Perception Review (PS4)

In Perception, you play as Cassie, a blind heroine who needs to unpick the mysteries of an abandoned house which is haunting her dreams. She isn’t afraid of the dark – the whole world is dark to her, but you as the player probably are. As the game starts you’re immediately introduced to how Cassie gets about – by echolocation. With sensitive hearing, she can help ‘picture’ what is around her, swathed in (to us) various colours. Your main method of being able to create sound is by clapping your cane on the floor, sending a ‘sound wave’ out which helps you see what is around you.

Despite the jump-scares which are fairly obvious (although I fell for every one), the game handles Cassie’s blindness in  clever ways. Her phone has Delphi, which is a more advanced Siri and can read out text messages to her, and scan objects and read out what they say on them (such as a bottle of pills). Cassie has a ‘sixth sense’ which highlights key objects and places to go. This is helpful but probably too helpful as it’s essentially a very clear waypoint on where to go next to proceed with the story. As a result it very much is a follow-the-waypoint adventure, one which you should not be too noisy about doing.

Perception is around four hours long in total, but even then probably outstays its welcome a bit too much. Some clever ideas aren’t quite fleshed out enough to make it a must buy experience, and even with the low price point it’s not really going to attract even the most hardcore horror gamers. Maybe worth a look if you’re bored, but generally there are better horror games out there.