MidLisa Maid of Sker Review

Maid of Sker made a great impression on me for about the first hour. So let's start with the good. The game looks great! It is beautiful, I didn't experience any glitch or lag. Graphics are nice and the game performs very well. The lighting is top notch. Being a game about music, of course it has to be good. But it is not just the music. The sound of the game as a whole is outstanding. Those footsteps... wow... chilling. The voice acting is good, not something out of the ordinary, but it is well made. Story wise, it has a good setting and plot. I always wanted to know more about what was going on. It was told through a combination of notes, and Elizabeth's dialogue through the conversations over the phone. It was nice to have a combination and not just notes telling you everything. The pacing of the story was also good. A good length for a horror game like this. Now, you must be asking, why did I give this game 2 stars if those things were so good? Well! Gameplay. This game is stealth. Everything is stealth... there is no combat and almost no way to defend yourself. You just have to be quiet, move slowly and run when you are detected. This mechanism made the game almost unbearable in some levels. I must admit that I hate stealth in games, but stealth can be done well. This wasn't. It was boring, annoying and obnoxious. Sometimes I had to wait for a long time in order to get to a certain spot to progress in the game. And most of the time, I was detected. It was hard to make them stop following me too. Just...no, please. Another thing that was just nuts were some of the puzzles. There were no hints, no reason for some of them. You just had to do some trial and error until you got it. The thing is that with all the people around looking for you, it made progress so slow, just because you had to walk at a speed of one step per minute in order to not get caught. How can I do some trial and error moving so freaking slow! Also, I was getting stuck on stairs all the time. Especially when I had the only defense mechanism that was available in the game out. Why? A lot of potential, but the gameplay killed it for me.