Plastomorphosis (PC)

Geoffrey Wright | March 29, 2024 | Mini Review | No Comments

Having looked for something to review on the side, Plastomorphosis is one of a few that recently caught my eye. The latest from VidyGames, it offers players a chance to return to those heady days of early 2000’s with a twist. Worth the low cost of the train fare to try and get into Modern-City? Lets take a quick look…

You play as an ordinary citizen that has been evacuated from their village due to the spread of dark energy. Most people in this world end up going to Modern-City, a dystopian metropolis where one can live peacefully if they pass the test and become a full citizen. As the latest potential citizen, its down to you to survive and embrace this new reality provided by the Government in the Nexus Tower.

Story is certainly interesting, offering a slightly more dystopian sci-fi angle instead of the usual supernatural, alien, zombie etc that you find in most others. There’s a few cutscenes but most of the story is delivered through text & voice messages you’ll receive through a phone (also acts as your flashlight) There’s about half a dozen hours in this of you want to take the time to soak in the atmosphere, otherwise just several hours will get you through – not bad considering the £6 price tag.

Miss the old days of blurry field-rendered PlayStation 2 games? Now you can relive those times irrespective of the resolution you wanna play. There’s several filters you can disable to clean things up of course, but I guess those filters are part of the charm and mask some deficiency. One area not deficient in is atmosphere, probably character design too as there’s some interesting ones you’ll want to avoid . This game uses all manner of visual tricks to create the atmosphere required and certainly succeeds as it draws you in to the dystopian world.

Audio also helps with that too. There’s a fair bit of voice acting for the voice messages that help punctuate the quite, but its the music that give off some Silent Hill vibes which seals the deal for this retro horror. Upside to the visuals is you don’t need much to run them as you can just keep dropping resolution without noticing much of a quality drop unsurprisingly.

To go with the retro styled visuals you also have the classic survival horror gameplay. There’s no action based over-the-shoulder malarkey here, just fixed cameras and tank controls (optional of course) Like classic games in the genre you’ll be having to solve puzzles and find keys to progress, all while managing your inventory to make sure you can defend yourself. Puzzles can be an obstacle, especially if rusty from playing recent survival horrors, as they fall more in line with older games as you’ll need to track various aspects or decipher texts to find clues.

Given the obvious inspirations, out of them all I’d probably say Silent Hill is again the one that springs to mind most. The liberal use of odd camera placements and the lack of ammo, best get used to the classic clunky melee, remind me of Silent Hill 2 more than anything. Unfortunately the game starts to lose a bit of steam, or maybe just focus I guess, as you get towards the end – the early atmosphere gives way for puzzle upon puzzle in later areas. Granted, the puzzles are still good as early game, if only there was a little more lore to read in between for a breather.

Plastomorphosis does exactly what it sets out to do by giving the player a dystopian survival horror modelled after the classics of yesteryear. The retro visuals, audio and gameplay (complete with tank controls), will make those fond of the likes of Silent Hill 2 feel right at home. Things do sour a bit towards the end as the focus seems to shift to a puzzleathon and some atmosphere is lost, but really for the cheap price of entry this should be worth an afternoon to anyone nostalgic for the more classic survival horror.