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| Title | DYING: Reborn |
| Developer | NEKCOM |
| Publisher | Oasis Games |
| Release Date | February 28, 2017 |
| Genre | Adventure/Puzzle |
| Platform | PS4, Vita, PSVR |
| Age Rating | M for Mature |
| Official Website | |
DYING: Reborn is a puzzle game with light horror elements added to it. You follow Matthew, who is trying to find his girlfriend after she mysteriously vanished and only left you with a letter stating her whereabouts. You wake up locked in a Saw-inspired room, with your only goal to escape and find your girlfriend so that you can both leave and go back home. You’re “guided” along by a fish headed gentleman, aptly named “The Guide”. So with that out of the way, how does this game fare?
Let’s start off with the obvious; the puzzles. Almost all of the puzzles in this game are fantastic and require a lot of thought to solve. There are a lot of very out-of-the-box solutions that you really have to sit and think about, which reflects wonderfully on the fact that this game was obviously inspired by the Saw movies. The only problem I had is that the final puzzle is glitched so that it can’t be solved normally. I had to look up a walkthrough on what to do because I was stuck and couldn’t progress, then when I was finally able to, I ran into a different issue. One part of the room involved sliding symbols around, which would not move when I attempted to solve it. I had to exit the game and restart it just to finish the puzzle, which was a little frustrating considering the load times in this game are quite long. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun solving most of the puzzles in this game.
The presentation isn’t really anything great to talk about. All of the set pieces are typical horror sets, which makes the whole game seem kind of bland. Usually the sound and ambiance would help with this, but they aren’t all that grand either. The mixing in this game is some of the worst I’ve seen. I already dislike the fact that this game is almost entirely jumpscares, but for some reason certain random sounds will just be louder than usual. The laughably bad voice acting isn’t helped by this fact, as I’ve found that sometimes characters will just be drowned out by random noises, and sometimes the audio will just stop altogether. The visuals aren’t anything spectacular, but they aren’t an eyesore to look at, which is a plus. So many things in this game seemed promising, like the creepy mannequins and the weird looking antagonist, but they never seem to go anywhere. Even the Saw aspects aren’t utilized as well as they could be.
Overall DYING: Reborn just doesn’t have a lot to offer. Sure the puzzles are pretty good, but the sound design is bad, the voice acting is horrid, and this game is full of bugs and glitches. This game looked promising, but it just fell flat. Just as well, the game is horribly overpriced for the amount of content that you get. Right now you can pick this game up for $19.99, or $9.99 on VR and get only half of the content. This game only took me about three hours to finish and nearly 100%, which is insanely short for that asking price. If you’re really into puzzle games and find this game on sale for about $5, then I would probably get it. Otherwise, don’t waste your time.
| Review Score | |
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| Overall |    |
Review copy provided by the publisher.
