14 DAY TRIAL // 
This year seems to have been favorable to horror games placed in a WWI setting. The trenches of the Great War are scarry enough by their own, but adding a personal tragedy on top of it, pushes the entire experience over the edge and turns Ad Infinitum into a real psychological horror. But is the dark atmosphere and constant gunfire enough to create a memorable experience?
Ad Infinitum is a traumatizing experience for the German soldier you will control, who will need to face their worst nightmares. He will never know for sure what is real and what isn’t, the horror of wandering through the trenches, being made even harder by reliving painful memories of their life from before.
Welcome to Ad Infinitum, a game that scares you from the beginning, partly because at first you cannot really figure out what’s going on. As you progress through the story, the aforementioned duality becomes more and more evident.
You will almost feel the pain and despair of your hero while deciphering the clues thrown at you together with the connections between the horrors of the war and the even bigger ones of your life before. Despite its linearity that story is quite gripping, but making sense of it requires you to explore the game and gather all the notes and collectibles.
Although you are playing as a soldier, Ad Infinitum is in its essence and adventure game, so you will have to face your fears most of the time equipped with nothing else but your wits. Taking away the gun you are presented with at the beginning of the game adds to a sense of helplessness and makes the already pressing atmosphere even darker.
If you can keep your cool under pressure, you will be able to hide from the monsters who are mostly blind but have a very good hearing. You have to be careful, since using stealth is not enough. You will have to avoid the countless traps that can give away your position or use the monster’s advantage against them by making loud noises to lure them away from the path you need to follow.
Although this sounds exciting in theory and you would believe that you have plenty of space to maneuver, in reality Ad Infinitum is a completely linear experience, without multiple solutions to a problem. There is only one correct path and usually just one correct solution. If despite your best efforts, you still get found by monsters not everything is lost.
In case of smaller enemies, you can parry their attacks by completing QTEs. If you fail them or if you run into bigger monsters your inevitable demise will be followed by waking up in a hospital bed. The problem with this solution is the automatic system that it relies on can teleport you to areas you have not visited before. As a result, you might miss out on whole sequences, making progress impossible if you missed a key item.
And since Ad Infinitum mainly relies on puzzles that involve finding these items and using them as envisioned by the developers, the frustration level can get quite high. This was the moment I realized how linear the game actually is. Everything follows a script and if one of the gears misbehaves, the entire system comes to a halt.
For example, after you cross the boundaries set up for monsters, they will stop chasing you and just stand there, doing nothing. On the flipside, often when you step into their activity area, they will find you even if you stand perfectly still without making any noise. But once you learn these patterns, you can turn their behavior to your advantage.
The atmosphere of the game is very dark and the few jump scares waiting on you are very effective. This is mainly the result of the great sound, that is a key element of the game, as you might have already guessed. The noises you make with those from the environment create a palpable tension that reaches critical heights due to the howls that will hit you when you least expect them. Combined with an excellent soundtrack you can expect chills running down your spine.
In direct contrast, the graphics and the visuals feel somewhat dated. The fog makes everything blurry to the point that often you don’t really see where you are going. The only element that seems to have been put effort into are the monsters themselves. Everything else seems put together without too much care and there are plenty of bugs further ruining the experience.
The Good
- Dark atmosphere with an interesting story
- Truly scary monsters
- Great sound design
The Bad
- Completely linear and scripted
- Underwhelming graphic design
- Frustrating amount of bugs
Conclusion
Because of that, it becomes increasingly frustrating to explore the levels in order to puzzle together the story. Also, once you pique behind the curtains and understand the mechanisms that break down so often, the magic is gone. The plenty of bugs and concept errors ruin what could have been a memorable experience.
Review key provided by the publisher.
