Long before the days of Netflix, Hulu, and the like, there were these places where humanity would go, peruse shelves of boxes and based on the images on them or word of mouth, pick one to take home, shove the box’s contents into a little machine, and then lights and sounds would then emit from a large box that they’d huddle around in their living quarters. I know this is a weird concept, but I am old enough to have seen it with my own two eyes and no, I’m not drunk, but I kind of wish I was because it would help soothe the pain that Anthology of Fear has put me through over the past couple of days, and sadly, it reminded me of some of my less awesome viewing experiences from the good ol’ days of Family Video and Blockbuster.

First off, I’ll go ahead and save you some time if you haven’t watched that trailer at the top of this article, but nothing in that trailer is in this game. I can assure you that it’s posted by the publisher and it has the right title, but nothing you see there is representative of the final product you may be considering throwing your money at. If you are genuinely interested in the game, you can find other more accurate trailers posted by other channels. This was akin to going to the rental shop, picking up the 2002 cinematic masterpiece Cabin Fever and getting home and finding that it was in fact the shitty 2016 remake.

Now that we have that out of the way, we’ll move on to story/disclaimer number two, more so to avoid wasting your time. Imagine if you will that you got home with the 2016 version of Cabin Fever and you decide that even though it’s the wrong film, you’re going to sit down and make the best of it. You’ve put your time in, all of your snacks are eaten, and you can just tell that the credits are within reach and are ready to wrap this experience up, rewind it, and put it back in its case only for the screen to go black. Your VCR starts making a whirring noise and then all of the tape starts shooting out of the front of your machine. This is essentially what happened to me just a few tasks before the end of this game, and after having uninstalled and reinstalled, switched to another Xbox, and checking the achievement list to compare if anyone else has had any issues, I can confirm that as of this writing, you cannot finish this game. No one has. 0.0% of the people who have played it have managed to complete the second act or completed the game (this has changed since editing). I will likely never reinstall this to check again, but go forward with this knowledge that if you buy this game, there is a good chance you’re going to have to watch someone else finish it on YouTube to see how the story plays out.

This is yet another puzzle-heavy walking simulator that makes up the bulk of every horror release we get that isn’t a remake in 2023, but hey, that’s okay because I am here for them good or bad. You’ll step into the shoes of a gentleman on the search for his missing brother who was last seen checking into a medical facility and then never seen or heard from again. Of course, you’re lowering yourself to less than legal means to do so by breaking into this facility, finding a vacant building (so you think) that houses nothing but a shuttered office, some things that look slightly off, and a metric shit-ton of VHS tapes, almost like visiting the dead fellow from the film V/H/S at work. From here you’ll swap between a few other characters as their experiences are relived through these tapes in a way that feels like a homage to Resident Evil 7.

Maybe it’s how low of expectations I had walking into this, but I actually enjoyed a lot of what I found in this game. There is a really fun rewind scene that occurs in the event you die while within the recording. The visuals were decent despite not clearly using the Unity or Unreal Engine, and outside of a few popping textures and the occasional wonky asset, everything looked as it should. There is a genuinely creepy atmosphere that permeates not only the more supernatural aspects but even the normal everyday areas. Everything looks like it was either lived or worked in, with personal notes and artifacts being placed in a way that makes it easy to slip into a place of comfort until it simply isn’t. The thing that really stood out to me as a negative with the presentation was the ever-present floating hands that I hate with a passion, as well as how the transitions between the two happened, which was generally a simple black screen whereas showing the events between the end and beginning would’ve really elevated the experience, be it through a cut scene or first-person in-engine gameplay.

This became an even bigger letdown during one of the less interesting task/puzzles, which I am going to try to be as vague as possible here, but it’s a little hard to do without slightly spoiling the action in question. Late into the game, something asks you to prove your love and wants an offering, an offering that comes from your mouth. No, not oral pleasure, but taking a tool and removing bits of yours which is done like this. Are you sitting down? You’ll walk forward into a mirror for about 10 minutes or so. Maybe longer. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow, what other motion you use, just that you continuously walk into a mirror until you’ve pulled five teeth which I think was more painful than just doing it in real life. It really felt inefficient, unneeded, and downright annoying. I feel like it was more of a budget or ability issue as opposed to self-censoring since there is later a scene in which a child takes a decent beating from the perspective of the kid, which also kind of felt gross to me, but I’ve seen far worse.

Most of the rest of the gameplay is going to be exploring and walking from point A to B, as these titles tend to go. There are really only a handful of puzzles, even factoring in what I had to view on YouTube after the crashes occurred. There are a few more involved puzzles that really ask you to carefully observe the world around you, but they are typically on the easy end. There is even a super short FPS section where you’re asked to take down a handful of enemies with a high-concept Sci-Fi gun that doubles as a sort of PKE meter from The Ghostbusters. It really ends up being a mishmash of ideas that feels incomplete once you’ve seen and heard everything the game has to offer. It’s a situation where a fair amount of things happen, but they don’t really tie together in a cohesive experience and feels like a situation where their aspirations didn’t meet their budget. Even after seeing the ending, I am not fully sure I get the point or how the two narratives really tie in together outside of the medical facility the characters have both visited in a Trick ‘r Treat but with sloppy writing kind of way. I can only assume these loose ends were explained in the missing third chapter that was promised, and speculating further, would probably also explain why there is nothing from the actual game in the trailer. There are also a few inconsistencies within the game, such as during one of the second characters areas, you switch from having a flashlight to not having it until finding the light for the first time as the character, only to lose and regain it at random.

The scares come mostly in the form of jump scares, those occasional scripted blink-and-you-miss-it bad guys walking through the frame, atmospheric shenanigans like a giant black eyeball, or just everyday objects that float. I am normally someone who is fairly desensitized to jump scares since I can typically see them coming out four miles away, but I will admit, a few got me here. Ever since the doll section in Resident Evil: Villages DLC I have gotten a weird eerie feeling when it comes to mannequins being in places they shouldn’t, and this really got me a few times, even if the ones found here are nowhere near as unsettling. In the previous game, it was all about how they moved and walked, but here you’ll only find a few that move in your field of view a handful of times, and in a far less substantial way. There is also some Layers of Fear style turning around and landing in a completely different setting used here and there, but again, it’s never to the same level of quality that Bloober Team managed in their pioneer version of the mechanic. This was very much a situation where it happened within the game became very obvious, typically due to a weird dead end, one where the hall continues to nothing but that alcove like the game was flashing a big “Go here” neon sign instead of relying on the player’s ability to find their way naturally.

Since my experience is limited to the Xbox version of Anthology of Fear I would have to say this game is a pass for me, mostly due to the horrendous teeth extraction and complete inability to finish the game; however, I would recommend picking up the PC version if you have a machine that will run it since it does seem to be in working order. I wouldn’t put it up there with my own short list of indie-horror greats, but it’s worth a weekend viewing.

4 out of 10

Pros

• Some Spooky Atmosphere
• The Death Animation is a Fun Homage to the VHS Era
• Some Effective Jump Scares
• Solid Visuals

Cons

• You Can’t Finish the Game on Xbox as of this writing
• The Teeth Extraction
• Abrupt Level Transitions
• Lack of Cohesion Between Areas/Stories/Mechanics

Anthology of Fear was developed by OhDeer Studio in association with 100 GAMES and published by 100 GAMES and Ultimate Games S.A.. It launched on NS, PC, X1 and XSX, and will be available in the future for PS4 and PS5. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of Anthology of Fear, check out the developer’s site.

 

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