Perception

Perception is a truly unique game, putting players into the shoes of a blind girl and using that as a means of storytelling and gameplay. It develops a world that you want to explore, but also keeps you on the edge of your seat with fear and trepidation.

Ultimately a worthwhile recommendation for horror fans thanks to its original concept, likable protagonist, and some genuinely chilling frights.

Innovative but quite repetitive horror adventure. Blindness as game mechanic is fascinating, but can't really shine.

Perception is meant to be different from a walking simulator, but it's so guided, easy and story based that this definition suits well. Fortunately, atmosphere and story are pretty good.

Bar one or two genuine scares Perception doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to horror, a lot of the animations were boring and didn’t intimidate neither me nor brave Cassie. Perception fails to deliver on the horror side, but boasts clever mechanics and an engaging but flawed narrative. The artstyle is original and works perfectly with the darkness and echolocation mechanics.

Perception is an original game concept with its blind character, but it fails too much in core aspects of the terror genre such as the game mechanics or the history itself.

Perception is full of interesting ideas, both mechanically and narratively, but it never fully commits. It’s a game about being blind that allows you to see. It’s a game about things that go bump in the night, but those horrors rarely show up to threaten you. There are some strong moments peppered throughout Perception, and some great, chilling histories to uncover in this virtual haunted house, but it plays at much bigger ideas than its surface-level exploration can handle.

Perceptions mechanics successfully imitate the feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar place as a blind person, but in my opinion the developers sacrificed too much in terms of gameplay to achieve that feeling. [08/2017, p.59]

Perception features a unique narrative thread, though it isn’t ground-breaking. Claustrophobic at times, Perception is at once elegant and creepy, but the title’s own core mechanic defangs any deeper sense of dread or terror it might have achieved. Perception sits comfortably in a casual gray area in terms of puzzles and story, but it offers up some solid voice work and unique, ethereal visuals. Horror fans seeking something novel, though not panic inducing, may find it worth a look.

Perception has many good ideas, but it doesn't carry them in the best way throughout the adventure, mostly for relying too much on cliches.

Perception starts with good ideas, but fails to build a really original game around them. The atmosphere is good during the initial minutes, but it feels like a guided walking simulator without real scares.

The more I wandered around the haunted mansion, the more I realized that Perception is a one-feature game, and that feature is poorly implemented.

The premises (a blind character, a creepy house, an evil spirit) were good, but Perception falls short as survival horror and as an intriguing walking simulator.

The “blindness” premise commits narrative suicide by effectively presenting the player with a complete, yet terribly drab view of the game-world. Furthermore, no real sense of danger or urgency is ever created and the game’s narrative falls victim to genre tropes once too many. The very definition of a noble failure, Perception fails to engage the player on an emotional level and crumbles under the weight of its monotony.

For the idea of a blind girl hero and bits of Bioshock, the game would deserve nine out of ten. Everything else, unfortunately, it is an average game that can be attractive only to the fans of horror games.

Perception fails in two very crucial areas, story and gameplay. It was supposed to put us in the unique role of a blind person, yet it fails to convince us at that. For one the use of echolocation more or less works so much better than a flashlight. As far as the story goes, Cassie here and there shouts “What am I doing here?” and we couldn’t agree more with this sentiment.

Were it not for the use of echolocation, Perception would be indistinguishable from the hordes of horror games that have seemingly flooded the market in recent memory. But that central mechanic fails to create an impact in the gameplay, making Perception a well constructed game that lacks in scares and surprises.

Perception isn’t great, failing to clear every benchmark that it set out for itself by a healthy margin. It could fall back on the fact that it was trying something experimental as an excuse for what went wrong, but there are too many experimental games in today’s day and age for me to cut any slack for the mess that is this game. With the pedigree of the team that created it and the lofty expectations that it set out for itself, it fails to live up even to modest expectations. While it’s noble to attempt to tackle representation in interesting ways, Perception isn’t a poster child for what games of this persuasion should strive to be.

Video games offer their own models for empathetic storytelling by allowing players to take on different identities and it’s a healthy sign of the medium’s maturation for players to be given more opportunities to explore characters who are not minimally-flawed, super-people.

Perception feels like a lost opportunity to showcase the beauty of mundanity. The routine-like flow of going from goal to goal as you rely on Cassie's sixth sense feels like a series of chores lacking in stimulation. And while reaching the end rewards you with an additional thematic message that no one could have anticipated, it doesn't redeem the game from its lack of nuance and overreliance on hand-holding waypoints.

Perception offers a decent set of horror stories, but exploring this house gets dull pretty quickly.

Perception is as much a disappointment for the clever and inherently frightening idea it wastes as it is for the mistakes it makes. At its heart, there’s the promise of playing something genuinely new, from a perspective that could help teach and thrill simultaneously. It’s unfortunate that, like its echolocation mechanic, the more I saw of Perception, the more there was to worry about.

The mechanics of echolocation looked promising, but its potential is not fully utilized. Beside this, Perception has nothing to offer.

Some very clever ideas are completely squandered by a game that is neither scary, enjoyable, or thought-provoking – although it does manage irritating and dull with great aplomb.