Blair Witch
TRULY SCARY, CHECK. FULL OF IDEAS, CHECK. BUT FUN TO PLAY? HMM... STEVE BOXER
PUBLISHER LIONSGATE GAMES / DEVELOPER BLOOBER TEAM / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £24.99/$29.99
which negates its meritorious
elements: its gameplay. At its best,
it’s serviceable. But on far too many
occasions, it’s downright annoying.
When we finished it, we felt a major
sense of achievement, followed by a
feeling of relief that we wouldn’t have
to play it any longer.
Blair Witch’s story kicks off with
ex-cop (and ex-soldier) Ellis driving
to the Black Hills forest to assist the
search for a missing kid. Ellis has
some ’90s period kit – an old Nokia
phone, a flashlight and a police
walkie-talkie. But most importantly, he
has his dog, Bullet.Good boy
Bullet is great. You can give him
various commands, pet him and feed
him treats, and in return he will bring
you useful objects, follow scent
trails and even indicate the direction
from which the chilling long-limbed
monsters will come at you.
Before long, Ellis finds the missing
kid’s baseball cap, allowing Bullet
to follow his scent. Bloober Team’s1999’s The Blair
Witch Project
is iconic – it
changed the horror
film landscape
permanently, with
countless subsequent efforts aping
its ‘found footage’ format. Turning
successful films into games is always
an act of bravery, but the franchise
was resurrected in 2016 via a new
film, also entitled Blair Witch, which
persuaded the games wing of its
production company, Lionsgate,
to take the plunge – entrusting
development duties to Polish horror
game specialist Bloober Team.
The videogame version of Blair
Witch has a lot going for it. Sensibly,
its story is independent from the
films and instead mines them
for interesting ideas which feel
original in the context of a game.
Atmospherically it’s spot-on, too.
Those are big pluses which would
normally persuade us to shower a
game in praise. But sadly, there’s
a colossal downside to Blair Witch
depiction of the forest is great – it’s
truly sinister, an atmosphere further
enhanced by top-notch sound design.
Nothing in Blair Witch is
straightforward, though, and Ellis soon
has the first of many breakdowns,
flashing back to the incident that
saw him lose his job and his marriage
disintegrate. Later, he will flash back
to PTSD-inducing wartime events. It’s
harrowing stuff, although the wartime
memories are a tad cliched, but the
problem is that the more you find out
about Ellis’ past, the less you like or
even feel sympathy for him.
Back on the trail, Ellis stumbles
on an abandoned camp, where he
finds a video recorder which features
heavily thereafter: he frequently
comes across red-marked tapes
which have the ability to change
reality when paused at the right place.
For example, pausing a tape of the
kidnapped boy just after he leaves a
toy car on the ground causes that car
to appear. It’s a clever puzzle-solving
mechanism, and the video camera’s
night vision comes in handy in theshort
cutWHAT IS IT?
An action/puzzling
adventure based on
the classic horror film
franchise.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Truly scary and
contains some
interesting ideas, but
infested with
annoying gameplay
sequences.
WHO’S IT FOR?
Only those obsessed
with horror films and
Blair Witch in
particular.076 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE