Perception
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Perception
Perception offers a decent set of horror stories, but exploring this house gets dull pretty quickly.
Perception has some good ideas, but it is ultimately a disappointment thanks to an annoying art style, frustrating gameplay mechanics, and an underwhelming narrative.
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.
Although more unsettling than outright terrifying, Perception brings some novel ideas to the horror genre
Perception features some strong moments but never fully commits to its big ideas
A novel and inventive approach to first-person exploration falls short of its ambitions.
Perception isn't great, failing to clear every benchmark that it set out for itself by a healthy margin.
Unless you're a big fan of horror adventure games, Perception is one you can easily skip. The plot isn't particularly engaging, and the horror elements are predictable with jump scares, characters and story dialogue that is typical of this genre. Even if it does fulfil all of the necessary criteria, it serves as a reminder that the horror genre is far too reliant on clichés to get by, and will only appeal to the thrill seekers happy to overlook its generic design.Ultimately, the biggest downfall is the core concept that drives Perception. The echolocation mechanic gets old quickly and seems like a better idea in theory than in actual gameplay; walking around in the dark in any game isn't normally enjoyable, and in this one it's no better – even with the added sense of meaning from the narrative. It's an aggravating concept that should not have really got past the early design stage, and detracts from the already average quality of this short-lived horror adventure game.
