the memory points, key items, and more.
Each area will have its own set of memories to listen to, key items, environments, and such. The ultimate goal for each area is to get the generator back up and running which you do by finding a jerry can with gas in it. Once you get the generator powered up, you will actually find a phone that has four buttons on it and this can be used to fast travel between the different areas - once they are powered up at least.
As you are doing this, you will occasionally encounter a static-type monster that will approach you. He is a little hard to see so I didn’t notice him the first time other than the sound effects but he seemed to be completely harmless. I think his goal is more of a hindrance since you can’t listen to anything while he is around, but he will disappear after a few seconds so you can just wait him out.
Audio and Visual
This game is made to be a low-poly style horror game, so in that light, they did pretty well. However, even for a low-poly game, I don’t know why I had trees that were well within sight constantly blinking out or back into existence. All the main aspects of the graphics were steady at least. There were some questionable choices overall, like how most of the memories would black out the screen but not completely so I can see through little pixelated sections even though I don’t think anything was there to look at.
Sound effects for the game were pretty bare bones as the focus was meant to be on the static. The voice acting was pretty decent though, so it is good to see that they did want to bring the story out properly, even if it is in a uniquely strange way.
What It Could Have Done Better
I don’t want to seem like I am just bashing this game, but I don’t see how so many people liked it. The graphics were low-poly so there was no excuse for parts of the graphics to come in and out of existence while within render distance, the monster was completely harmless and even ignorable most of the time, the only couple of scares in the game were the jump scares, the story was confusing and hard to follow - although with a good wrap up at the end, and the gameplay itself was just rather lackluster.
Verdict
Chasing Static just wasn’t the horror experience I was looking for. I’ve played horror games since I could hold a controller, but this game was one I was glad to be finished with. There is apparently an appeal to it that others enjoyed based on the Steam review scores, but based on my own experience, I would have to say that this just isn’t a game I can recommend.
Chasing Static is now available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
