For Cryin’ Out Loud
The adventure takes place somewhere in the early 20th Century as best as I can tell, in Russia. However, in several parts throughout, you will time travel briefly to solve puzzles. You begin in your brother’s apartment, which has been overhauled to being a full blown lab for his ‘capsule’ that he’s built. Around his apartment are all kinds of notes and books about psychology, ‘infrasound,’ botany, experiences after death, and megaliths. Basically, your brother discovered a way to separate mind and body, allowing one to explore their past and memories in minute detail. It’s fairly intriguing, but as you discover in your adventure, this ability has a very dark side, too. In fact, it seems that your brother is actually lost in this ‘Shimmering World’ that he’s given himself access to.
The first order of business is to find a way to join him in the ‘Shimmering World.’ You’re not given much to go on, but you at least know that you need to take a certain type of plant and mix it with alcohol and inhale that while being subjected to ‘infrasound,’ these sounds that you cannot hear, but that can be created. It’s not long before you realize your character is a mute, who offers no feedback on what the heck you’re looking at or need to do; in fact, you can’t even examine an object in your inventory except for mouse-hovering over it and reading a basic, useless description like ‘screwdriver’ or for the unique items they just say ‘Detail.’
So with no feedback from your character and the inability to examine anything, you really don’t have anything to go on except for these books and notes strewn about (not only the apartment, but elsewhere in the game too). Clicking on these notes, at least the ones where your brother narrates them, is annoying; you’ll be able to read much faster than the steady drone of your brother’s voice. I actually used the mute button on my keyboard to avoid this distraction, but the turning off sound effects is an option too.
What’s more is that items in the world, when you scroll over them, change the mouse cursor, a very common and useful mechanic of adventure games. Outcry manages to throw a wrench in this simple mechanic too by allowing objects that you’re simply not ready to interact with change the cursor as well – this too is normal – but it’s most definitely not normal for you character to not say anything or for you to get any kind of feedback at all, so you never quite know when you’re supposed to be able to interact with something and when you aren’t ready.
Puzzles are similarly frustrating; most puzzles involving turning valves, flipping switches, and doing other mundane mechanical actions that don’t offer a lot of interactive satisfaction when done anyway. In Outcry, you have that to contend with, but you also won’t often know when you’ve done something right until you go and look for yourself.
Interacting with things in Outcry has some notable problems as well. I noticed my mouse movement was slow and jaggy way, way too often, as though the game were swapping out massive data files from RAM to my hard drive, which I know was not the case. It’s really annoying to have your mouse cursor stutter and move slowly at seemingly random moments.
On the Other Hand…
I was intrigued by Outcry’s story, however detached from reality (no pun intended) it might be. The entire game also carries an old film look to it, as though you’re playing from an old cinema reel; light fluctuations, stray thin white vertical lines, and that general graininess effect makes for an interesting overlay throughout the game. It can however also hide certain objects that you need to interact with, but the trade off was reasonable. I didn’t find myself having to pixel hunt too hard too often, and the visual effect I think benefited the experience.
The music in Outcry is also ambient and fitting. While not quite as good as Nikopol that I am simultaneously reviewing, it adds to an atmosphere of despair and loneliness. Effects are sufficient, but had their been voiceovers, especially for your character, that could have really elevated this adventure.
Several of the puzzles were cool, too. Using the Time Key to shift back in time to find or move an object, or relive a memory of your brother was a neat trick.
With the help of a walkthrough when I was firmly stumped, I was able to get through the adventure in well under six hours according to my save game time. Had I tried to solve all of these puzzles alone, I would have probably had to restart the game several times because on some of those switching puzzles, if you alter the state of the switches before you know what you’re doing, you could potentially set yourself back even more. I think it’s actually a good thing Outcry didn’t try to stretch out much longer, because in a lot of ways it’s a chore to play through.