Visage
I played Visage when it first came out in 2020 but got reminded of it after playing MADiSON now and figured I’d share my thoughts. Visage is the game that I have touted as the scariest game I have ever played but to be honest, I feel MADiSON is a great competitor. But I do enjoy the mechanics more with Visage. I really enjoy its sanity mechanic, which I’m biased toward as my favorite game of all time is famous for how it used that mechanic, Eternal Darkness; Sanity’s Requiem. So I enjoyed the slight nod it felt like Visage gave Eternal Darkness but the sanity was done differently where instead of more paranormal things occurring when sanity is low, witnessing paranormal activity causes sanity to decrease and in turn can make enemy encounters occur more frequently.
I really like the depth of the story, especially with the depth of the different endings you can get. It’s thought provoking ideas that stick with my the longest and that I appreciate the most. I also like how Visage divides its main chapters to where one feels more horror focused, one more action and the other more puzzle driven but ironically had some of the most memorable horror moments because of their subtlety and the paranoia and anxiety it can cause.
The only criticisms I have for Visage is that it sometimes has the enemy encounters happen too much at certain points at a random occurrence to where it actually broke the game for me one time where I got through a section and was in an unplayable cutscene but the enemy spawn right in front of my character and cause me to have to repeat the section I just completed over again. This happened on a repeat play through so I know it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. But I’m sure it was a rare occurrence.
What I appreciate with Visage’s story is it felt like an extension of PT, the playable teaser for Silent Hills, the game that never was. PT was said to be its own thing and how Silent Hills was not going to resemble it in any way so for me it’s almost as if PT ended up being more of a playable teaser for Visage. Of course we’ll have to see what Kojima does with OD but that’s a whole other thing.
For now, if anyone is looking for any scary games to play this spooky season, I can’t recommend Visage enough.