GSY Review
PS5
Xbox Series X
PC
After the unforgiving in The First Berserker: Khazan we covered a few days ago, we are now going to tell you about KARMA: The Dark World, a new horrific walking simulator arriving today on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. To find out our verdict, we invite you to take the red pill and follow us inside.
Verdict
Daniel McGovern is a roam agent of the Thought Bureau, which means he's empowered to enter the minds of apprehended suspects to discover what they're hiding there. Although the main character is able to use highly advanced technology to probe the human brain, the story of KARMA: The Dark World is set in 1984, in a dystopian, uchronistic East Germany where citizens are controlled with an iron fist by the Leviathan corporation. Unsurprisingly, with such a choice of year and the tyrannical atmosphere depicted in the game, references to George Orwell's iconic novel 1984 are numerous, starting with the name of the research institute where Daniel will be investigating, which echoes that of the main character in the famous British novel. That being said, the world described here retains a certain originality, and the plot we follow, while not perfectly clear at the end of the adventure, has the merit of maintaining the player's curiosity and interest throughout the seven hours of this dark plunge into the human psyche. The visuals are meticulously rendered, although we do regret the poverty of certain textures (the texts appearing on some of them are too often very pixelated), as are the sound design and the English VO (it's also possible to play with Chinese voices). The major problem with KARMA: The Dark World is that it comes after so many narrative games tinged with psychological horror that the mechanics on which it's based have become very mundane. You'll discover many documents (optional or not), solve a bunch of puzzles (simple for the most part, as they too often rely on a date or time that reveals the hidden access code) and face a few enemies in scripted passages (you'll regularly run away from a threat but you'll also have to photograph a monster from behind several times without being seen, nothing very frightening nor exciting). It's clear that most of the work went into the art design, the staging ideas and the creation of the world and story. The whole thing works, of course, but for our part, we can't say that we were mesmerized by the experience. The game does allow itself a few rather singular sequences that could even be taken from another title since they look so different from the rest of the game, but that was not enough to fully convince us. We'd therefore recommend KARMA: The Dark World to those who appreciate strange, gloomy atmospheres and who aren't yet tired of horrific walking simulators, or those who haven't played too many of them thus far.
- On the upside
- Intriguing game world
- Immersive atmosphere
- Visually polished throughout
- Convincing voice work...
- ... with a few poignant cutscenes
- Not too expensive
- On the downside
- Stale gameplay mechanics
- Some textures are too blurry
- Occasional framerate drops
- Only seven hours
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