Song of Horror (PlayStation 4)

Ever since the “death” of survival horror, gamers have been clamoring for a return to form, the good old days with the Redfields and the Carnaby of old, Protocol Games have decided to give the people what they want and dish out the Song of Horror. 

Song of Horror initially released on Steam in an episodic fashion before reaching its outro on consoles under a “complete edition” moniker. 

Unfortunately due to events with covering this game, as detailed below, we are unable to score the PlayStation 4 version of Song of Horror. 

Song of Horror puts you initially in the boots of Daniel who is looking into the mysterious disappearance of a famous horror author, as bad luck would have it Daniel also disappears after the tutorial and you have to pick from a range of people who know Daniel such as friends or his ex wife he lost through his rampant alcoholism. 

This sets up this games unique hook in that you can pick any of the characters, they all have a unique item/ability and try to tackle the mystery, should they die though you lose them for the rest of the episodes.

The story is quite good and the initial mystery certainly keeps your interest piqued through the 5 episodes if you’re a horror enthusiast, it’s a slightly predictable but entertaining Lovecraftian tale. 

Now as much as I would love to lavish praise on the same and trust me the audio is top notch, I was sent the PlayStation 4 version of the game and it was only due to the generosity of the chief here at Otaku Gamers UK that I got to experience the game properly as my time with the console version was rough to say the least. 

The audio side of things is as standard really, voice acting is beautifully hammy and the subtle audio queues along with environment ambience helps bring the horror that the mystique that the story presents to you. 

Graphically on PlayStation 4 the game was an utter shambles and had me regretting to listen to this particular song about 4 minutes into the introduction, as Daniel made his way to the ominous mansion door I noticed that textures around the place were popping in all over the show and that the door in fact wasn’t in the frame, Daniel naturally didn’t react to this and knocked on casual like. 

Daniel then made his way through a door that appeared but never moved, materialising through it before I went on to explore the dark mansion, due to poor illumination I pressed the torch button, light poured from Daniel’s finger tips while a torch hovered in the middle of the air, after a few more presses the hallway housed 6 torches that hovered, spooky stuff. 

The camera allowed me to expect the character models quite closely and while the scenery was really well done and created quite an atmosphere, the character model looked like it had been badly imported from a previous generation release. 

I continued on and completed the initial tutorial section and got to pick a character, Sophie our main character’s ex-wife to be exact and started a pixel hunt through the very same mansion.  

After doing some initial puzzle solving and finally meeting the mysterious identity that haunts the house I got introduced to the listen mechanic, I had to put my ear to the door and listen, if there wasn’t a sound I could continue but sometimes the other side of the door sounds like actual Hell and that spells danger, this meant I had to plot different ways to get around the mansion and despite the graphical mess I was in to it.

I opened a door that sounded safe but got caught in a QTE against this mysterious entity, I think I survived but my game crashed after some strong graphical glitches, HARD CRASH this meant I had to unplug the console which any PS4 owner knows isn’t ideal, loaded the game up again and save corrupted! No bother I’ll restart, few minutes in another hard crash and more corruption, with the PS4 version I never saw further than episode 1 due to fear of the damage these constant crashes were doing to my console. 

Having played it on Steam it’s a perfectly fine horror game with iffy graphics and glitches but it’s stable, the version I reviewed wasn’t and there is no way I could suggest anyone pick the game up on consoles, horror is coming back and the right fears need to be produced, not the fear that a game will kill your harddrive!.